The Harvard Boys Do Russia

by SP

Borrowing from the phrasing of the porn classic “Debbie Does Dallas,”  American anthropologist Janine R. Wedel tells the story of the “privitazation” (plundering) of Russia’s state owned assets under Borris Yeltsin.  This article is from The Nation.

Her bio notes:

Wedel received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. She writes about governing, corruptionforeign aid, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist.

The plunder of Russian state assets was facilitate by President Bill Clinton and the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID).  Harvard professors Jeffrey Sachs, Lawrence Summers and David Lipman, Jonnathan Hay and other high profile Harvard academics along with money from the IMF for “foreign development.”

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The whole thing is quite a story.

She draws on the book “How America Buildt the New Russian Oligarchy.”

Anne Williamson, a journalist who specializes in Soviet and Russian affairs, details these and other conflicts of interest between H.I.I.D.’s advisers and their supposed clients–the Russian people–in her forthcoming book, How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy. For example, in 1995, in Chubais-organized insider auctions of prime national properties, known as loans-for-shares, the Harvard Management Company (H.M.C.), which invests the university’s endowment, and billionaire speculator George Soros were the only foreign entities allowed to participate. H.M.C. and Soros became significant shareholders in Novolipetsk, Russia’s second-largest steel mill, and Sidanko Oil, whose reserves exceed those of Mobil. H.M.C. and Soros also invested in Russia’s high-yielding, I.M.F.-subsidized domestic bond market.

When the dust settled, 9 men emerged as multi-billionaires, the Russian oligarchs, and the Russian people had been robbed of their state owned industries and resources, under the pretext of “aid” / “capitalism” and “privitazation.”

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