Re: Fall of Communism sparks job growth

["jon farr" <ga666@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

er...hi this is nothing to do with anything in particular thats in been
discussed in the last week, but for me (although I'm sure many of you
already knew) this is almost an epiphany(sp?) and I wanted to share it.
I'm currently studying the Eastern European Economic Transition and this
morning was reading a fairly good book by Stefan Hedlund (who is one of
earlier critics of the Soviet transition programme) called "Russias' market
economy: a bad case of predatory capitalism".
Anyway on to the point. In my course it is generally excepted that currency
liberalisation was absolutely necessary because of the monetary overhang in
the Russian economy caused by years of Soviet price fixing. Fair enough
makes sense, until we discover courtesy of Mr Hedlund that in fact most of
the overhang was caused not during Communism but in 1991 when "Moscow
succeeded in creating no less than 137.3 billion roubles, which may be
compared to an accumaled total of 133.8b roubles created between 1961 and
1990. During a single year, they thus managed to print more money than in
the preceeding three decades put together."
Furthermore the reason for this was not economic restructuring or the
creation of a social safety net, it was infact part bribes to lure people
into supporting Yeltsin over Gorbachev, and part a pay rise bonanza for the
Russian people in order to keep them under control.
This is not to say that Soviet economics were flawless up until this point,
but it certainly deals a blow to the idea that price controls and Soviet
style policies were just bad economics that would have inevitably led to
collapse.
Anyway I though I would just share that piece of information as an other
blow to Yeltsin apologists.

Yours Jon



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