Advising the Neocapitalists

One of the new wave of consultants to Russia and other fledgling capitalist nations reflects on the difficulties American lawyers face when advising these emerging free market economies In the early 1920s, Angelica Balabanoff, Secretary of the Soviet Comintern, wrote that alll of the left-wing westerners who had come to the Soviet Union after the Revolution of 1917 fell into one of four categories: "superficial, naive, ambitious, or venal." The fall of Communism has brought a new group of Westerners to Russia. Unlike the visitors of 1922 these are from the right, not the left, but they may still fall into Comrade Balabanoff's four categories. I am one of the new right-wing visitors to Russia who have gone there to advicse on drafting free market law, and I am not unique.