Anatoly Chubais, one of the ideologists and the leaders of economic reforms in Russia in the 1990s, is credited with a phrase in which he cynically speaks about 30 million people: they say, they will "die out because they did not fit into the market." We checked whether such Chubais spoke really.

The phrase that attributed Chubais, literally sounds like this: "What are you worried about these people? Well, there will be thirty million. They did not fit into the market. Do not think about it - new ones will grow".

The quote is brought to social networks And Media For more than 16 years, and it became the first phrase that the critics of the economic reforms of Chubais recall. Under one of the discussions, whether Chubais spoke these words, for example, write: "Even if I did not speak, he did." And they add: there is a video where he flies on an airplane near the window and pronounces this phrase.

VideoWhere Anatoly Chubais flies on an airplane and talks about economic reforms, there really is. In his name - a quote about 30 million. However, on the very record, no such phrase does not sound: Chubais talks about privatization and discusses the destruction of communism, but does not mention 30 million "who did not fit into the market."

It is believed that in the media the phrase about 30 million appeared in 2004. In the newspaper Pravda.ru, journalist Oksana Anikina wrote article About Anatolia Chubais, and in the title I brought this quote. Now Oksana Anikina is the deputy chief editor of the same portal, and the author of more than 1300 notes on the site. Anikina does not have a certain specialization: she Writes And the materials about how Einstein “drove home women without embarrassment of his wife”, and about the ways “become sex-bogino”, and also reveals the secrets of the Tu-204 disaster in 2005.

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

In this article, Anikina himself 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 conducted economic reforms, but worked in this body for about two months, after which there was Fired. After 1995, Polevanov practically did not participate in the state and political life of the country. This is what he allegedly recalled in 2004, according to Anikina:

"IN. Polevanov says: "When I came to the state committee and tried to change the privatization strategy, Chubais told me in an open text:" What are you worried about these people? Well, will you die thirty million. They didn’t fit into the market. Do not think about it - the new ones will grow up "."

In fact, if you try to find these memoirs of Polevanov until 2004, you can stumble upon another text on the anonymous website Compromat.ru, in the article 2000. Allegedly in it Given The text of Leonid Krutakova, published in September 2000 at the Stringer news agency. The text analyzes the initiatives of Chubais in privatization, and at the end there is a phrase that exactly coincides with the text of Anikina.

It is unclear whether this phrase in the text was initially or appeared after the publication of Anikina. However, there is no such publication on the website of the Stringer news agency. There is no evidence that Polevanov really remembered Chubais so: even when he was interviewed in the 2010s, he was nothing about this famous phrase I did not say.

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

“This is such a well -known story that has not the only victim. This phrase, the one that you quoted, or rather, quoted Comrade Polevanov, from time to time they are attributed to Gaidar, to me, Hakamad. Ira even, in my opinion, was suing this, for sure, sued about this. Notice that you probably somehow selected quotes for conversation and could not find my quotes in this regard. ”

Indeed, Anatoly Chubais is not the only one who is considered the author of this phrase. Her attributed Also, for example, more Yegor Gaidar. At the same time, there is no evidence that Gaidar said it.

Anatoly Chubais, apparently, did not speak the phrase about 30 million who did not fit into the market. In any case, at least any reliable evidence of this is absent. And judging by the fact that it is not attributed to him the only one, this formula, as it were, fixed it, cemented a common myth, which developed around the liberal reformers of the 1990s.