In these grim times for economic reform in Russia, privatisation is often described as one of reform's few success stories, and with Anatolii Chubais the last reformer left in the government a success story which might yet be maintained. Even if Chubais is unable to continue to force the pace, it is considered by many that privatisation has gone too far to be reversed. This creates the hope that the new economic class which should arise from privatisation will provide a bulwark against anti-market forces in the future.

It is not the purpose of this chapter to examine the validity of such hopes in detail or conclusively. It will do no more than look at some particular aspects of privatisation, but in a way which should contribute to an understanding of the place of privatisation in the current state of the Russian transition.

We examine privatisation in the Russian industrial sector, and will be concerned with what in the literature is described as ‘large’ privatisation, that is, of enterprises large enough to require a sufficient complexity of management that the issue of the separation of ownership and management will be relevant.