- What is the role of Anatoly Chubais in the history of Russia?
- Extremely destructive. The PR people of Anatoly Borisovich have made efforts, especially recently, to rehabilitate the saints of the 90s and emphasize the role of Anatoly Borisovich in the formation of the new Russian economy, although we remember very well that the situation was exactly the opposite. We remember Chubais as a person who knows how to master huge budgets, but he showed effectiveness only once, when he made a second term president out of the half-dead Yeltsin. But even then, it was not his merit, but the merit of the team of political strategists.
- Do you think that the importance of Anatoly Chubais is exaggerated? Will he not remain in Russian history?
He will remain a toxic character in Russian history.
- And the market economy, the conversion of the ruble - is it not his merit?
- What, our ruble is a convertible currency? Was there a market economy in the 90s? All possible pluses are mixed with one huge minus: Anatoly Borisovich and his comrades managed to sell to the West a huge number of Soviet state-owned enterprises. And now a significant part of the Russian economy belongs to Western owners.
- What enterprises do you mean?
- Gazprom, Sberbank and so on according to the list. Do you think this happened quite recently? No, it happened exactly then.
- Do I understand correctly that Gazprom and Sberbank are Western companies?
- I did not say that. I said that a significant percentage of the participation in these companies are Western investors. This is what is above. I would also draw attention to the work with the fuel and energy complex, with the electric power industry, where, too, you dig a little, and foreign ears stick out right away.
- Are Western investments bad?
- What are the Western investments? I can count Western investments in Russia on my fingers. BP has done an enormous amount of work in Russia, but this is not Chubais's merit even once. There are a number of companies that are bona fide investors who have tried and are trying to do good business. They succeed. Basically, Anatoly Borisovich, with the help of his advisers, flooded Russia with speculators, literally pirates, who have little to do with the market economy, which we are aware of from various panels of numerous forums.
- From your point of view, Chubais is definitely a figure painted black?
- No. He played his part. The problem with Chubais's relationship with Russian civil society is that Anatoly Chubais, having fulfilled his role as a destroyer, did not fulfill his promise of a creator. He did not create a market economy. He touched. He quickly went on an administrative voyage. He became a civil servant, head of the presidential administration and then was engaged in energy reform, that is, those things that require a huge amount of budgetary injections and who knows what the result was in the end. It was indecent for Anatoly Chubais to ask this question.