Publication

This paper examines the financial behavior of Russian households from the collapse of communism to the financial meltdown in August 1998. The author describes how in post-Soviet Russia financial intermediaries were increasingly unable to attract additional household savings, as people turned to other alternatives. The paper identifies the main alternatives households could turn to in the form of the state savings bank, commercial financial companies and foreign currencies, and details how such patterns of economic behavior contributed to the financial crisis in 1998.