duced in 1991 and 1992 brought additional hardship to the nation ("Russia," 1999, p. 22).
By the mid-1990s, the Russian economy was in a situation where many of the goods which were being produced, often in the same manner that they were produced under the Soviet system, could not command prices which covered the costs of production. Businesses and individuals began developing "creative" approaches to pricing in order to overcome this problem, with the result that a non-monetary based economy developed. This shadow economy, based often on barter, had the effect of effectively overpricing goods and services in that it hid the cost of production. The shadow economy permeated Russian economic life. Not only were small individual transactions conducted without money, but as many as 70 percent of all transactions among industrial organizations involved no money. Tax payments made by both individuals and businesses often involved barter and other nonmonetary transactions.
Reform will be difficult to implement in Russia. In the early 1990s, reform might have been possible if the priv
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