The Chubais Appointment: A Possible Putin Olive Branch To Biden And The West
December 10, 2020
A Kremlin decree published December 4, 2020, announced that "Anatoly Borisovich Chubais will be appointed as special representative to the President of the Russian Federation for relations with international organizations to achieve sustainable development goals."
[1] The Chubais appointment aroused controversy in Russia. Putin has consistently evoked the bitter memories of the 1990s when following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced severe economic privation and was seen by many Russians to have been reduced to a vassal state of the West. In successive elections, Putin and his supporters have recalled the bad times as a major reason for keeping him in power. Now Putin was appointing Chubais, a figure who was demonized for his prominent role in these bad times. Chubais was in charge of privatizing the economy a process that resulted in massive layoffs and the wiping out of savings. It also resulted in the enrichment of a few oligarchs who purchased assets for a song. In 1995-1996, Chubais was the Russian governor of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development lending credence to the charge that he was a minion of global capital. Although out of politics for over twenty years, the rancor towards Chubais has not abated. When Chubais' horse died earlier this year, the leader of the Communist Party of Russia, Gennady Zyuganov made the following comment: I saw that Chubais's horse had died. He says that we must immediately switch to innovation. And I think, at least I would say, you did everything with Yeltsin so that we were left without a base for innovation. You destroyed 80 thousand enterprises, entire industries. "