Re: Why did the USSR fall?

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote: >> I'd forgotten that [Russian military exports]. Of course, it's got a down-side, in that such exports help destabilize the world and sap poor countries' civilian budgets. As my dad used to say, every silver lining has a mushroom cloud...<<

Chris D writes:>The great majority of Russian arms go to two countries, China and India.<

those two have been at war before. But the small recipients are probably the ones we have to worry about. 

>> (Ha! But the old USSR's nukes are used, in the sense that they were used as deterrent -- and also in the sense that they have physically depreciated over time. The latter was what I was thinking of.)<<

>I keep hearing different things about this... Ostensibly, the state of the stockpile is deteriorating, but then they keep coming out with new stuff. For instance, the are developing bunkerbusters (in response to the US) and very recently announced a new ICBM that can change course in midflight, thereby circumventing ABM systems. Russia takes its nuclear shield very seriously.<
 
great. The old arms rot (and become more unstable?) while the arms race goes on.
 
BTW, in a science-fiction novel I read recently (THE STONE CANAL, by McLeod), a country (part of the exUSSR) rents out its nuclear shield to other countries, so they can have a deterrent without having it based in their own territories. Interesting idea. Maybe Putin would like this idea?

>> It's interesting that all of these exports (plus the military ones) were based on the investment done during the Soviet period.<<

>Put yourself in the shoes of a budding post-Soviet capitalist in the mid-90s. Do you build up a business from scratch, or do you try to get your hands on the huge Soviet enterprises that are already there? Clearly the latter.<
 
I wasn't blaming them. I was just stating my understanding of what's going on.

>>Have the new capitalist rulers done nothing productive except political stabilization?<<

>Theoretically, political stabilization creates the ground for economic development. Yeltsin would change the laws regulating business every other week, sometimes retroactively. That is not conducive to capitalist development.<
 
it could also be stabilization of a stagnant comprador regime, once oil prices fall. 

>> Further, the near-total focus on natural resource exports is a sign of economic dependency. (The exception is the arms exports.)  It means that the vast majority of fixed investment goods and even consumer goods bought in Russia are imported, no?<<

>No. That was the case pre-1998, not today. Most consumer goods are Russian-made. In sectors outside the natural-resource industries, software is doing well, as are telecoms (BeeLine GSM and MTS being the big Moscow providers). Fast food is big (it seems like Moscow has about a billion fastfood chains, e.g., Russkoye Bistro, Kroshka Kartoshka, etc. Incidentally the head of McDonald's Russia is a Chechen.).<
 
finally, the Chechens have figured out how to strike back in a decisive way!
 
>Most Russians drive Russian-made cars.<
 
which doesn't involve much a domestic market for new production. Unless repairs are a big industry?
 
>Electrical appliances are mostly domestically produced.<
 
I remember seeing some of those in Cuba when I was there in the late 1970s. The Cubans thought they were shit, too.
 
> Pharmaceuticals are domestic. Clothing is domestic, or imported from China or Belarus (mainly shoes, in the latter case. Belarus makes good footware.). Furniture is domestic, imported from Belarus or, in Moscow, purchased from IKEA. Vodka (a big seller) is domestic; so is beer--e.g. Baltika, Staryi Melnik, Klinskoye, Ochakova--though there is some foreign ownership. Foodstuffs are mostly deomstic, with the big exception of American meat, which is sold at very low prices and is consumed by the lowest strata of the poor, because it's awful. (Produce is mostly grown on collective farms that were privatized and given to their employees, resulting in a huge increase in productivity.) Entertainment, except for film, is mostly domestic. Of course nothing comes within spitting range of Big Oil, Gas or Metals.<
 
how about investment goods? those are more crucial. 

>> There are at least two "status quos" here. One is what's left of the old bureaucratic-socialist system.<<

>The chinovniki _are_ the old bureaucratic-socialist system, or at least the part before the hyphen....<
 
I don't know the terminology. What are "chinoniki"? 

>>The other is the status quo of capitalism and the current distribution of power. The KGB types, I would guess, favor the latter but not the former.<<

> I suspect they want a system in which they dominate big business is dominated, rather than vice versa, as was the case under Yeltsin, when Berezovsky could basically buy himself a government post.<

but don't they want to be like the US, where Bush bought himself a government post? It's true, though, that mostly people use government posts to buy themselves jobs in the "private sector" as lobbyists, etc. 

>>The fact that they live off of rents (and seek more) suggests that their statist ideology will reflect their means of support. They may aim to bump off (figuratively and maybe literally) a couple of billionaires, but that would be in order to elevate themselves to that status rather than to end the existence of billionaires as a social category.<<

>Definitely. They Kremlin has been very clear that if you are a "patriotic businessman" instead of a "bandit capitalist," which means in effect doing what the Kremlin says and not shipping assets abroad ...<
 
hmm. 

>> "not necessarily bad"?!? I guess maybe, in the sense that the CIA is more enlightened than the FBI is. Lesser of two evils! <<

>I meant in the sense that the KGB was the most professional and least ideological of all the segments of the Soviet government. The most liberal, too, since they were the only ones with full access to information. The KGB wanted to start Perestroika in the early 1970s. People tend to forget that Gorbachev's mentor was Andropov, the head of the KGB.<
 
I hadn't forgotten that. BTW, the CIA was traditionally the "liberal" branch of the US secret services, hob-nobbing with laborites and social democrats (while buying them). 
 
thanks for the interesting article & the interesting conversation.
 
Jim D.