Date: Sun, 18 May 2008
From: Janine Wedel <jwedel@gmu.edu>
Subject: re Aslund/ JRL #92 [re: Post-Soviet Transformation]
It has some to my attention that Anders Aslund has leveled a condescending ad hominem attack on me and my book, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (Palgrave, 2001) (JRL 2008-#92). The last refuge of someone whose troubling activity has come to public light is to attack the credentials or character of the individuals who helped bring the public scrutiny to bear.
On the facts: Aslund did present himself as someone who could leverage Western monies and was involved in the 1991 discussions among the “reformers” and Western economists about Russia’s economic future (for details, see Collision and Collusion, especially pp. 155-156 and pp. 281-283; see also Lynn D. Nelson and Irina Y. Kuzes, Radical Reform in Yeltsin's Russia: Political, Economic, and Social Dimensions, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995). I did not write that Aslund was part of the Harvard-Andrei Shleifer team institutionally or funded by USAID (here Aslund puts words in my mouth and attacks me for something I never said); in fact, I document his separate relationships and funding sources (which included the Swedish government, according to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs – details on p. 283, n163). Collision and Collusion, which received favorable reviews from numerous publications and won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Improving World Order (not typically given to loosely documented or reasoned writing), is supported by hundreds of interviews with people variously involved in the aid process and cross checked and confirmed by multiple sources and documents from multiple governments and investigations.
Finally, Aslund has called me an “untruthful slanderer.” If I were Aslund, I would be careful applying that label to others.
Janine R. Wedel, Professor, School of Public Policy, George Mason University; and Fellow, New America Foundation.