In 1990 Nikolai Ryzhkov, the head of Gorbachev’s cabinet, posed a question: “Are we building socialism or capitalism?” By that time the question had long since been answered, not only by the cooperators but also by a large number of the red directors who had begun to transfer state property into their own hands well before the official privatization of the 1990s. The signs of this major shift in economic power from the central government to the Soviet managerial corps were out there, but few, including Ryzhkov, understood the consequences.
