What singles Ukraine out is that it is the only industrialized republic that has not recovered from the 90s. Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan are all nonindustrial, and all have had civil wars in the past 20 years (Georgia had 3). So they have an excuse. Ukraine has the massive Kharkiv industrial center (the center of Soviet car production). I think the blog writer may well be right that the divided nature of Ukraine (the result of the Great Cartographer) has prevented it from establishing the necessary functional state.
----- Original Message ---- From: Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Somebody: I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that there's a wealthy Armenian community in the U.S. Armenia, like a Christian counterpart to Israel, may be benefiting from the nationalistic goodwill of it's diaspora. Some quick and dirty internet research reveals that anywhere from a quarter to one third of the GDP is based on remittances and investment by Armenians living outside the country. Apparently the country even has a Ministry of the Diaspora to encourage this sort of thing.
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