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.
