Much as it did with Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1920s, the Economist had no qualms in justifying Yeltsin’s strongman actions as the only path that could guarantee capital order: “Mr. Yeltsin had to choose between smashing his rival with force or seeing himself, his government and any prospect of reform destroyed. . . . Mr. Yeltsin’s opposition was a bizarre coalition of extremists of every kind, more than a few of whom, to western eyes, seem downright crazy. . . . Th e threat, in the end, was extreme— and so, necessarily, was the response.” Th e article concluded, “Th ese gains— the restoration of Mr. Yeltsin’s power to govern and renewed progress in economic reform— are great indeed.” In the months that followed, as the Economist doted on the rapid privatization of Russian industries, data from the World Bank showed that unemployment had reached double digits. If, in 1987– 1988, 2 percent of the Russian people lived in poverty (i.e., survived on less than $4 a day), by 1993– 1995 the number reached 50 percent: in just seven years half the Russian population became destitute. In the same period, nonwage income rose from 5 percent to 23 percent of GDP.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1594