I thought the world was bad enough, but I never imagined that there would be another mountain to climb – the Covid-19 pandemic has not yet stopped, and the sudden outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine has stirred people’s hearts. These days, various analyses and debates on the Russian-Ukrainian war and related political and economic history are flooding the major news channels and social media. And it suddenly occurs to me that this book, Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russia, which I read many years ago, is a good one to be read again.
So what has Russia been through since the collapse of the Soviet Union to get to where it is today – as some commentators have put it, “playing a good hand like this”? What has Russia done right or wrong in its almost 30 years of national transformation? What are the lessons to be learnt for the onlookers and those to come?
Looking back to the 1990s, when the Soviet Union, once one of the “two poles of the world”, underwent a dramatic transformation, the scene of President Yeltsin taking to the streets and giving a speech on a tank became a classic shot that has left a mark on history. But after the excitement, the Russian people soon had to face the harsh realities of a devalued ruble, a civil war in Chechnya, and the chaos of a society in transition…, which led many Russians at the time to say “I’d rather go back to the Soviet era”.
Chrystia Freeland, author of Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russia was the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times from 1995 to 1998, and was previously based in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where she witnessed what was almost the biggest auction in human history. The “Faustian bargain” – the “loan-for-stock” auction of the century – between the young reformers, who had been hastily brought to power at the beginning of Russia’s transition, and the oligarchs: young reformers with ideals but no experience in governing, met a group of shrewd and adventurous oligarchs.
At a critical moment in history, the reformers failed to seize the opportunity, and their theoretical experimentation cost Russian society dearly, not only by disrupting the social order of the new Russia, but also by losing the precious trust between people, as stated in a passage in the first chapter of the book, Marx was Right About Capitalism: “In a world of heartless, tin-skinned men and women, there is no need for a new Russian society. The ruthless market mechanism is in fact an organic system that relies heavily on mutual trust between the participants. But when Russia began to create capitalism, the vast majority of its citizens…had been trained to be suspicious and to have no trust in each other.” A reform without trust can hardly succeed.
Sale of the Century, completed in 2000, was named the “Best Business Book” of the year by the Economic Observer, and was later published in Chinese in 2004. In order to gain a thorough understanding of the matter, Sale of the Century can be read alongside another book enitled The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia (2001), written by David E. Hoffman, who also experienced Russia’s turnaround first-hand, and was formerly the Moscow correspondent of The Washington Post. Both of these books provide a series of prophetic spells through history in the midst of the world’s current chaos.
