But Russia’s economy was a shipwreck. In the words of George Soros, Russia was “a centrally planned economy with the centre knocked out.”2 In the so-called transitional recession, inflation soared and Russia’s real GDP fell by 40 percent between 1989 and 1995. On “Black Tuesday,” October 11, 1994, in one single session of frantic currency trading, the ruble lost more than a quarter of its value against the dollar. It was not until 1995 that Russia’s economy stabilized.
