After the reforms of the 1990s, the Russian state got a great possibility for development when the oil prices increased greatly in the beginning of 2000s. And these opportunity became quite a curse for the Russian Federation because it gave to the state quite a big resources, which could be used for the development or to make the structure of the economy better, but it was quite hard. Within the situation when the social expectations from the state were still reserved since the Soviet time. It was quite different situation in 1990s and 2000s. When in 1990s, the state had no resources at all, while in 2000s, the state got the resources and try to compensate the people that lack of payments which they suffered during 1990s. These resources were used for paying some social payments to the people, and sometimes these meant that the state just used the oil resources for making the social stability rather than for economic development. Of course, it is very hard to draw a line between the social development and economic development. But social payments, in some dimension just to prevent it, very uncomfortable for the people, and the uncomfortable situation, uncomfortable circumstances, they could get some more goods and services as consumers, and the states supported them for their personal development but not in their development as participants of the global economic system. The state was not limited, and this is very important legal point. The principles which were written down in the Russian constitution, they were more or less borrowed from western democracies, which had quite different historical environment when they adopted their constitutions, and those borrowing sometimes made the Russian constitution very similar to the constitutions of Western European countries, but the principles and the norms sometimes were needed quite different. I mean that if we take the oil income to the state, the principal which should be, I believe, written down in the constitution, was the principle that this income should not be used for current expenses, and these income should be used for development of infrastructure or for other kinds of payments which will improve the economic basement for future development in Russia. But in a standard set of constitutional norms and principles, there is no such a principle. And this is a part of state policy rather than legal regulation of this use of income, and the situation was quite unfavorable for development of free market in Russia. Because this extra income appeared occasionally to the state, let the state to keep the social burden, to keep the situation as it used to be before, and had no quite strong motives to develop the infrastructure and other basing things for future economic development. When we look on the situation with economy in Russia today, we see that state somehow compensated that unfair privatization which occurred in 1990s, and these compensation was in some re-privatization in different forms. Sometimes, the revision of privatization resolves. While generally it was declared there will be no revision, but in some cases, it was. And the state tried to keep the situation in that way that the most obvious criminal situation with privatization should be revised, and the fairness should be protected. The state had the resources for this, and in the long run, it meant that the state got the property, got the industry, got some other kinds of lands, and buildings, and plants, back to the state ownership. This developed state-owned economy, and even in 2010, the World Bank showed the figures that in Russia, the state participation in the economy is very crucial and very substantial, and too crucial and too substantial to make the market quite free for development. This was quite a big problem for development of the whole economy as such. So, the privatization results were revised in such a manner that the state somehow compensated the lack of legal regulations and legal criteria for privatization in 1990s, and the state took some property back to the state ownership, also to protect public interest, to protect people's interests. It was involvement in the newly accepted system of property, in the newly established system of property. And maybe from the outside, it seemed that the state tried to get property from those who owned these, and it was quite a kind of taking property from the private persons to the state ownership without proper legal and the factual basement. But when we look on this situation from inside, we see that this property was not truly earned, was not truly got by these entrepreneurs by their labor and by their entrepreneur's activity. So, the state just somehow made corrections. And of course, it was not a full correction of the entire results of privatization, and this, of course, accusing to the state, which is quite just. But in the very end, the state motivated its position about some pieces of property as the correction of what was done in 1990s. This situation of oil prices and the need for revision of privatization in the 1990s, all these measures led to the situation when the most big pieces of industry, pieces of property in the state, became state-owned, and the whole economy was in a great part under the control of the state. I would say that this is quite logic and this could be quite natural after the abolition of the Soviet economy, and it was seen from outside more than from inside as unfair going backward to the state control over the economy after the period of free market and free development of the entrepreneurship. From inside, it is seen much more obvious that in 1990s, it was not a real market and it was not a real entrepreneurship development. So, this development which occurred later, the state involvement in the economy was a reaction and it was a correction of the system. So, this was the realization of those principles which were included in the constitution of 1993, and which still needed to be realized. They are the purposes of those reforms which went in the 1990s, and which still go on in our contemporary Russia.
