> what's the Russian model of industrialization?
Here's the short list:
1. Default on your foreign debt and avoid dependence on external loans thereafter. 2. Expropriate the worst of the speculator-comprador elites running the place into the ground, force the rest to become ordinary CEOs. 3. Nationalize your leading industries (in Russia's case, gas, oil, metals) and force the rest to pay their taxes. 4. Get state banks (Sberbank etc.) to lend and create sovereign wealth funds to save export earnings. 5. Channel domestic savings into science and technology (Russtech, nanotech, aerospace), education and infrastructure (social projects, Sochi Olympics), rural sector (agribiz) and a nascent welfare state.
None of this is theoretical. It's already happened, and offers a powerful model to other middle-income countries with some history of urbanization and industrialization, e.g. Latin America, Central Asia and SE Asia. (Conversely, lightly urbanized peripheries like rural India and Nigeria should look at China 1979-1990 and Vietnam 1985-2000 for useful models).
This is why the mainstream neolib press (what Peter Lavelle dubbed the commentariat) has demonized Putin and demeaned Medvedev. In their own narrow way, the commentariat understand that the semi-periphery is breaking its neocolonial chains.
-- DRR