--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote: So it was not that the IMF boys did Eastern Europe and Russia, but that inside power brokers, the so-called techno-managerial class (or the "nomenclature"), did Eastern Europe and Russia, using the IMF boys as convenient icons and toilet brushes to clean up the pipes connecting them to Western markets.
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This is true. Hacks like Aslund also served an ideological function. I tend to believe that the main "obstacle" to Russia becoming a Western-style society is the clan- and family-based social system and the complete contempt for the notion of provate property that is probably rooted in the peasant worldview. (Which, BTW, is why Russia should not try to become a Western-style society.)
Really it's amazing how little Russian society has changed in the past 150 years. Four revolutions and two thoroughgoing shifts in property relations and it's still clearly a variation on the same system. The place seems to have some kind of internal gyroscope that keeps pulling it back into position. I'm not sure what the reason for this is. It must be something pretty enduring -- like the Eurasian landmass. Maybe it's size.
Also, I think that what was probably the main or one of the main reasons for the post-Soviet economic collapse is the _obvious_ one that no one _ever_ mentions -- breaking up a tightly linked territory does not make a whole lot of sense economically.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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