Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Would have been better to reform slowly, if people were genuinely fed up and were sure that they wanted a market economy.
I'm not sure that is a fair approach. I think people didn't really know what they wanted and especially how their dreams should be approached. In fact, there are pros and cons in the planned economy vs. the market economy. As much as I dislike the communism/socialism, I can't deny the obvious pros of the planned economy. The founders of the planned economy in Russia had no means to know the cons until they built it and it was thoroughly tested with time. It's easy to be wise now, but back then in the early 20th century it wasn't clear which way is better. Many believed the market economy is the past and the planned economy is the future. Also, the term "fed up" is relative: some people were fed up, others thrived on that. Also, the term "market economy" wasn't used up until later. Rather, the term "хозрасчёт" was coined to denote a payment ABOVE the set up government salaries. (Yes, both ought to be paid, so nobody really knew what is that supposed to mean, and how is that going to work. What happened as a direct result of more money paid without the substantial change in the output was that the money was devalued.) The "market" economy was viewed very negatively those days since many people were able to get their first-hand experience buying on the local markets. The prices were way above the government-set prices and no competition was to be seen. Rather than that, the sellers agreed with each other in advance on the price and kept it high regardless of whether the product was sold or not because they knew they would be beaten and expelled by the other sellers (and/or militia-police officers paid by those sellers) so those individuals who wanted to sell for cheaper were forced into that price. Of course, there was a lot of corruption among the officials responsible for "overseeing" the markets as well as the open criminals connected to that process. There was nothing new in the 90s - it was the same old mechanism on the larger scale. So, if you assume most people were fed up and wanted a market economy, that would by all means be an overstatement.

Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Another thing is that it is not easy to create democracy where it has never existed.
We had democracy between February 1917 and October 1917.

Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
In Western Europe it happened more slowly, and things like corruption has been quite common in many countries until fairly recently. Not sure how much democratic Western Europe and the US really are though (it varies) but at least there is less obvious corruption.
That's an interesting topic. What do you think might be the reasons? What's the recipe to fight corruption?