Anatoly Chubais, one of the ideologists and leaders of economic reforms in Russia in the 1990s, is credited with a phrase in which he cynically speaks of 30 million people: they say they “will die out because they do not fit into the market.” We checked whether Chubais actually said this.

The phrase that attributed to Chubais, literally sounds like this: "Why are you worried about these people? Well, thirty million will die. They didn't fit into the market. Don't think about it - new ones will grow"

The quote is given in social networks And Media for more than 16 years now, and it has become the first phrase that critics of Chubais’ economic reforms remember. Under one of the discussions, whether Chubais said these words, for example, write: “Even if he didn’t say it, he did it.” And they add: there is a video where he flies on an airplane near the window and says exactly this phrase.

Video, where Anatoly Chubais flies on a plane and talks about economic reforms, there really is. Its title contains a quote about 30 million. However, on the recording itself no such phrase is heard: Chubais talks about privatization and talks about the destruction of communism, but does not mention the 30 million who “did not fit into the market.”

It is believed that the phrase about 30 million appeared in the media in 2004. Journalist Oksana Anikina wrote in the newspaper pravda.ru article about Anatoly Chubais, and included this quote in the title. Now Oksana Anikina is the deputy editor-in-chief of the same portal, and is also the author of more than 1,300 notes on the site. Anikina has no specific specialization: she writes and materials about how Einstein “took women home without being embarrassed by his wife,” and about ways to “become a sex goddess,” and also reveals the secrets of the TU-204 disaster in 2005.

It is her article about Chubais that those who attribute to him the phrase about 30 million who did not fit into the market refer to.

In this article, Anikina herself refers to Vladimir Polevanov, the former chairman of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for State Property Management, who held this position after Chubais, from November 1994 to January 1995. Polevanov criticized the ongoing economic reforms, but worked in this body for about two months, after which he was fired. After 1995, Polevanov practically did not participate in the state and political life of the country. Here's what he allegedly recalled in 2004, according to Anikina:

"IN. Polevanov says: “When I came to the State Property Committee and tried to change the privatization strategy, Chubais told me openly: “Why are you worried about these people? Well, thirty million will die out. They did not fit into the market. Don’t think about it - new ones will grow up.”

In fact, if you try to find these memories of Polevanov before 2004, you can stumble upon another text on the anonymous website compromat.ru, in an article from 2000. It supposedly is given text by Leonid Krutakov, published in September 2000 in the Stringer news agency. The text analyzes Chubais's privatization initiatives, and at the end there is a phrase that exactly matches Anikina's text.

It is unclear whether this phrase was in the text initially or appeared after Anikina’s publication. However, there is no such publication at all on the website of the Stringer news agency. There is also no evidence that Polevanov really remembered Chubais this way: even when he was interviewed in the 2010s, he said nothing about this famous phrase didn't say.

At the same time, Chubais himself eventually had to comment on this statement. In 2008, in an interview with Vladimir Pozner, when asked whether he said such words, Chubais replied:

“This is such a well-known story in which I am not the only victim. This phrase, the one you quoted, or rather, Comrade Polevanov quoted, is attributed from time to time to Gaidar, to me, to Khakamada. Ira even, in my opinion, went to court over this issue, definitely went to trial over this issue. Please note that you probably somehow selected quotes for the conversation and could not find my quote on this matter.”

Indeed, Anatoly Chubais is not the only one who is considered the author of this phrase. Her attributed to also, for example, also Egor Gaidar. At the same time, there is no evidence that Gaidar said this either.

Anatoly Chubais, apparently, did not say the phrase about 30 million that did not fit into the market. In any case, there is no reliable evidence of this. And judging by the fact that it is not attributed to him alone, this formula seems to have consolidated and cemented the general myth that developed around the liberal reformers of the 1990s.