Authority 17

For a long time we lived under the dictatorship of the Com­munists, but now we have found out that life under the dictatorship of business people is no better. They couldn’t care less about what country they are in.

Boris Kagarlitsky (1994): Square Wheels: How Russian Democracy got Derailed. New York: Monthly Review Press, p. 191.

Grigori Gorin (1940-2000) was a Russian-Jewish doctor, screenwriter, and novelist.

Through the transformation processes of glasnost (public) and perestroika (reorganisation), Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet republics, attempted to orchestrate a democratic transition in the Soviet Union. However, since Russia was heavily indebted, it had to implement economic reforms in order to get credit. With the dissolution of the USSR, Russian President Boris Yeltsin deposed Gorbachev and ruled by special decree for a year during the economic crisis. Valuable state property was sold off. For example, 40% of the oil company which had annual sales of around US$ 190 billion (2006) was sold for US$ 88 million (Klein 2007: 232). In 1999, he handed power to Putin, whose first act was to guarantee Yeltsin immunity (ibid.: 237).

*Aris Chatzistefanou & Katerina Kitidi (2012): Katastroika. Documentary. *Naomi Klein (2007): The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada.

1993