ps and invested in the Russian stock market to unprecedented heights. It was believed these problems would resolve themselves if the economic medicine were applied with sufficient vigor. In actuality, they played a role in the failed reformation. Since western investment was involved, it was inevitable that western politicians were also factors in the unsuccessful attempt to bring capitalism into the Russian economy. There were reports of massive Russian money laundering through the Bank of New York, which raised new questions about the logic of pouring international loans into a country spending an estimated ten billion to fifteen billion a year in capital flight. Billions of dollars loaned by the IMF was going into the Russian economy but there was no evidence of progress. Foreign policy advisers to George W. Bush, the leading Republican presidential candidate, attempted to link Vice President Gore to the failure of economic reform in Russia because of his much-exaggerated relationship with former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. For their part, the Democrats accused the Republicans of throwing away the best chance of influencing future events in Russia during the period of 1991-92, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism. With a country of two opposing views, how did they expect to successfully aid Russia in the reformation if they were unable to agree on what went wrong?That the attempt to shift to a more Westernized capitalist economy failed in Russia was immensely due the structure of the economy. Analysts called it a “virtual economy.” It was a false economy because Russia failed to reform the communist economic system. According to the Washington Post in June 2, 1998, Russia took strong measures to initiate transition from communism to a free-market, but in many instances it was not followed through. Land was not fully privatized and the tax code had not been updated. Although most companies were p...
