Not long after, the new Russian Federation was teetering. Central planning had collapsed; inflation was rising; shops were empty. In December 1991, Sachs arrived to advise the government with a team of Harvard economists. But the Polish prescription had markedly different results in Russia, which was rent by political infighting and lacked markets or a strong civil society. Many proposed reforms stalled in Parliament. Those implemented, like elimination of price controls, led to spiraling inflation that wiped out Russians' savings and thwarted investment. Privatization led to looting of the country's most valuable assets by its leading businessmen and organized criminals. Fairly or not, many still hold Sachs responsible.
Whenever I asked Sachs about Russia, he bristled, the only times in months I saw him lose his composure or stray off message. When it first came up, we were standing outside his four-story town house off Central Park West at the end of a long workday. Sachs launched into his standard defense: he gave the right advice, but the Russians didn't follow it. It was the United States' fault, too, for refusing to give enough money to stabilize the currency and create a safety net for the unemployed.
There was a clap of thunder. Then raindrops. Sachs's words seemed to race ahead of him. ''You try your best and do what you can do, but you couldn't imagine all of the blame that came afterward,'' he said. ''Say that malaria aid didn't work. It would be like being blamed for malaria for the next 10 years. Am I going to be blamed for AIDS too?'' The rain started coming down harder, and his wife, Sonia, rushed out with an umbrella and reminded him that the guests for a fund-raising dinner were already there. He paused for a moment and his voice lowered, cracking slightly. ''Frankly, the Russia thing was a very painful period.''
Instead of wallowing in the pain, however, Sachs has set out to redeem himself. It's as if having failed at the second-greatest challenge of modern history -- the transition from communism to capitalism -- he is intent on solving the first: the persistence of global poverty. ...