For the producers, there was no reason to produce. You get money, but you couldn't use this money. For consumers, you could have money, but you have no way to use it because you go to the shop and see nothing.

Private property is a very fundamental and very long-term institution.

You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia.

I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990.

Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology.

I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council.

In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government.