[1] Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, who advised the Russian government in the early 1990s, called Gaidar "the intellectual leader of many of Russia's political and economic reforms" and "one of the few pivotal actors" of the period.

[citation needed] He was appointed Acting Prime Minister under President Boris Yeltsin in 1992 from 15 June until 14 December, when the anti-Yeltsin Russian Congress of People's Deputies refused to confirm Gaidar in this position and Viktor Chernomyrdin was eventually chosen as a compromise figure.

[citation needed] On 3 October, he famously spoke live on Russian television, then broadcasting from an emergency station near Moscow, as there was fighting going on in the Ostankino complex, calling on Muscovites to gather to defend Yeltsin's government so that Russia would not be "turned into an enormous concentration camp for decades".

[11] In the 1993 Duma elections, in the aftermath of the crisis, Gaidar led the pro-government bloc Russia's Choice and was seen by some as a possible future Prime Minister.

However, due to the bloc's failure to win the plurality of votes in the election, Gaidar's role in the government diminished and he finally resigned on 20 January 1994.

[12] Gaidar was often criticized for imposing ruthless reforms in 1992 with little care for their social impact; however, the country back then was in a desperate state of economy and was on the brink of a famine.

Moreover, the privatization and break-up of state assets left over from the Soviet Union, which he played a big part in, led to much of the country's wealth being handed to a small group of powerful business executives, later known as the Russian oligarchs, for much less than what they were worth.

"[14] As society grew to despise these figures and resent the economic and social turmoil caused by the reforms, Gaidar was often held by Russians as one of the men most responsible.

[15] According to Franklin Foer writing in The Atlantic, however, "when Yegor Gaidar ... asked the United States for help hunting down the billions that the KGB had carted away, the White House refused.

"[16] One of Gaidar's most outspoken critics was the Yabloko economist and MP Grigory Yavlinsky, who had proposed since 1990 a 500 Days programme for the transition of the whole USSR to market economic, which was first backed and then dismissed by the government of Nikolai Ryzhkov.

[citation needed] Gaidar's supporters contend that although many mistakes were made, he had few choices in the matter and ultimately saved the country both from bankruptcy and from starvation.

[19] Next day he moved from the hospital to the Russian embassy's premises and arranged a transfer to Moscow where doctors familiar with his health status suggested that it looked like he was 'poisoned'.

[20] In an interview published in the Financial Times, Gaidar claimed that it had been an attempted political murder, where "most likely that means that some obvious or hidden adversaries of the Russian authorities stand behind the scenes of this event, those who are interested in further radical deterioration of relations between Russia and the west".

[24] Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser now living in the US, commented that the whole case was staged, and the reason for taking Gaidar to hospital must have been hyperthensia, stress or alcohol.

[29] Exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and convicted fraudster Platon Lebedev expressed their condolences[30][31] and stated that "He laid the foundation of our economy".