The Russian State Is Back, and You Can Stay Rich

As russia elects first a parliament and then a president over the next ten months, there will be calls from across the political spectrum to break or at least loosen the chains that bind russia to its western tormentors. The american press will dismiss these demands as nationalist finger pointing and attrib russia's demise to its failure to hue more closely the i m s prescriptions. And washington well pour money into the russian elections, as it did in 19 96, to support its friends. But the russians might well be better off cutting this toxic umbilical cord which could at least give them a fighting chance against the powerful domestic criminal class our own government and private sectors