Word: communism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...aggressive as a senior vice president in charge of the Bank of New York's East European division, the Russian-born, Princeton-educated businesswoman charmed and cajoled, wined and dined her way to the forefront of the correspondent banking business in the heady days of Russia's breakaway from communism. Muscling out American rivals through her web of Moscow connections, she turned the Bank of New York into the biggest U.S. servicer of Russian accounts, moving along the flood tide of cash rolling out of the ebullient new economy in return for lucrative bank fees. When she wanted to snatch...
...billions looted or laundered belonged to Russia. The real victims have been the millions of Russian workers and pensioners who are often paid late by a government without the cash to function. The most chilling consequence of that for Americans is not financial but psychological. When Russia repudiated communism in 1991, Western values enjoyed immense admiration and influence. That has vanished as millions of Russians have learned to equate reform with corruption and free markets with theft and misery. The hostility to the U.S. that has built up is genuine and pervasive...
...suspected of stashing away millions. Administration officials concede that they underestimated the groundswell of corruption that came with Russian privatization. They had plenty of intelligence about the kleptocratic shenanigans, but didn't want to let it derail more important business like nuclear security and preventing any rollback to communism...
...West cheered a second great victory over communism, the oligarchs got even richer and a lot more powerful ? and Boris Yeltsin?s political survival became intimately linked with their fate. What the current crop of financial scandals points to is that in the '90s rush to exorcise the ghost of Stalinism, the distinctions between government, legitimate business and organized crime became dangerously blurred in Russia. "Crime, politics and business in Russia feed off each other," says Meier. "Russia?s huge criminal organizations were born, and continue to thrive, because of their access to political power...
...blame for its failure, both are looking toward long-term crisis management rather than any dramatic policy shift. No wonder the Russian masses clamored for a last glimpse of Raisa Gorbachev. By comparison with the standard of living in today?s Russia, the death throes of communism presided over by her husband may look like a gilded...