> But the Soviet public didn't want the end of socialism or the breakup
> of the USSR. What they wanted had nothing to do with it. Yeltsin
> shelled the parliament building as part of his "democratic" revolution
> - then handed over state assets to his cronies, most of whom were in
> the CP. The push for the transition to capitalism came from within the
> elite, aided by the World Bank and Jeffrey Sachs, not from below.
Yes, but I think we're conflating different "elites" here. The "elite" who eventually pushed for capitalism was not the "elite" of the Politburo, which actually made policy. My impression is that the capitalism-pushers were mostly regional bosses and enterprise managers, whereas the Politburo was mostly made up of (a) sincere social democrats like Gorbachev (and the allies he stacked it with) and (b) conservative Brezhnevites who thought Gorby was too soft on capitalism.
SA