It's certainly on the increase. Investment in the Russian economy is way up, and most of it is domestic, or sent in through Cyprus (which means it's 90% repatriated stolen capital coming back into the country -- this is in large part because the government has declared a virtual amnesty on crimes committed during the privatisation process in the hopes of getting stuff back into the economy that people were keeping out for fear of prosecution). the so-called "young oligarchs" like Abramovich and Deripaska are certainly much better-behaved than their predecessors, in part because they're scared shitless of Putin doing to them what he did to Berezovsky and Gusinsky, and more recently to former Gazprom head CEO Rem Vyakhirev (Putin fired him) and the recently canned, and notoriously corrupt, head of the Railways Ministry (I don't remember his name). King of the Oligarchs Anatoly Chubais, also head of Russia's energy delivery network UES, has basically been forced by teh Kremlin to change his plans for privatising the system because of an outcry by minority shareholders (and Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarianov, famous for having predicted the 1998 ruble devaluation) worried that they were going to be screwed.
I think the period of Primitive Accumulation (the reformers' words) is over. The 90s, from the oligarchs' point of view, were about getting as much government property as you could and making money from it in the quickest way possible, which usually meant asset-stripping. This means anarchy and decay. Now, on the other hand, they've already stolen what there was to steal and the problem is making more money from it -- which means investment -- and, even more importantly, protecting what you've got from other would-be thieves -- which means a more ordered state, laws protecting private property, more transparent ways of doing business and so forth.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal
Chris Doss wrote:
>BTW, some of the oligarchs have actually started, perish the thought,
>investing in the economy! Oleg Deripaska has been buying up the auto
>industry and actually making cars instead of stripping assets! this is
>virtually unprecidented.
How widespread is this? Is the period of thievery and decay over, or is it just resting?
Doug