[lbo-talk] Marx Russia

[jeff sommers]

This attributes too much to Putin.  The collapse of the ruble in 1998
created, in Keynesian fashion, domestic demand for Russian products and by
implication investment in Russian industry absent since the 1980s.
Complementing this was the rise in oil prices.  Neither was planned by
Yeltsin or Putin.  It happened to Russia, and was not planned. At the same
time by the 1990's end, the Russian carcass had been
picked clean.  The easiest money gone, it had to be earned more
legitimately (using the term loosely).  It was not just Russia that
experienced this growth in the new century, but Urkraine, an acceleration of
growth in the Baltic states, Belarus, etc.

Putin occasionally jabs at the US, as Doug asserts with Yukos, but
alternates that with fawning support for the most reactionary elements in
the US government. 

Putin may have helped ensure Russian pensions got paid and salaries too.  It
is more orderly and that fits the tempo and times of an oligarch class (at
least some of them) that amassed enough wealth to begin thinking about
social stability.  At the same time Putin introduced privatized pension
systems, although almost nobody contributes at this time, and wants to
remove people's in-kind benefits and replace with cash, which can then erode
the real value of these if not properly indexed to inflation.

Yeltsin was not exactly a hard act to follow.  One only need not be a
ridiculous drunk giving away the country's patrimony to look good by
comparison...

Jeff 

Jeffrey Sommers, Visiting Fulbright Professor
-Email: <jsommers at fulbrightweb.org>
Stockholm School of Economics-Riga <www2.sseriga.edu.lv>
University of Latvia, Center for European & Transition Studies
<http://home.lanet.lv/~cets/index_en.htm>

--Research Associate, Institute of Globalization Studies, Moscow
<www.iprog.ru/en>
--Book Review Editor, H-World/H-Net <www.h-net.org/~world>