Calls by US for Economic Transition in Russia From Reagan Through Trump
March 11, 2021
Aleksandra Srdanovic
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his secretary of state, George Shultz, as well as U.S. President George H.W. Bush, are well known to have worked effectively with their Soviet counterparts to advance bilateral arms control. What is less known is that Reagan, Bush and successive presidents also sought to convince the Kremlin to give the market economy a chance, as they believed that a transition by the Soviet Union to a market economy would have been in America’s interest. The 1992 Freedom Support Act submitted by the Bush Administration to Congress, for example, stated that “recent developments in Russia and other independent states of the former Soviet Union present an historic opportunity for a transition of the independent states of the former Soviet Union into the community of democratic nations…the entire international community has a vital interest in the success