Trendevents: Russia's Transition Derailed

Clyde Wilson

1994

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat Newsletter, March 1994, No. 122

It is interesting to note that Russia's road to democracy and capitalism has run into a number of potholes, road blocks and detours. The transition from a state-controlled Price System to a capitalistic Price System of privatization has been anything except smooth and has fallen on hard times and taken on many of the characteristics and problems of a financial and monetary system.

Russia, with its economy in dire straights, has been admonished by the Western nations that loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will not be forthcoming unless it can get its economic act or system in order. Yet Russia, in an attempt to move its economy toward privatization and a market oriented economy, continues to run into many of the pitfalls that are now plaguing the industrial nations of the world. (The United States is calling for a democratic state of private enterprise and a market oriented economy, yet the United States, if it is an example, has the dubious honor of being the largest debtor and trade deficit nation in the world.)

Maybe all is not hopeless for Russia and the Russian people. Here was a nation of republics that took the brunt of World War II and turned back the onslaught and siege of fascism in a crucial period of world history. During the most adverse conditions, Russia was able to dismantle, move and reconvert over 2000 of its plants and equipment beyond the Urals and out of reach of the fascists' military forces. For a nation of republics that had the most devastation and a loss of over 20 million of its population during and from the aftermath of World War II, it was resourceful enough to rebuild and reconstruct its infrastructure and industrial complex (without the aid of the Marshall Plan).

The fact that the Soviet Union could do all of the things that have been mentioned during and after World War II shows there is no reason why Russia, in cooperation with the now independent Republics, cannot implement a transition or conversion plan where her resources, technology and expertise are mobilized to meet the present exigency as well as for useful and meaningful purposes when the conditions for such a transformation are more favorable.

Just to create another breed of Nomenclatura elite, millionaires and billionaires, and join the multinationals in the exploitation of Russia's remaining resources for merely capital gain and personal aggrandizement, American or Western Style, and be led down the path of deterioration that comes from plutocracy does not speak well of its leadership nor the future of Russia and its people. To allow the wheelers and dealers from the West to get a foothold in Russia would be the worst thing that could happen to Russia and the Russian people. Their destiny lies in Russia and the contiguous area of the region.

Like America, Russia needs a new breed of leadership with inventiveness and imagination that understands what must be done to break completely from the status quo of the past and the present; and she needs to refuse to let a fictitious created piece of paper or a mere promissory note get in the way of implementing a new economic system and method of operation that is based on physical reality.