David Ignatius’s August 25 article “Who Robbed Russia?” was right on the money in "Who Robbed Russia?" [op-ed, Aug. 25]. The answer: the Russian oligarchs, mostly former Communist nomenklatura members. But who set them up? The U.S. government.

Mr. Ignatius cites recent “Russiagate” articles. John Lloyd wrote last month in the New York Times Magazine that President Boris Yeltsin, whom “we in the West supported, became worse than the Communists we helped him to overthrow.” Robert Kaiser quotes former U.S. diplomats in Moscow to the effect that high U.S. officials, lead by Vice President Albert Gore, ignored information on the corruption of Russian bureaucrats, as long as those swore by “reforms.” ["Pumping Up the Problem," op-ed, Aug. 15].

The United States promoted “privatization” in the name of market reforms. In reality, Russia’s resources went to criminal money launderers. Wittingly or not, the U.S. government became their accomplice. By wasting billions of tax-payers’ dollars, the United States defeated the purpose of its assistance to Russia. Mr. Ignatius is right that “the Clinton administration squandered one of the most precious assets--the goodwill of the Russian people.”

Oh, were it only Russia! A recent United Nations report says that post-communist reforms have been calamitous for a vast swath of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, leading to widespread poverty, alarming drops in life expectancy, widening inequalities between the sexes, falling investment in education, the collapse of public health and the spread of disease, crime, and violence.

For the United States, in the midst of its economic boom, to emerge as the chief sponsor of misery in the world is not only obscene. It defeats our national purpose.