Gaidar

Yegor Gaidar has died. I never did get the chance to meet him in person.

Masha and I have been family friends for many years. She knows my parents; I know her mother. It kept coming up that her father would be at some gathering we both attended, and she would introduce us. I’m not usually a shy person, but honestly, I was intimidated. Because this was GAIDAR himself. I was a fan of his back in the romantic early days of the rise of the market economy. I argued myself hoarse with anyone who opposed him. That romantic period passed, but Gaidar remained one of the very few people who continued to command my unconditional respect and reverence. He didn’t steal. He didn’t become an oligarch. He didn’t grab oil fields for himself, even though he had more opportunities than most. It was always disgusting to hear tales about Gaidar’s unimaginable wealth, because I saw with my own eyes that the family lived modestly. All he earned came from his work at the Institute for the Economy in Transition. Half the people who came out of that institute are now government officials, many of them quite senior. Obviously, with the force of his authority, Gaidar could have “solved many problems” with a simple phone call. But that was an absolute taboo. It would never even have occurred to anyone to approach him with requests like that. Even in the liberal political crowd, where, let’s be honest, people are a peculiar lot and love throwing mud at one another, no one would ever have dared accuse Gaidar of dishonesty or lack of integrity. We have all been left orphaned. Blessed memory to Yegor Gaidar. A great man who lived through great upheavals and remained a Human Being. text of the Slon.ru column on this sad subject