Or, as Cynthia Freeland put it:
"Every businessman seeks the most profitable opportunity. Russia's tragedy is that the best opportunity was ripping off the decaying state. Expecting the future oligarchs to forgo that Klondike--to piously retool an ancient Soviet factory or energetically hawk copper bracelets, when they could be taking over vast oil companies--would be like asking the cat to stop hunting mice.... The future oligarchs did what any red-blooded businessman would do. The real problem was that the state let them get away with it..."
Yet another opportunity to learn that the "minimal" "night watchman" state--the state that consists only of a judge to say which contracts should be enforced, a constable to make sure people do what the judge says, and a night watchman to make sure nothing is stolen under cover of darkness--is actually a ferociously powerful and sophisticated political and social institution. Think of it: It has to:
(1) Secure property rights--protect people who own stuff from casual theft and extortion. (2) Prevent violence. (3) Enforce contracts--and decide how to interpret contracts. (4) Control regional notables who would otherwise use their standing and resources to extort wealth (including, say, factory managers in early 1994 who promise to fire workers who won't hand their privatization vouchers over to him). (5) Most important, perhaps, control its own functionaries so that judgments are given and rights enforced according to the law, and are not bought and sold for bribes.
These are very hard tasks to accomplish...
On another topic: I never knew Chubais. But I did know Boycko. I knew Maxim Boycko back in 1991, when he was sure above all else that Russia required an honest and fair privatization process: an egalitarian share distribution to create a large active class of people who would benefit from rapid capitalist growth, and so advocate it, and who believed that the property of the state had been distributed fairly. I knew Maxim Boycko in early 1994, when he believed that the privatization process needed to assign huge numbers of shares to "red directors" to recognize the realities of power and control on the ground, if anything was ever going to happen--and the important thing above all was for something to happen, for them to be some motion toward reform. But I haven't talked to Maxim Boycko since the end of 1995, and I don't understand how he shifted to believing that the government should give away the rest of Soviet industry for a song to the oligarchs. Was it a belief that it would otherwise it would soon be stolen anyway? Was it a belief that voucher privatization had entrenched incompetent managers, and that it would be preferable to continue privatization by creating strong plutocrats who would be powerful political allies for the government?
I genuinely do not know...
Brad DeLong