Michael Pugliese quotes, from the _New Republic_, Stephen Kotkin's review of Strobe Talbott's _The Russia Hand_:
>http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020603&s=kotkin060302
>>...Talbott rightly notes that the policy of guiding Russia's transition by
>means of IMF loans was supported by Congress, meaning both Gingrich and Dole;
>indeed, for a time "there was no opposition to speak of." This was too bad,
>because a farce ensued. Talbott insists that it was Lawrence Summers--then
>deputy treasury secretary and the real capo of the IMF-- who assumed the
>position of dictating government appointments and policy measures to Russian
>prime ministers...
Summers "dictating government appointments and policy measures" to the Russian government?
How strange a reading of Talbott's book.
What I remember from Talbott's book is very different. What I remember is Talbott's recounting (p. 117) how Summers in Moscow begged Talbott to talk to Clinton to get Clinton to ask Yeltsin not to fire Yegor Gaidar and Boris Fyodorov--and how Talbott then shaved down Summers's plea ("we agreed that Clinton couldn't be in the position of explicitly second-guessing a personnel decision Yeltsin had already made...") and how Clinton then shrugged Summers off ("their political requirements are at cross-purposes with good economics"). What I remember is Talbott's recounting (p. 208) the horror of Summers and his right hand David Lipton at Anatoly Chubais's loans-for-shares program ("bad economics, bad civics, and bad politics")--and Talbott's semi-apology that State and the White House didn't back Summers and Lipton at the Treasury: "[The rationale for loans-for-shares] was debatable, and we, as the reformers' constant backers and occasional advisors, should have debated it more with them. We would have done so if we'd had more time, more foresight, and more influence..."
I wonder if Kotkin read _The Russia Hand_...
Brad DeLong