Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Age to Eastern Europe, 1990-1997

Wedel's (The Private Poland) experience in the Soviet bloc gives her the sociological basis from which to understand the post-Soviet ""aid"" period. While painting a sympathetic portrait of well-meaning foreign donors, such as USAID and the European Union's PHARE (Poland and Hungary Aid in Restructuring the Economy) programs, she presents the myriad elements that contributed to their failure in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, but most spectacularly in Russia and other nations of the former Soviet Union. Prominent among the culprits were the media darlings of the ""Marriott Brigade,"" consultants who jet-setted about the region, offering homilies and heady capitalist exhortations, then departed safely to the next country before developing concrete solutions. While donors lulled themselves with the idea that these consultants were effective, Easterners were quick to adopt ""foreign friends"" to get access to funding. Wedel sharply exposes the mutual promotion of the Harvard Institute for International Development's consultants and economic guru Anatoly Chubais's cronies. She charges that, gaining nearly sacrosanct status, they maneuvered enormous profits via insider deals: e.g., Harvard Management Fund was one of only two foreign participants in the fabulously lucrative loans-for-shares deals, while one Chubais cohort obtained Norilski Nickel for a fraction of its value. Wedel's research reveals how little Western ""aid"" really got to where it was supposed to go and why even much that did failed to help. Wedel's bold, invaluable report is frightening for its revelations and political implications, both in the U.S. and the ex-Eastern bloc. (Dec.)