Chris Doss wrote:
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.). Most Russians
drive Russian-made cars. Electrical appliances are mostly domestically
produced. 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.
This beehive of economic activity must be placed within the context of how
other nations are faring. With a population of 10 million, Portugal has a
GDP of 195 billion dollars. Russia's population is 14 times the size of
Portugal's but the GDP is only 7 times as great. In other words, per capita
wealth production in the poorest Western European nation is *twice* that of
Russia's. Russia's economic output is roughly in line with Mexico's, which
has a population of 104 million that produces a GDP of 924 billion dollars.
Russia's 144 million people produce 1.2 trillion dollars in GDP. So we are
talking about a country that rates about the same as Mexico on the world
scale, a basket case by all definitions.
I am positive that there is nothing that Putin can do to eradicate poverty
despite promises of a "New Deal" and no matter how many Mafia/businessmen
he jails. The economic predicament of Russia is a function of exactly what
is delivering an uptick right now, namely the high prices of exported
natural resources. There has not been a single oil-exporting country in the
world that has not experienced an improvement in its economic situation
during a favorable period in the business cycle.
All this being said, when you consider Russia's "take-off" in light of what
went along with it, the results are even less impressive. With the breakup
of the Soviet Union, regions such as Mongolia et al could no longer depend
on subsidies. Chris is impressed with the quality of Belarus shoes. I am
far more concerned about other matters. Belarus has the same population as
Portugal but a GDP that is less than half. As you might expect, this
translates into statistics reflecting on general well-being. In Belarus,
there are 13.87 deaths for every 1,000 live births. In Portugal, the
figures are 5.73 deaths per 1,000 live births.
When I hear all this talk about how much "better" Putin is than Yeltsin, I
am reminded of the same rhetoric about the American elections. In the world
of politics, we must never lose sight of our goals. The Soviet Union came
into existence because it could not develop economically under the pressure
of global markets. Now that the clock has turned back, new contradictions
will eventually emerge that make that need imperative once again. It would
be a shame if those of those on the left limited our options for change in
that part of the world. Even though revolutionary socialism is a marginal
current in the former Soviet Union, it is the only one that can solve the
nation's long-standing economic problems. Putin can promise all sorts of
things, but socialism is not one of them.
Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
