Liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency has nothing to do with attacking the social safety net, which in fact was not attacked. Health care and education are still free, and people still get lot of benefits, and did throughout the Yeltsin years.
In fact, many people lived entirely on benefits. Workers who weren't getting paid would eat at the cafeteria, in which their employer gave them food, and their children would use the employer's daycare facilities. That's why they kept working in the absence of actual pay.
----- Original Message ---- From: Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Mon, February 15, 2010 12:30:07 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] What Would Have to Happen First
"The programs of liberalization and stabilization were designed by Yeltsin's deputy prime minister Yegor Gaidar, a 35-year-old liberal economist inclined toward radical reform, and widely known as an advocate of "shock therapy". Shock therapy began days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when on January 2, 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. This entailed removing Soviet-era price controls in order to lure goods back into understocked Russian stores, removing legal barriers to private trade and manufacture, and cutting subsidies to state farms and industries while allowing foreign imports into the Russian market in order to break the power of state-owned local monopolies.