To ordinary Russians, Western-sponsored "democracy" meant watching helplessly while "liberal" elites looted the country and transferred vast fortunes to Western banks, to the profit of Western economies.

Harvard University, for example, is very belatedly investigating the conduct of professor Andrei Shleifer, who allegedly profited corruptly from a U.S. government-sponsored Russian privatization project on which he was an advisor. Shleifer was long protected by Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who as President Clinton's Treasury secretary himself helped push Russia's monstrous variant of privatization. If U.S. scholars are — rightly — outraged by the Shleifer case, imagine how ordinary Russians feel.