The Russian Collapse?
tapsns.com
tapsns.com
In programming terms the author is bitching about Python's OOP implementation having only programmed C++ for his entire life. Amusing but pointless.
The article comes across as immensely naive, on the border of stupid, to any Russian or anyone who lived there in the 90s. Every sentence in it is just so bizarre and stereotypical beyond funny, I was expecting a next paragraph to start with bears eating alcoholics on the streets and nuclear warheads offered for a bottle of vodka on farmers markets. Yes, it's that retarded.
I'm not even sure if junk like that is more amusing or dangerous: I guess muslims got less lucky - they're just "all terrorists" when viewed through Western glasses people like author seems to wear.
Refuting an authors point with a fairly lengthy reply that doesn't address a single specific point of his is just as useless, albeit not as dangerous, as a over-generalized analysis piece.
I lived there in the 90s. Opening your own small business inevitably meant meeting with local gangs and paying them monthly. If that's the "market economy" Putin destroyed, then nobody is missing it for sure.
Pre-Putin Russia looked very much like a bandit state ruled by a few "influential groups" that Eltsin couldn't control. After USSR collapse, what Russia needed was a massive financial help from the West, similar to what Marshall plan offered Germany after WWII. Instead, they received vast numbers of western scam artists and mostly useless economic advice from IMF and very expensive loans (and the default which followed). That's why remarks like Michael Dell's will always make everybody there laugh and even anger.
For anyone who lived through those times, reading about "Putin destroying democracy and market economy" feels... strange, to say the least. Moreover, the article is filled with pointless exaggerations, like "privatized all oil companies". There are plenty of private energy companies there, just pick up Forbe's billionaire list: what do you think those Russian-looking last names represent?
Russia simply needs more time. Their political scene is interesting but not very practical: tons of small and disorganized democratic parties [always fighting each other], one big pro-government "conservative" one, plus always amusing and relatively numerous communists that are slowly dying off.
Consequently at all elections the same group of people competes for the seats (to some extend). It's especially visible on regional layer. In fact this situation hasn't changed from the Soviet period.
And as you might imagine these people are very uncomfortable with that democratic thingy. During the late 90s the United Russia was introduced to support the most popular politician of that time (Putin). It was created from the ground up and expanded very aggressively. Joining that party looked like a clear opportunity to improve once position. That's why everybody tried to jump in.
The resulting growth was enormous! And combined with a complete inability of right parties to form a strong opposition this resulted in the formation of the superparty. Suddenly everybody in this ruling slice of the society felt the comfort of the good old days of the Soviet Era: 'just join UR to get a warm fuzzy feeling' :)
Now here's the thing western people do not understand: this situation is Ok! It's much much better than what Russia had during the 90s. One thing Putin tries to teach other politicians it that there're some formal rules which they should follow at least to some extend. As it was already said at least small and medium businesses are not forced to pay for 'protection'. That's a huge thing because it affects the whole nation. People have at least some confidence and feel secure.
After all democracy is not that much important. And comparing to China democracy is doing pretty well in Russia.
The real political problem today is the lack of strong right opposition. Communists are doing pretty well on the left side with about 20% of support among the population. But on the right side there was never a strong entity. If there's one I'm sure it could get about the same support ratio. These two strong oppositions could ultimately overcome this superparty situation. Than it depends. If UR gets divided into two parties Russia will end up with two identical parties of equal power (US model). If it stays united then it will be a three-party system (European model). Anyway, if there are no revolutions or big wars I would expect them to become democratic before the end of the century. Otherwise we'll have to wait even longer.
Personally I do not expect to see a democratic Russia during my lifetime (I'm in my early 20s).
Thing you should know:
1. Despite what you might be told by your officials Russia is not a big deal. It's just a country.
2. They are not your enemy and they never want to.
3. If you let them (and help them) build a better image of Russia they'll be very thankful.
4. They want to fell big and important. So be it. If your president decided to gang up with a couple of others just invite Russian leader over as well. Meeting in Russia is a good idea as well.
5. When the right opposition start to form don't rush and don't give them you aid. Otherwise it's reputation will be tarnished among the nation. It must be a homegrown thing. That's something US gov and NGO screw things up all the time. Once there're western money involved these democrats will start targeting each other, not the superpower. Look at a Belorussian opposition as an example.
6. Just do what you have to anyway: go green, improve recycling, ease the environmental pressure, reduce oil and gas consumption. Once you do it you won't give a dime about their pipes.
7. Bring all that green high tech to Russia. Russians are smart and they want to live on a healthy planet, too.
Communism is not really a bad thing and it doesn't prevent the democracy. I live in a western European country now. But when I walk along the streets I see the same life my parents had in Soviet Russia. How ironic is that!
edit: formatting
"and oh, goodness, weren’t there just a great number of these in unregulated America?"
Europe which is much more stringently regulated has the same (or even bigger) problems than the USA – so does Japan. So to blame everything on the Americans is not a 100% correct. Some of these regulations (e.g. Community Reinvestment Act) even had a hand in the cause of the economic troubles. Europe's “well regulated” banks are falling just as fast as American banks.
“Here he was, blowing up civilians in apartment buildings in ...”
Blaming Putin for the Russian apartment bombings is standard conspiracy stuff. It is like blaming Bush for 911.
“nationalizing all resource companies, “
The Russian oligarchy obtained most of the state assets in a pretty corrupt way during the Yeltsin era. I am pretty sure that pure nationalisation of assets would not be bad. (even though Putin is corrupt).
“working on re-constituting the old Soviet Union,”
What did Putin do to “reconstruct” the Soviet Union? Even its closets allies (and component states of the Soviet Union) were forced to pay market prices for natural gas (e.g. Belarus) – i.e. Russia stopped subsidising them.
“while people like me were warning investors for the last couple of years to get as far from Moscow as they could (too bad BP didn’t listen). “
Hindsight is always 20/20.
“The system, instead of being diverse and robust, is a monoculture with no life to it.”
The economy was in pretty dire straits when Putin took office (1998 Russian financial crises). It can be argued that the economy now is in better shape than it was before Putin took over from an alcoholic.
“I don’t think this will save Putin or his current ideation of Russia. “
As far as I know, Putin was extremely popular when he was president and he is still now pretty popular. State ownership of television stations may help with this. The United Russia party (of which Putin is the chairman) won the last elections in 2007 by an almost 2 3rds majority.
I inadvertently took an economics class in college. Fortunately the professor was amazing and the class was incredibly mind-expanding. The downside to this is that now I am constantly aware of people (and nations) completely ignoring proven economic principles - it can be really frustrating to watch.
This is a bit off topic - but I've often wondered why the US public school system requires so many classes in order to graduate from high school, but rarely even touches economics. I'm all for english literature, social studies, etc - but I think a simple economics course would be far more valuable to the American populace. Apparently, basic economics would be pretty valuable to the Russian populace as well ;)
So... what exactly makes you think that Russians need your tutoring on basic economic principles? How much do you read on Russian affairs per week and have you ever spent any time there? Also, I am assuming you're very knowledgeable regarding latest Russian history, from the collapse of USSR to the latest financial crisis, right?
This reminds me of when Michael Dell, in a typical naive Western manner asked Putin what western computer/software companies can do to "help out", and he got back the only answer this question deserved. Look it up on Youtube.
So Russians don't need "my" individual tutoring, lol. Of course that's not what I meant. The point is that there are basic economic principles that seem to be ignored by governments and individuals and it can be frustrating to watch. I'm advocating in a round-about way I guess for basic economics to be taught to more than just a relatively few students that happen upon it at University.
Didn't want to single you out, sorry if it came across this way.
How do you inadvertently take an economics class? Did you accidentally wander into the wrong room?
How has told you this bullshit ? Nowadays Russia is more capitalist than US ever was.
The rest are desperate to cash their chips and get around the capital export controls. Five or six have moved out of the country entirely. (Every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings. Every time Chávez sneezes a condo agent in Miami gets a commission)
Forget the politics of it. If you scare off two generations of business owners, in a few years your economy will be f-u-c-k-e-d.
The only problem for startups here in Russia is lack of venture capital, as all the capitalists were frightened out away by Putin, who sued YUKOS to death for not paying taxes and hiding crime. So, most startups here are bootstrapping self-supported profitable busineses, as there is no way other.
I pesonally know a guy who developed mobile IM client and sold it to well-known russian internet giant for $1MM. He's now starting a new company for developing desktop client :-).
But VE is pretty bad unless you can navigate around some big and scary forces. Some people are getting rich there but it's tricky. The diversity of the economy (which has always been kind of bad because of the distortion of the oil business) is getting worse as far as I can tell.
Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0815731140
You can read an excerpt for free here: http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_d...
or here: http://scribd.com/doc/12796808
I believe it will not. Only 38% of Russian GDP comes from Oil and Gas industry and this figure is contantly lowering, means the gov doing its best to devercify incomes. What's more, Russia has saved significant amount ($400B) of currency reserves. This will allow Russian government to support economy and stay afloat for a couple of years no matter what prices on energy resources will be. How much did US gov save ? ;)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/budget.h...
There are hard times ahead for Russia, along with the rest of the world.
January '09: Russia spends $30B in a week
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aalw...
$40B sold in Oct, keeping ruble in desired band
http://russiatooat.blogspot.com/2008/11/massive-foreign-rese...
further discussion of selling to support Ruble
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29099569
That's not to say that Russian hasn't spent hundreds of billions also on loans, and even more billions on loss of FDI and declaring financial war on foreign owned companies. But my point holds.
In any case, I wish Russians the best of luck; they were almost uniformly kind to me when I lived there. But I think the probability that Russia avoids another governmental crisis is shrinking.
Of course, new people, like the internet generation are different, but they are weak and immature.
About this article - it is probably based on authors imagination.