Letters

National Interest, The, Fall, 2000

Over this period, Belarusians have had plenty of opportunities to vote freely-- the only time the international community did not indicate its approval being when it sent no observers to the 1996 referendum. Compare that, though, to the referendum held three years earlier in Russia to legitimize Yeltsin's bombardment of the country's parliament. Western election monitors, journalists and experts queued up to hail his fairly won victory--only to have the rug pulled from under them several months later when the Russian authorities themselves admitted the result had been fixed.

Besides all this, no one can accuse the Belarusian government of having waged a war of virtual extermination against one of its minorities (although it has plenty of them), nor of having interfered repeatedly and often ruthlessly in the internal affairs of its neighbors. Both policies-- which are nothing if not characteristic of the Soviet era-- have been taken for granted most of the last ten years within ruling circles in Moscow, at a time when Aslund has been all too ready to sing their praises.

JOHNATHAN SUNLEY

Budapest

Wedel replies:

Professor Goldman's defense of Jeffrey Sachs demonstrates that passions run high. Goldman presents no evidence in support of his Harvard colleague. He appears to agree with the thesis of my article and the facts, excepting those pertaining to Sachs. Many of Goldman's claims are contradicted by documents in my possession, including those of Sachs' own consulting firm. The rest contain refutations of points I never made. To wit:

* Goldman shares my view regarding "the grotesque privatization of state enterprises", as he puts it. He agrees that the Harvard Chubais transactors were involved in privatization but states that Sachs was "not part of that group." Sachs' own project documents (Jeffrey D. Sachs and Associates Inc., 1992) tell it differently: "The [Sachs] team has had an extensive interaction with the [Russian] State Committee on Privatization and has helped in the design of the mass privatization program legislation recently enacted by Parliament." The team consisted of Sachs, his business associate David Lipton and Harvard Professor Andrei Shleifer, as well as Jonathan Hay and others. Later, as I have pointed out, while being funded by the U.S. government, the HIID, with Shleifer and Hay at the helm, wrote decrees for Yeltsin's signature and participated in high-level Russian privatization decisions. Despite this, Goldman cites "stealth advisers" "who bear real responsibility." Who are they?

* The issue is not Sachs' official standing. (Some officials said he had it, while others, including Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, have suggested otherwise.) Sachs and Goldman seem unwilling to accept that the issue is the multiple and sometimes conflicting roles that the transactors assumed, not the specific official title they held at any given time. Goldman claims that Sachs never "worked on two sides of the negotiating table", but documents show that Sachs and Lipton were proffering advice to the IMP while representing the Russian side and that Sachs offered his services to the parliamentary opposition of his client, Gaidar.