The claim that the Russian boom was only a result of the oil boom is patently false, though people keep clinging to it with all the tenacity of a tiger clinging to juicy steak. The structure of the Russian economy is completely different from what it was 10 years ago, due largely to the extensive reforms in the 2000-2004 period. E.g. Russian consumption is based on domestic production, whereas 10 years ago it was imports.
Also running contrary to this narrative is that most of the oligarchs were not former apparatchiks. They were low-level black marketeers from not-apparatchik backgrounds. Gusinsky was a theater director. Berezovsky was a mathematician. Khodorkovsky was a Komsomol head.
----- Original Message ---- From: "dredmond at efn.org" <dredmond at efn.org> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sat, December 5, 2009 11:39:26 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Therapeutic Rant of the Day: The Ayatollahs of Academic Privatization
On Sat, December 5, 2009 11:38 am, michael perelman wrote:
> One of the major forces behind the breakup of the
> Communist Party was the apparatchiks' hope that they could claim great
> chunks of the public property for their own. They were correct, although
> some of the robber barons were not close to the center of power. The
> result was a horrendous economic collapse, from which the country only
> recently recovered largely because of an oil boom, which has since
> languished.
I'd push the Russian comparison even further. Russia recovered because after 1999, the siloviki smashed the rule of the oligarchs and renationalized about a third of the economy. The revenues of the energy boom were saved for a rainy day, and now they're being used to jumpstart the high-tech economy (Bearzilla has nanotechnology for teeth, not missiles -- military spending remains quite low).
-- DRR
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