"From the start, law enforcement in defense of private ownership was extremely uneven. Private security forces to a large extent took over the job, warring with each other and further aggravating the sense of chaos. It wasn't at all clear that the Yeltsin government itself understood how a market economy's legal system must work. In 1998, for instance, an influential Russian acdemic told the Washington Post: 'The state thinks ... private capital should be defended by those who have it. ... It's a completely conscious policy of the law enforcement authorities to remove themselves from defending private capital.' To me this suggested a basic ignorance of the need to embody property rights in the judicial system. The use of rival private police forces is not the rule of law; it is the rule of fear and force."

Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence