Sid posts: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put immense riches up for grabs -- vast deposits of natural resources, sprawling factories and lucrative businesses, ranging from airlines to television networks that the state had owned for decades. But the massive transfer of property to private hands, a necessary step to create a free-market economy, has turned into a vicious struggle for wealth in which the rule of law has never been established. Former Soviet bureaucrats, factory directors, aggressive businessmen and criminal organizations have all made a grab for the bounty through insider deals, bribery and simple brute force. Russia's economy has taken on an oligarchic structure, in which large business conglomerates, often allied with groups of powerful politicians, compete for grand fortunes -- and sometimes resort to violence. COMMENT: Surprise, surprise. After many years as a member of the western left, castigated (unjustly) by Eastern anticommunist intellectuals as being naive about communism, I take very grim satisfaction in witnessing the massive injustice unleashed by the primitive accumulation of capital in the east. Have any of the Vaclav Havel's of the world confessed to a parallel naivete about the glories of capitalism? Terry McDonough
