I'm not sure it failed, I'd say it was never meant to be a consumer society in the first place, so the arrival of multinational consumer capitalism necessarily meant the one-party state had to radically mutate into a developmental state (China and Vietnam), or hitch its cart to someone else's developmental state (Slovenia and Czech Rep vis-a-vis the EU). Russia will probably have to do a bit of both -- tap EU markets for technology, and create its own neo-mercantilist industrial policy, sort of like southern China vis-a-vis Japan, i.e. funnel its energy-rents into its quite promising manufacturing sector.
-- Dennis
-It failed as a socialist state, just like the czarist modernization -failed, i.e., the system collapsed and another system is trying to -accomplish the task, what is interesting with Russia is that those -failures are always associated with economic regressions, ie., the -collapse of the czarist Russia essentially led this country back to -an almost half colonial status while the current collapse led it back -to Latin American status. However, while Russia probably has good -prospects, as far as oild prices remain high, it faces some very -difficult troubles. 1-How to deal with increasing inequalities (Ginni coefficients of 48 which probably will increase further as liberal reforms deepen) 2-The collapse of its own population (which is decreasing at a fantastic 800,000/year) 3-The slow decline of educational system, which was probably the most "competitive" sector of the former USSR (along with its weapons industry) 4-The fact that its current GNP was barely able to reach 50% of former USSR GNP, so there is a long road to follow (the recovery in the 20´s was much faster, with pre war levels reached by 1928-9, despite the much more extensive damage caused by civil war)
Btw: It seems the Russian peasants, 70 years after the collectivization who killed millions of them, are now prepared to fight against priva- tization? Does Chris Doss have some information on this??
Alexandre Fenelon