1) Yeltsin didn't inherit a disaster, he created it. He was one of the central people responsible for undermining the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Union_Treaty In fact, he was supposed to be negotiating that very treaty when he, Ukrainian and Belarus leaders signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovezh_Accords instead, breaking up the USSR. Millions people dead and catastrophic economic collapse, all because some a-holes wanted more personal power and free hands to plunder the state.
2) Yeltsin was the person that choked democracy in its crib, not Putin. His government was in charge of fraudulent privatizations that created oligarchs, who in turn funded his election campaigns. His democracy looks like this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/a/a7/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB_%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0_%D0%B2_1993_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%83.jpg Tanks firing into Russian House of Deputies. Why you ask? Oh, that's simple, Yeltsin signed an illegal order to disolve the Congress. Both chambers of it. Obviously, they refused that illegal order, and in turn voted to have him deposed, so he sent in the tanks to kill them. You know, democracy. BTW Clinton patted him on his back, and said he handled that pretty well.
3) In 1996 elections, Yeltsin was polling in single digits before they started. You've guessed it, he won the elections. I'm sure it was completely fair, despite people running between US Embassy and Kremlin getting arrested with boxes of cash to fund the campaign, using state resources to help run illegal TV coverage, and many regions sending in forged totals for the main vote count, that was officially investigated and declared fradulent. Nope, free and fair elections.
If you are going to write about history and missed opportunities, it helps to do some research about the background situation. Looking at an isolated person or time out of context, and comparing it to your reality today, is a pointless and automatically distorted way to present history.
Alexey, you seem to think you are rebutting me. I assure you, you are not. Contrary to what you think you read, I did not defend or praise Yeltsin. I was in Russia at the end of the Yeltsin years and I fully agree with much of what you write here. If I were to write about the Yeltsin era, would be, if anything, even harsher (notably, on the Chechen war). It was a carnival of corruption and horrible governance. And you're absolutely right that the West ignored the anti-democratic moves of the government, or abetted them, mostly because we feared something worse if Yeltsin lost power.
All that said, your first point, and your curious avatar, would suggest you see the fall of the USSR as the source of the disasters that followed. On that point, I will, indeed, beg to differ.
I was responding to this statement, for the most part, as my opening suggests.
"Boris Yeltsin inherited a disaster and never had the resources needed to turn it around. Drunk or not, he was doomed."
Just to add, the main reason Putin did not rebuild the economy, was because he expected to be integrated into Europe. As you probably know, EU economy is designed around allowing certain members unfair advantages in specific economic areas. Ex-Pact states discovered it some time ago (Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary) as did Ukraine, when it overthrew Yanukovych to push ahead their EU integration and was assigned very limited export quotas into EU. They don't need any additional competition inside the block, so If Russia would ever have a chance to join, it would have to not bring along a bunch of manufacturing competitors to be allowed in. The other reason is Putin is a corrupt authoritarian, not wanting to have issues like China has with their rich businessmen.
Considering the way the global economy is having seizures for the past few years, with a few bottlenecks stopping giant production chains and logistics trying to adjust to the chaos, I wonder if communist economy would have similar issues. You know, mostly self reliant states, that produce their own basic goods like construction materials, steel, enough food not to starve, useless stuff like that. I'm sure you will point out how they all failed, but I'm not quite sure it was inherent flaws, so much as the outside pressure, smaller market, and intentional sabotage. After all, the Western economies fail at least every 20 years, and they didn't have to rebuild their countries after a giant war.
When it comes to mismanaging oil wealth, Russia and Iran aren’t even close to the worst offenders. At least Russia developed some semblance of a middle class, as did Saudi Arabia and even Iran under the Shah. (Since 1979 it’s harder to know how much of Iran’s plight is from the Mullahs’ mismanagement and how much is because of sanctions.)
Ordinary folk in Angola and Nigeria see even less benefit from their countries’ oil wealth (though from what I’ve read, corruption in Nigeria is so endemic that even the lowest paid oil workers can demand bribes) and Venezuela is a particularly notorious example of a populist government running an oil economy into the ground.
But the worst of all might be Equitorial Guinea, which *should* be the Dubai of Africa but is cursed with a shockingly corrupt and brutal ruling family.
Very true. I wrote a couple of long features about the grotesque family that runs Equatorial Guinea and their cosy relationship with the US government. As I recall, it was one of those pieces that got literally no response.
As of roughly 2008 or so, there was almost nothing in English on Equatorial Guinea. It had one of the maddest dictators of the 1970s, and became an atrocious story of a small country ruined by oil, but for some reason the Western media seem to have never heard of the place.
9 million unnecessary deaths according to the Lancet, since the fall of the Soviet Union. The decline of the economy was to a tenth of its size before the reforms of Perestroika. The argument is not that Putin and his thugs treat Russia as purely a mafia possession, but that misunderstanding goes both ways. What the Soviet leadership, and I mean the controlling group within the KGB, wanted was simple. From their perspective they could out compete the USA. The USA was never an enemy even to Stalin, but a "competitor". They didn't understand the way the West actually operated, and the West was a bit dense as to the end goal of Russia's predators at the top of the food chain. So, they thought they would simply stop being the Soviet Union and go into a Free Market competition with the West. Well, that didn't end well. Partly, but not all, it was due to the West having an insatiable fear of Russia. Who knows, perhaps its shaped the wrong way and it looks awfully big. Now we see the results of hatred blind as fear itself from the West and overestimation of the future by Russia. Russia has always and will always suffer from an excess of "Optimism". The leadership keep hoping the West will come to terms and negotiate, they never will. Now without negotiation they are driven into the arms of China and make beautiful and helpful deals to India and all impoverished nations, to the extent even Lenin would think it an ultra-left position. By the way for the first time since the Fall of the Soviet Union, the leader of Russia has quoted Lenin in a speech with reverence. The only way out of this is negotiation. Hold your nose if you must but sign an agreement to end this, is all our leaders can and should do.
1) Yeltsin didn't inherit a disaster, he created it. He was one of the central people responsible for undermining the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Union_Treaty In fact, he was supposed to be negotiating that very treaty when he, Ukrainian and Belarus leaders signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovezh_Accords instead, breaking up the USSR. Millions people dead and catastrophic economic collapse, all because some a-holes wanted more personal power and free hands to plunder the state.
2) Yeltsin was the person that choked democracy in its crib, not Putin. His government was in charge of fraudulent privatizations that created oligarchs, who in turn funded his election campaigns. His democracy looks like this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/a/a7/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB_%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0_%D0%B2_1993_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%83.jpg Tanks firing into Russian House of Deputies. Why you ask? Oh, that's simple, Yeltsin signed an illegal order to disolve the Congress. Both chambers of it. Obviously, they refused that illegal order, and in turn voted to have him deposed, so he sent in the tanks to kill them. You know, democracy. BTW Clinton patted him on his back, and said he handled that pretty well.
3) In 1996 elections, Yeltsin was polling in single digits before they started. You've guessed it, he won the elections. I'm sure it was completely fair, despite people running between US Embassy and Kremlin getting arrested with boxes of cash to fund the campaign, using state resources to help run illegal TV coverage, and many regions sending in forged totals for the main vote count, that was officially investigated and declared fradulent. Nope, free and fair elections.
If you are going to write about history and missed opportunities, it helps to do some research about the background situation. Looking at an isolated person or time out of context, and comparing it to your reality today, is a pointless and automatically distorted way to present history.
Alexey, you seem to think you are rebutting me. I assure you, you are not. Contrary to what you think you read, I did not defend or praise Yeltsin. I was in Russia at the end of the Yeltsin years and I fully agree with much of what you write here. If I were to write about the Yeltsin era, would be, if anything, even harsher (notably, on the Chechen war). It was a carnival of corruption and horrible governance. And you're absolutely right that the West ignored the anti-democratic moves of the government, or abetted them, mostly because we feared something worse if Yeltsin lost power.
All that said, your first point, and your curious avatar, would suggest you see the fall of the USSR as the source of the disasters that followed. On that point, I will, indeed, beg to differ.
Thank you for your quick reply.
I was responding to this statement, for the most part, as my opening suggests.
"Boris Yeltsin inherited a disaster and never had the resources needed to turn it around. Drunk or not, he was doomed."
Just to add, the main reason Putin did not rebuild the economy, was because he expected to be integrated into Europe. As you probably know, EU economy is designed around allowing certain members unfair advantages in specific economic areas. Ex-Pact states discovered it some time ago (Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary) as did Ukraine, when it overthrew Yanukovych to push ahead their EU integration and was assigned very limited export quotas into EU. They don't need any additional competition inside the block, so If Russia would ever have a chance to join, it would have to not bring along a bunch of manufacturing competitors to be allowed in. The other reason is Putin is a corrupt authoritarian, not wanting to have issues like China has with their rich businessmen.
Considering the way the global economy is having seizures for the past few years, with a few bottlenecks stopping giant production chains and logistics trying to adjust to the chaos, I wonder if communist economy would have similar issues. You know, mostly self reliant states, that produce their own basic goods like construction materials, steel, enough food not to starve, useless stuff like that. I'm sure you will point out how they all failed, but I'm not quite sure it was inherent flaws, so much as the outside pressure, smaller market, and intentional sabotage. After all, the Western economies fail at least every 20 years, and they didn't have to rebuild their countries after a giant war.
When it comes to mismanaging oil wealth, Russia and Iran aren’t even close to the worst offenders. At least Russia developed some semblance of a middle class, as did Saudi Arabia and even Iran under the Shah. (Since 1979 it’s harder to know how much of Iran’s plight is from the Mullahs’ mismanagement and how much is because of sanctions.)
Ordinary folk in Angola and Nigeria see even less benefit from their countries’ oil wealth (though from what I’ve read, corruption in Nigeria is so endemic that even the lowest paid oil workers can demand bribes) and Venezuela is a particularly notorious example of a populist government running an oil economy into the ground.
But the worst of all might be Equitorial Guinea, which *should* be the Dubai of Africa but is cursed with a shockingly corrupt and brutal ruling family.
Very true. I wrote a couple of long features about the grotesque family that runs Equatorial Guinea and their cosy relationship with the US government. As I recall, it was one of those pieces that got literally no response.
Great article on Russia. Also, what books do you recommend on Equatorial Guinea? I will search for your other article on it.
As of roughly 2008 or so, there was almost nothing in English on Equatorial Guinea. It had one of the maddest dictators of the 1970s, and became an atrocious story of a small country ruined by oil, but for some reason the Western media seem to have never heard of the place.
:( to the above.
Well, I didn't even know it existed, but now I do, so thank you for educating me here. :)
Good article.
9 million unnecessary deaths according to the Lancet, since the fall of the Soviet Union. The decline of the economy was to a tenth of its size before the reforms of Perestroika. The argument is not that Putin and his thugs treat Russia as purely a mafia possession, but that misunderstanding goes both ways. What the Soviet leadership, and I mean the controlling group within the KGB, wanted was simple. From their perspective they could out compete the USA. The USA was never an enemy even to Stalin, but a "competitor". They didn't understand the way the West actually operated, and the West was a bit dense as to the end goal of Russia's predators at the top of the food chain. So, they thought they would simply stop being the Soviet Union and go into a Free Market competition with the West. Well, that didn't end well. Partly, but not all, it was due to the West having an insatiable fear of Russia. Who knows, perhaps its shaped the wrong way and it looks awfully big. Now we see the results of hatred blind as fear itself from the West and overestimation of the future by Russia. Russia has always and will always suffer from an excess of "Optimism". The leadership keep hoping the West will come to terms and negotiate, they never will. Now without negotiation they are driven into the arms of China and make beautiful and helpful deals to India and all impoverished nations, to the extent even Lenin would think it an ultra-left position. By the way for the first time since the Fall of the Soviet Union, the leader of Russia has quoted Lenin in a speech with reverence. The only way out of this is negotiation. Hold your nose if you must but sign an agreement to end this, is all our leaders can and should do.