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Comment by arcadeparade | Hacker News Reader

Relative to Yeltsins Russia that is a success. And far more stable.

No. You can not compare a period after privatesation and other social, political and economic changes directly with now. The fact is that there was less political elitism and state power in russia but it increased a lot.

If you have small political elite you will never have stable growth. You might not get stable growth under a more broader politcal system (socialist india was relativly democratic) but much more likly.

See these two books, one from a economist perspective, on from a politcal sienctist perspecitve (both considered top people in the field):

- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

- Dictator's Handbook

The both tell the same story with diffrent words, or maybe one would better say diffrent but overlapping parts of the same story.

This is fine but kind of getting away from my main point, which is that the NYT is denigrating Russia, not because of it's economic and social problems which are real, but because it is an independent country that is rich in natural resources, therefore a target for the West. But it is too powerful to be threatened militarily, hence articles like this about its problems instead.

Oh my god, conspiracy theories abound on HN now. :-(

Living in Western Europe, life is busy. I spend all my time implementing conspiracies against Russia, Pakistan, etc, etc...

In fact against all countries which are controlled by authoritarian b-ds that use West as an external enemy to keep people from complaining about how much they steal. Weird coincidence.

It doesn't make it more successful or stable. Putin simply continued Yeltsin changes: more power to the government, suppress the opposition, consolidate the power in few hands. He haven't done anything new, except creating a new image of an iron man that Russia loves (Like Stalin, translated from Russian - steel).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#Putin.27s_fir...

Nice little graph there.

Most of those graphs conveniently end in 2010.

2010 was the year when world economy started to recover, russia's - not so much.

Relative to Khmer Rouge Russia is a beacon of human rights. This means nothing.

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