Exactly 20 years ago, Russian citizens went to savings banks for their first vouchers. A significant event that in many ways turned the course of modern history. Few managed to profitably use their privatization checks. But some of those who skillfully managed the vouchers are now residents of the Forbes "hundred".
Birth of the securities market
On August 14, 1992, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, signed a decree on the start of voucher privatization in the country. In the same year, all citizens of the country, regardless of age (from babies to the elderly) became the owners of a voucher with a face value of 10 thousand rubles.
It was on October 1, 1992 that vouchers began to be issued in all branches of the Sberbank of the Russian Federation. In the first days there was a serious stir and even queues. In fact, vouchers have become practically the first security in our country. From this point of view, October 1 (or August 14) can be considered a kind of birthday of the securities market.
Everyone who received such a paper could then independently dispose of his “share” of the national property: exchange it for shares in his enterprise, participate in a voucher auction, buy shares in voucher investment funds (CHIFs) and then receive dividends or simply sell.
Together with the vouchers, a memo was handed out, in which the following was written: “A privatization check is a chance for success that is given to everyone. The ruble is subject to inflation, and property, if properly disposed of, does not depreciate, on the contrary, it will bring you income. Remember: the one who buys checks expands his opportunities, the one who sells loses prospects.
At the same time, all recipients of vouchers were warned: “Investing in shares is always risky. The state does not guarantee that your contribution to the investment fund will not be lost. You alone are responsible for the results of your investments.”
Privatization in Russian
“We need millions of owners,” Yeltsin said in the summer of 1992, explaining the then obscure reform. In one motion, the government of the nineties decided to divide all state property among all citizens of the country. Why was the face value of the voucher 10,000 rubles?
First, it should be said that Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the State Property Committee, is considered the ideologist of privatization in our country. Under his leadership, the State Property Committee developed a privatization program and carried out its technical preparation. The media indicated that there were several compromise options for privatization.
“We wanted to carry out privatization for money – the Hungarian way,” recalled Yegor Gaidar (from March to December 1992, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation). However, in the end, a compromise option was chosen - mass and rapid voucher privatization, covering the entire population of the country. Chubais' associates claimed that he resisted this idea, but then he and Gaidar were forced to agree with the arguments of their colleagues, who convinced them that the proposed scheme had no alternative.
According to some information, the godfather of the "check" part of privatization was at that time the chief economic adviser of the State Property Committee Maxim Boyko, who later became the main "privatizer" of the country (in 1993-1996 - the general director Russian Center privatization).
True, not Boyko, but Chubais promised that over time, one voucher in terms of the equivalent price will be equal to two Volga cars. In the newspapers of free ads, the corresponding proposals immediately appeared: “I am changing the privatization check for one Volga”. In reality, at first they gave $40 for a voucher, then $10, then $5. Only by the spring of 1994 did the price stabilize at $20 apiece.
Vouchers could not bring high profits, since the entire post-Soviet economy was estimated at only $100 billion. At the time of privatization, there were 250,000 state-owned enterprises in the Russian Federation. They took 35% of this amount - it was precisely this share of property that the state decided to transfer to the people in the form of vouchers. These 35% were divided among the entire population of the country. And so they received a face value of 10 thousand vouchers.
But for some reason they overlooked one nuance: the cost of enterprises, including metallurgical plants, pipelines, major ports, mines and much more, was taken from the last large-scale revaluation book value Soviet economy, which took place back in 1984.
As for the voucher itself, price liberalization and subsequent inflation quickly depreciated it: by the end of 1993, 10,000 rubles could buy only five packs of washing powder. The price of the voucher did not reach the cost of the bike, not to mention the Volga.
Sell, give and forget
According to experts, the state should have taken on the responsibility of explaining to citizens the very essence of privatization and the possibility of placing vouchers with the prospect of subsequently receiving income from investments. However, this was not done.
As a result, the majority of Russians (34%), according to statistics, preferred to sell their vouchers. Another 25% invested checks in investment funds("MMM", "Khoper", "OLBI" and others) and generally lost everything. Perhaps this was the most unwise investment possible. 99% of such funds did not bring a penny of profit.
11% decided to donate a "security" paper, and 6% do not remember at all what happened to their vouchers. Only one in six (15%) invested their voucher in Russian enterprises, becoming their shareholder, albeit a minority one.
The best investments turned out to be the purchase of shares of Gazprom and RAO UES. Over the past years, these shares have brought thousands of percent of the profit. The example of Gazprom is especially indicative.
The striking results of auctions for the sale of shares of this company are explained by a special scheme for conducting voucher auctions for them. In accordance with it, buyers of Gazprom shares in different regions found themselves in unequal conditions: for each region, the conversion ratio of Gazprom's securities was different.
The fact is that Gazprom's property was sold in parts, and each part is in the administrative territory in which it is located. The main gas production areas turned out to be the least populated. As a result, the vouchers of those who lived in close proximity to Gazprom's wells and pipelines played the most successful. Thus, residents of the Republic of Mari El could receive 5,900 shares for one voucher, and residents of the Perm Region could receive even more - 6,000 shares (today such a package costs a little less than 1 million rubles). Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents were unlucky, each of which (a participant in voucher auctions) received an average of 50 and 65 shares per voucher, respectively.
The most depressing results of the auction were for residents Altai Territory: 16 shares per voucher.
Good Examples
One of the buyers of Gazprom shares was Pavel Sigal, vice president of OPORA Rossii. “Before the crisis of 2008, these shares rose so much that they could buy if not three, then two and a half Volga for sure. In this regard, Chubais did not deceive, ”he told the media.
In Tatarstan, one voucher could be exchanged for 1,900 Gazprom shares. Accordingly, at the peak they cost about 360 rubles, and they could later be sold for 684 thousand rubles.
True, Pavel Sigal did not sell the shares, but kept them for himself, now they bring their owner a small income. “If I had once sold them and invested money somewhere, I would have received much more. But I figured it would be better for me to have Gazprom shares,” he admitted.
However, not only the owners of the shares of the industrial giant managed to earn money thanks to privatization.
The President of the St. Petersburg "BTK Group" Taimuraz Bolloev at the time of the start of the privatization campaign was CEO plant "Baltika". He suggested that the employees (at that time about 400 people worked at Baltika) invest in the shares of the plant, believing that the enterprise would develop. Almost all of them changed their vouchers for company shares.
“Today they have all become quite wealthy people. The voucher eventually turned into $8,000. This is according to eight years ago, now this figure needs to be multiplied by at least two more. In total, one voucher invested in Baltika shares turned into 16 thousand dollars, ”says Bolloev, whose words are quoted by Business News.
Huge fortunes on privatization checks could only be made by those who purposefully bought up vouchers, mainly through check funds and banking structures.
According to Forbes magazine, out of 96 dollar billionaires in Russia in 2012, 64 (or 2/3) got rich precisely through privatization. Only 28 billionaires created their business from scratch, and 4 more people were "red directors", that is, they were related to direct management production in Soviet times (but then they also took part in privatization).
The story related to the privatization of Severstal, which was subsequently told by its former general director Yuri Lipukhin, is characteristic. He entrusted the purchase of vouchers to the budding economist Alexei Mordashov. At the age of 27, Mordashov created a subsidiary of Severstal-Invest (24% of which was owned by Severstal, and 76% by Mordashov personally) and then bought up Severstal shares. Having thus taken the enterprise under his control, Mordashov became the director and owner of OAO Severstal.
Ranked eighth on the list the richest people Russia (according to Forbes versions) Thanks to privatization, Viktor Vekselberg managed to significantly expand his business.
In 1991, Vekselberg, together with his fellow student Leonid Blavatnik, established the Renova CJSC company, which was later reorganized into the Renova group of companies. A year later, Vekselberg became the first deputy general director of Renova, which bought up privatization checks. When Renova accumulated enough vouchers, it was decided to expand the business by acquiring a number of aluminum and oil assets in oil production (TNK) and non-ferrous metallurgy (SUAL-Holding).
Voucher privatization owes its fortune former owner"United Machine-Building Plants" Kakha Bendukidze. A few minutes before the end of the auction for the sale of Uralmash, the unknown Bioprocess company offered 130,000 vouchers for an 18% stake in the enterprise. There was simply no one to beat the bet. As a result, the enterprise, whose turnover today exceeds $300 million, went to Kakha Bendukidze. Meanwhile, the cost of those 130,000 vouchers did not exceed $2.5 million.
The engineering giant was not the only one that went under the hammer literally for a penny. Similar schemes (bags of vouchers thrown into the auction at the last moment) were used in other cases.
In more civilized forms, such schemes are also found now, when stocks collapse in the markets in the last minutes of trading days, notes financial analyst FxPro Alexander Kuptsikevich. “The difference is that very small shares of companies are traded on the platforms, unlike in the days when huge enterprises were at stake,” he says.
According to Kuptsikevich, among ordinary people, those who made a bet that the state would remain strong and the structures close to it would be rich were the main winners. “Despite all the triviality, in the early 90s, when the economy was shrinking by tens of percent per year, the question “is it worth betting on state-owned companies” received an ambiguous answer,” he adds.
The senior researcher of the Institute then answered positively to this question for himself. economic policy named after E.T. Gaidar Sergei Zhavoronkov.
“The winners were those who exchanged their vouchers for shares in large commodity companies. My family and I are among them,” he says. – We proceeded from the general humanitarian idea that Gazprom is a rich company with a good cash flow. Dividend yields are negligible today, but the shares themselves are of considerable value.”
At the same time, the expert emphasizes that this was the first case in a long time when the state did not take something away from citizens, but, on the contrary, gave it. “In the worst case, it gave nothing – to those who hung their vouchers on the wall, sold them for a bottle of vodka, invested unsuccessfully, and so on. Not a single person was harmed by check privatization,” notes Zhavoronkov. The sale of the century ended on June 30, 1994. In less than two years, citizens have invested, sold or exchanged 148.6 million privatization checks. Over 50% Russian economy passed into private hands.
Despite its short history, privatization has gone through many different stages, each with a different approach.
Of particular note is the voucher privatization in Russia, which became one of the first forms of transfer state property into private property. This format was significantly different from the others, and despite the fact that he had the same goals, completely different methods were used.
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At the same time, many today still do not fully understand what voucher privatization is and what its features are.
The key features of voucher privatization include the following characteristics:
To ensure privatization, enterprises that produced real products on expensive specialized equipment were distinguished by almost zero cost of jobs, while companies operating in offices in the service sector could have a cost of a workplace of several tens of thousands of dollars.
Voucher privatization was carried out on the territory of Russia in the period from 1992 to 1994. The official goal, which was stated by the government at the time of the transfer of various enterprises into private hands, was to ensure the maximum powerful class of owners, in connection with which many state-owned enterprises and other types of business could be registered in private ownership by citizens on an absolutely free basis. To ensure the correct transfer of all property, a specialized "voucher mechanism" was created.
In order to streamline the mass privatization procedure, as well as exclude the possibility of any fraud, it was decided to develop a specialized draft law that would provide nominal privatization accounts and deposits. In accordance with the updated legislation, every citizen of Russia in state bank received a personalized privatization account, which provides him with the right to receive a certain part of state or municipal property free of charge.
At the same time, it is worth noting the fact that, according to the law, any transfer of such accounts in favor of other persons was prohibited in order to exclude the possibility of deceiving ordinary citizens by various scammers.
However, in the end, it was decided to abolish the initially fair and correctly calculated mechanism of personal accounts.
Of particular note is the fact that more than 200 specialists from other countries were invited to carry out the voucher privatization, some of them were career employees of the US Central Intelligence Agency, as well as persons serving in military intelligence. Ultimately, some of them were convicted in their homeland for the reason that, while remaining public servants, they were engaged in illegal enrichment through privatization in the Russian Federation.
The voucher privatization itself was carried out in several ways, each of which had its own unique features. In most cases, they were all ineffective.
Initially, it was conceived in such a way that voucher pyramids, better known to most as CIFs, would provide the most efficient savings management ordinary people. Thus, the citizen did not have to go on his own to the voucher for the purchase of company shares, and all the work instead of him was carried out by the CIF, to which he was assigned and who was engaged in the mass purchase of shares, while citizens would be provided with a comfortable life at the expense of dividends.
In practice, the funds actively collected vouchers from the population, after which they took part in voucher auctions and actively bought up vouchers from truly profitable enterprises. Further, the scheme could be carried out in different ways.
First of all, shares could simply be sold from the balance of investment funds to the balance of certain organizations that were under the control of influential groups in their area, and they were sold at an extremely low book value, and nominal assets remained in the fund in order to subsequently completely liquidate it .
Some funds were simply engaged in the accumulation of serious assets that allowed them to take part in voucher auctions, and only then they self-liquidated.
It also happened that the owners of the funds created a certain package of vouchers, as a result of which, although this was contrary to the law, they sold them to the directors of various companies who wanted to receive one or another part of the enterprise immediately. Directors of companies due to the fact that they were regularly detained wages to their employees and saved money in many other ways, actively buying up such packages, after which they bought back the shares of their enterprises.
The CHIFs themselves, who were obliged to ensure the storage of vouchers and exchange them for shares, did not do their work at all, and therefore they were all quickly closed soon.
The privatization check was a special state certificate, confirming the ownership of its owner to a certain part of state property, which was distributed free of charge by the state. The nominal value of each such check was 10,000 rubles, so it could later be used as a full-fledged means of payment, since general term its implementation has been limited.
Vouchers were actively distributed through the branch of Sberbank, but for each such paper it was necessary to pay an additional 25 rubles. Chubais at that time gave an official announcement that market price each voucher will be equal to two "Volgas", which was just an incredible luxury for the overwhelming majority of immigrants from the Soviet Union.
From the point of view of the used privatization model, the nominal value of the voucher basically did not play any role, because this document only determined the right to acquire shares in various state-owned enterprises in the process of their privatization. At the same time, it was envisaged that the main part of the shares of any company would be replaced exclusively by such vouchers.
Real cost this document directly depended on the state of privatization at a particular enterprise. Thus, in one place it was possible to change the voucher only for 3 shares, while in another - for 300, that is, it was possible to write its nominal value, in principle, any, and this would in no way affect its purchasing power.
For at least some rationalization of the nominal value of such securities, it was decided to tie them to the price of the main fund for each unit of the population. Thus, approximately 150 million vouchers were printed, each of which had a nominal value of around 10,000 rubles, that is, the papers were printed one for each citizen of Russia, including minors and children. In other words, if there were four people in the family, then they should have been given four vouchers. AT total amount, respectively, the cost of all documents for the country reached one and a half trillion rubles.
After the vouchers first appeared on 01.10.1992, they changed their value more than once, and in real terms it approximately halved by the middle of the next year. At the same time, in the process of expanding the scale of vouchers, and also given the number of objects that could be registered in private ownership, the real value of vouchers really approached the face value at the end of 1993.
During the period 1993-1994, approximately 800 voucher auctions were held every month throughout the country, as a result of which approximately 70% of the total number of shares were sold for vouchers.
In reality, ordinary citizens did not have such a wide variety of options for how they could use the received vouchers:
The same persons who had a sufficiently large number of vouchers could take part in specialized voucher auctions in order to acquire shares in state-owned companies.
Ultimately, 99% of ordinary citizens did not receive anything at all from the voucher privatization, which was originally conceived by those who organized this procedure. The bulk of the population simply had no idea what could be done with these documents, in connection with which their overwhelming majority was transferred into the hands of ordinary buyers. In this regard, the cost of vouchers was constantly decreasing more and more strongly, and therefore by May 1993 it was about 3-4 thousand rubles.
Since the papers were subsequently made impersonal, it was possible to buy such a document in any quantity.
According to statistics, approximately 60 million citizens sold their vouchers to ordinary speculators, which is no less than 40% of the total number of issued documents, and as it turned out, these people managed to get at least something, since on received money they could buy some clothes or household appliances
From a technical point of view, these measures were supposed to serve as the most simple and accessible tool through which it would be possible to implement the privatization checks of the population. Anyone could take part in such an auction, from employees of the company being privatized to foreign citizens. The only condition was to pay for the purchased shares only with vouchers.
In this regard, in the overwhelming majority of cases, information about the privatization event was simply hidden from most people, and, in fact, this did not even contradict the current legislation, and therefore, subsequently, practically no one was ever really punished.
Initially, state-owned enterprises could transfer shares only by purchasing them for vouchers, but then a simply “incredible decision” was made - officials were given the opportunity, at their discretion, to sell a certain part of the shares of enterprises for money, as a result of which large businessmen stopped buying vouchers, but simply gave away the full amount the right people and received a controlling stake in some department store or factory.
In this regard, over time, nothing remained of the “voucher auctions” except for the name itself, because the vast majority of assets were sold for real money. Even the presidential decree adopted over time, limiting the possibility of acquiring shares for real money, did not bring practically any result, since due to connections in the management team, businessmen managed to bypass any prohibitions, and it was almost impossible to stop the rapid growth of regular violations.
Ultimately, such a format for conducting privatization led to results that were quite expected by experts, namely:
Thus, the privatization was carried out to the maximum short time, and as a result, the interests of only certain individuals were satisfied, while the vast majority of the population was left with nothing. At the same time, the state budget received an amount that was equal to 0.5-1% annual budget the whole country.
From the very beginning, privatization in Russia was quite controversial, since its format included a huge number of legal gaps. At that time, there were already a huge number of countries with real experience privatization, but such a scale as in Russia, has not been anywhere else.
First of all, there was no mutual understanding between the Supreme Council and the Government on how exactly the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private individuals would be carried out, and in addition to this, various lobbying groups had an active influence, the main purpose of which was to defend the interests of specific businessmen.
The privatization of state property actually started not on October 1, 1992, but in the summer of 1991. The law "On registered privatization accounts and deposits in the RSFSR" was adopted.
Sberbank was supposed to open a personal privatization account for every citizen of Russia, to which money from the sale of privatized property was to be credited. At the same time, the law did not allow other persons to withdraw funds from privatization deposits.
However, the plan with privatization accounts was not implemented. Instead of opening accounts, they decided to distribute vouchers to the population. Is free.
The nominal value of the voucher was 10 thousand rubles, based on the assessment of state property - the country's enterprises. All assets subject to privatization were valued at 140 billion rubles.
When the government started a big privatization, the consequences for business or for citizens were the least thought. It was important to save the state, which was on the verge of economic collapse.
By this time, after decades of Soviet power, there was no business in the country, except for underground artels and guild workers.
So, neither citizens nor businesses, or rather those workers who were employed at state enterprises, were ready for privatization.
And who will blame them for this? Yes, citizens did not have financial literacy. The vast majority had no idea what to do with this piece of paper - a voucher.
I remember that I spent part of the money on the purchase of shares in Gazprom, Regionneftegaz and on the shares of the Beryozka store, which traded for foreign currency imported goods not available for rubles. It seemed to me that this profitable investment, but Beryozka went bankrupt along with my mini-share. I was also hounded by funds offering to sell shares. I ended up doing just that a few years later. Got some ridiculous amount. How much, I can't even remember.
In general, all this privatization actually passed me by. Like most citizens.
Of course, the Russians remained offended. It turned out that if you honestly worked, lived on a salary, you could not buy anything worthwhile, no property for these vouchers.
Most Russians, yesterday's Soviet citizens, eventually realized that they worked and worked under socialism, built factories and factories, laid roads, taught children, and when they were told to return to capitalism, get your property back, they were not left with affairs.
That is, the foundation of the new system was laid on the bones of deceived people. If you look at the suicide statistics of those years, there were a lot of such cases when the head of the family took his own life, not being able to feed his family.
This argument is usually objected to as follows: if privatization had not been carried out, then a civil war would have started against the background of famine, and there would have been incomparably more victims. Yes, it probably could be. But another question arises: why has the situation in the economy been brought to such a state?
Elena Ivankina, member of the Russian branch of the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI)
Almost everyone was dissatisfied with privatization in Russia. People did not become owners of their country. I am sure that 90% of the population now will not even be able to remember where they put the vouchers. For example, I don't remember. Probably sold to some fund.
At that time, like the majority of the population, I did not have money for the basic necessities, and I had to teach at seven different universities, including lecturing in English, in order to maintain the previous standard of living. It's scary to even remember that time.
The authorities, starting privatization, were in a hurry and did not create conditions for citizens who would like to participate in business. In the countries of the socialist camp, in the Czech Republic, for example, ordinary citizens were able to become owners of cafes, shops, and hairdressers for vouchers. In Russia, however, only large companies of the federal and regional levels could be privatized.
Privatization was organized extremely unsuccessfully. There was no clear assessment of the property that was put up for privatization.
In general, no one conducted an assessment of small and medium-sized businesses, and the assessment of large plants has always been the subject of controversy. In general, valuation is possible only under market conditions, and the market in the classical sense did not exist in the early 1990s.
The authorities really thought about the assessment of property only after the start of voucher privatization, in 1993, at the suggestion.
It is not surprising that almost the entire current oligarchy grew out of the voucher privatization of the 90s. The then privatization was a time of opportunity for young, literate people with money.
I admire those who understand what money can be made from: Potanin, Mordashov, Prokhorov... I don't have that ability. I tried to go into business - I created a company for the purchase and sale land plots. I invested my own money. A partner was looking for clients. And quickly "threw on the money."
Realizing that I would not receive any two Volga cars for my voucher, I did not invest it anywhere. Although it was hard for a family man to live in those days on one and a half rates of an associate professor, he left a voucher as a souvenir.
In my collection, the voucher took its rightful place next to coupons for vodka and sugar. This is a testament to our history and I am sure that such times will never return.
It is significant that now, speaking about privatization, much more often than vouchers, they recall, and in a negative way, loans-for-shares auctions. It seems to me that there is a certain understanding behind this that in the early 1990s no one fully knew how to carry out privatization correctly.
In fairness, it must be said that everyone received vouchers, and some citizens who exchanged it, for example, for Gazprom shares, still receive certain dividends.
But the loans-for-shares auctions were a well-thought-out action that did not solve either the problem of forming an effective owner or replenishing state budget. And so their results still remain "the talk of the town."
From the height of the past years, it is clear that today analogues of voucher privatization are, in fact, impossible, and this topic itself is more interesting to historians than to those who are thinking about the mechanisms of denationalization of the economy at the present time.
The winners were those who bought up vouchers on a large scale and with their help achieved control over the enterprises they needed. Buying took place on all corners.
Those who did not sell, but "invested", were also mostly left with nothing. Including even the most advanced ones. In particular, one of the organizers of privatization P.Filippov.
How did you manage your voucher?
- I invested in one of the funds, which was organized under the State Property Committee, the owners of this fund showed us with a pen and left. That is, I could not sell anything on my voucher. But the paper voucher itself is not my invention, but the invention of Chubais and the guys. But I agreed in principle, because our approach with a cashless voucher led to a dead end. The Sberbank system would simply choke on non-cash vouchers.
The scheme worked clearly - I received a voucher ....
sold....
or "invested"....
as Sergey Dubinin, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of VTB, former Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia (1995-98)
.
- I, like my family members, placed the voucher in a certain investment fund. I don't remember what it was called. But I knew the people into whose hands I handed over. They warned about the risks associated with participating in privatization. The enterprise where our vouchers were invested went bankrupt. I was fully informed about this. I have no complaints, because the managers did everything they could.
received...
sold...
or gave it to crooks...
as Oleg Vyugin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MDM Bank.
- I had several vouchers for the family, Invested unsuccessfully. Avtovazovskoye ... "Alliance" was called something. And the other voucher is at my place, it has Anatoly Borisovich's signature on it.
Irina Yasina, economist, head of the Regional Journalism Club.
I gave my voucher to my mother-in-law. I then had Small child and didn't have time to do it. The time was wild then, the child wanted to eat ... And the mother-in-law invested in something. Something to Gazprom, something to the Beryozka store, and somewhere else.
"SP": - Did you manage to get any dividends?
- Nothing. We screwed everything up.
The people, of course, hated the "grabbers".
Red-haired, freckled, killed many grandfathers with a shovel. And grandmothers.
Why did it happen?
Economist Andrey Illarionov, who knows the liberal-reformist cuisine well, sensibly explained http://www.kursk.kp.ru/daily/25933.3/2881287/ why everyone with their vouchers was left with nothing.
- Few people remember, they know, but in 1991 the Supreme Soviet of Russia, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the law "On nominal privatization accounts and contributions to the RSFSR." (I believed Illarionov, but checked it just in case. I didn’t remember myself, because I was still working in Prague in 1991. Indeed, there was such a law. According to it, every citizen of Russia had to receive a personalized privatization account, to which sums of money were credited The law did not allow the sale of privatization deposits to other persons!- E.Ch.) The initiator and one of the authors of the law was Petr Sergeevich Filippov, chairman of the subcommittee on privatization in the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation. When Chubais was put on privatization in the government, fierce disputes began between him and Filippov. In the end, in this struggle, Chubais "ate" his colleague and colleague in the St. Petersburg club "Perestroika".
In my opinion, with Filippov's registered accounts, privatization in Russia would have been slower, but fairer. And would enable many people to take part in the process if they understand what they are doing. Vouchers, shares, investment funds - all this was new, incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of the people who left the USSR. It took effort and time to figure out what was what. However, the new government chose the tactics of a cavalry attack: faster, faster! So that no one has time to come to their senses and understand what is happening. Accelerated privatization proved ideal for this.
Having "eaten" Filippov, Chubais later gracefully pulled off an operation to replace the already legalized nominal accounts with nameless vouchers. I waited until August 1992, when the deputies went on vacation. And Yeltsin signed a decree on vouchers.
What is the meaning of the operation?
Then, according to the emergency powers given by the Congress to the president, Yeltsin's decree came into force if it was not rejected by the Supreme Council within one week. It was physically impossible to call the deputies back from the holidays to Moscow to vote against the vouchers in a week. Chubais was counting on this. In such a clever way, the ideology of privatization and its legislation were fundamentally changed.
When the deputies returned to the capital in autumn, they realized how cynically deceived and insulted their executive power - the government and the president, to whom they granted emergency powers. But it was already too late. In any democratic country, such actions would be regarded as a grave crime against the constitutional order and would lead to the immediate resignation of those responsible. But not in Russia.
Only now have so-called. "explanations". Like, Sberbank was not then ready to introduce nominal privatization deposits, since it was technically difficult to do so. But technical difficulties are not grounds for breaking the law. Is it difficult to do in a year? Do it for three years. Who hurried you? In Poland, mass privatization began 6-7 years after the start of reforms. In China, after more than 30 years of reforms, mass privatization has not yet begun. And, it seems, it cannot be said that the reforms were unsuccessful both there and there. Rather the opposite.
Did you have a voucher?
The privatization of 1991-1997 was the logical conclusion of Russia's entry into a new path of development - market economy. Everything was subject to denationalization real estate(businesses, housing), Natural resources, Earth. In essence, privatization is the transfer of former state property into the hands of private owners (as an option - collectives).
The vicious circle of socialist management and management, when everything belongs to everyone and no one is specifically interested in the result, has led to a catastrophic state of the economy. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 added fuel to the fire. The old legal framework no longer met the requirements of reality. The new one was not actually formed.
In such conditions, the transfer of state property to private owners was of decisive importance. The bet was made on the fact that the new owners would be vitally interested in the profitability of enterprises and would be able to establish production that had been destroyed during the years of Soviet power. But precisely because of the lack of a clear legal framework, a good undertaking went down the wrong path and turned into a real plunder of the country's wealth.
Managing the course of privatization is traditionally associated with the names of two people: Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar. The first is the chairman of the State Property Committee of the RSFSR and one of the authors of the new economic reform. The second is the Deputy Prime Minister for economic issues and the main ideologist of privatization.
At their suggestion, it was decided to carry out the process of denationalization by distributing privatization vouchers (checks) of state standard among the population. As conceived by the ideologues of the reform, 1 voucher was equal to 10,000 denominated rubles. The issuance of vouchers was an attempt to somehow regulate the course of privatization in the absence of an adequate legal framework.
The value of all property was conditionally divided by the total number of citizens of the country. 1 voucher and denoted the share owned by each individual Russian. According to the plan, the holders of vouchers after the end of privatization were to receive a certain percentage of the profit from the total income of the enterprise, in which they owned a share.
The course of privatization was theoretically regulated by two main legal acts. One of them was published on the initiative of President Yeltsin personally. But in reality, these laws did not work. Privatization was carried out by a huge corrupt "machine". Percentages and shares of participants were manipulated. In some cases, enterprises were seized by force by their directors. In others, bribes were used to officials who were supposed to regulate the process and monitor compliance with laws.
The vouchers that were distributed to the population were actually worth little. 2 vouchers in the 90s were exchanged for one bottle of vodka or a couple of kilograms of buckwheat. Ordinary Russians did not know what to do with these documents, so they often simply exchanged them for food. Vouchers were bought in bundles by speculators of all stripes, and as a result, the bulk of the country's population did not participate in privatization at all.
The most valuable state property was almost “gifted away” to those who had connections in the State Property Committee and subordinate organizations. The following scheme was in use: the real value of the enterprise was artificially underestimated, after which it was sold at a mortgage auction for a pittance to an interested person. This was especially often practiced in relation to large facilities such as shipping companies, ferrous and non-ferrous metal plants, oil production enterprises, etc.
In total, over the entire period of privatization (the process lasted until 2006), more than 120,000 former state-owned enterprises were privatized. For this value, the state treasury received about 17 billion dollars, which was equal to 505 billion rubles at the rate of 1 dollar = 30 rubles. 2/3 of this property was privatized in 1992-1997. For it, the state bailed out only 90 million rubles, taking into account the then rampant hyperinflation.
Thanks to the barbaric privatization, more than 70% of state property was sold for next to nothing and redistributed among the “close ones”. Now it brings new owners huge income. On this basis, the class of oligarchs that flourished then and now was formed. Another negative consequence of illiterate privatization was a sharp decline in production and new crisis in economics.
In the 1990s, not only the state in general, but every Russian in particular lost a lot. Almost 80% of the population did not receive a penny for their part of the former state property. Many Russian citizens consider privatization dishonest and are ready to review its results.
