Yegor Gaidar Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 2 of 9
Tell me a little about your economic training. You got your Ph.D. in Russia.
At Moscow State University.
Which theorist most influenced you that we in the West would be familiar with?
Well of course, the economic training during the Soviet era was first of all based on orthodox Marxism. So you were told something about the bourgeois economic theories, but if you would prefer not to know them, you could use textbooks that never went in depth. So that still creates some problems. But if you were willing to study, there were libraries. If you knew English you could find the books. You had to explain why you had to read all of these bourgeois theories, but you could explain it. So a lot depended on whether you were willing. I think that probably Adam Smith had a major influence on me.
And what in particular? His concept of the market?
Yes, concept of the market, of the market world, his liberal picture of the world of course.
When you were younger, as part of your education, you studied in Yugoslavia and Cuba.
When I was a schoolboy, yes.
And what did you get from that experience? Did it make you a better communist?
Well, I was in Cuba when I was very young. And that was exactly after the Cuban Revolution and during the Missile Crisis, etc.
So you were there during the Missile Crisis as a young kid?
Yes. It was terribly interesting, terribly romantic because it was a young revolution, nice. There was still a working American tourist civilization, still everything functioned. But also, the girls who would set their machine guns in the corner before making up our room, etc. It was all very romantic for a 7-year-old boy. But also it was the first time that I started to ask some economic questions. For instance, the fruit in the Havana markets was very limited, but if you went 100 kilometers from Havana, there were mountains of oranges remaining unused.
So there was a supply and demand problem.
Somehow it was impossible to get it from here to Havana because of spoilage. And it was very difficult for anyone to explain to me why this was so.
Did you ask?
Yes.
That's interesting. Your generation was fortunate in the sense that you could still benefit in your education as the system was coming down and, in a way, prepare for the future even if it was "on the side," even if the system didn't formally allow you to.
Well yes. Our generation really was fortunate because we were already
old enough to have a possibility of using the opportunity and young enough to
be able to adopt the new realities to the rapidly changing world.
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