#9
New York Times
October 24, 2001
Pavel Bunich, Reformer for New Russian Economy, Is Dead
at 71
By PAUL LEWIS
Pavel G. Bunich, a moderate Russian economic reformer and two- time Parliament member who broadly supported the switch to a market-based economy under Presidents Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris N. Yeltsin, died on Saturday in Moscow. He was 71.
His family gave no cause.
A prolific writer who frequently appeared on television, Mr. Bunich was an advocate of the changes that were introduced into the Soviet Union in 1988 with Mr. Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms and that continued in the new Russian Federation with Mr. Yeltsin's "500 day" drive to a market economy, beginning in 1990.
Although he saw the need for a more market-based system, Mr. Bunich, like other moderates in his camp, also worried about the speed with which changes could safely be made.
He continued to see a role for state intervention in areas like dealing with sudden shortages and keeping military industries functioning.
Similar caution led Mr. Bunich to support the ouster in late 1992 of Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, an ardent reformer, with the more cautious Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who was deeply versed in the Soviet economic bureaucracy.
Pavel Grigoryevich Bunich was born on Oct. 25, 1929. He was educated at Moscow University and received his doctorate in 1961.
An early advocate of relaxing the centrally planned economy, he swiftly found himself in trouble with the authorities.
In the 60's, he left Moscow and spent several years in posts in the Soviet Far East.
By 1975, he had returned to the capital to become a professor at Moscow State University. The next year, he was appointed head of the Ordzhonikidze Institute of Management, also in Moscow.
Mr. Bunich was active in the Movement for Democratic Reforms, a party that at times counted among its members reformers like Stanislaw S. Shatalin, author of the "500 days" plan, former Foreign Minister Eduard N. Shevardnadze and Aleksandr N. Yakovlev, father of the glasnost reforms.
From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Bunich sat in Parliament as a representative of the Academy of Sciences, when it was putting Mr. Gorbachev's political and economic reform programs into effect.
From 1993 to 1999, he was a member of the lower house of the new Russian Federal Assembly.
From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Bunich headed the parliamentary committee on property and privatization.
He was married and had a son.
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