[lbo-talk] Comparative post-Sovietology, 20 years on

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 12 00:22:03 PST 2010


Belarus has the distinction of being the only former Soviet Republic besides Russia that has net immigration, and the additional distinction of being the only one that people in Russia emigrate to.   Speaking of Western darlings, Latvia is in awful shape. They lost 25% of their GDP last year. I have a couple of Lithuanians visiting, and according to them the situation in Lithuania is not so wonderful either.

Now, Armenia -- what are the Armenians doing so right? The country has one open land border -- with Iran.

----- Original Message ---- From: Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com

Somebody: Belarus is an amusing case. Of course, anyone who's bothered to pay attention would be, as you say, not surprised that it's a relative winner in the post-Soviet GDP sweepstakes. But, in a farcical way, Lukashenko is analogous on a miniature scale to his idol Stalin, in this regard: it's possible to be both hamfisted and popular at the same time. The last dictator of Europe is probably still one of the more popular heads of state on the continent, for good reason.

Azerbaijan, with it's oil and natural gas, isn't a surprise either. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the country after the waning of the global recession. I suspect it could become a resource driven industrialized country like the Persian Gulf states given enough time, but on the other hand it could fall victim to the Dutch disease.

It's funny how the Western darlings Georgia and Ukraine have fared so poorly. Once again, this is something that the BBC and New York Times invariably miss.

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