Mark Braund on the state of Russia:
Mark Braund, The possibility of progress. Chapter 4, The State of the World. p96-97. wrote:It [neoliberalism] is certainly not working for the people of Russia. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the resulting social and economic chaos has seen male life expectancy fall from 66 to 59 in just ten years. In a survey in 2002, the Russian Ministry of Health discovered that 60 per cent of children were unhealthy. Half of Russia's 18-year-olds were rejected for military service on health grounds. Since 1985, life expectancy among men has fallen by ten years, principally as a result of widespread alcoholism, but also due to the re-emergence of previously eradicated diseases such as tuberculosis. Less than half of teenage boys on Russia today will reach the age of 60. Empolyment, virually guaranteed under the communist system, is no longer secure for many: 40 per cent of Russians now live below the poverty line. The country has an estimated six million users of hard drugs out of a population of only 150 million. In many new republics, organised crime operates as a virtual shadow government, controlling a black market which provides for the needs of the few, while the formal economy fails to meet the needs of the many. By 1994 murders in Russia were averaging 83 per day, or 30,000 a year, this rate shows no sign of reducing and is way ahead of the United States.
The poorly planned move to a capitalist economy has had little impact in the way of economic liberalization, or in reviving the economy to feed, clothe and house the Russian people. The privatization of state enterprises has led to oligarchic arrangements under which a tiny politically connected elite control much of the economy, in what has been described as the tycoon model of capitalism. Profitable elements of the economy are under the control of this political elite: non-profitable elements, such as food production, are left to the people. Between 1991 and 1998, production within the formal economy almost halved.
Millions of people have no money; they survive through subsistence farming on small plots and by barter. The absence of traditional agricultural planning, and the failure to develop adequate market-driven mechanisms for food produciton, has left tens of millions of Russian struggling to feed themselves. This experience suggests that certain conditions must hold in order for a market-based economy to provide adequate opportunities for all members of society. ...
Despite Mikhail Gobachev's attempts to prioritize environmental concerns, the condition of the land, water and air in Russia is amongst the
worst in the world, and is deteriorating. Super-polluting factories which were shut down for environmental reasons have been reopened in exactly the same condition. The quality of food and water available to the population is heavily compromised; people have neither the means nor the motivation to put things right. As Vladimir Tsirkunov of the World Bank noted: 'If you are dying of hunger, what do you care if you are going to die of cancer in ten years time. Environment is an abandoned child.'
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Russia's situation is that since the fall of communism this huge country, rich in resources, and steeped in cultural tradition, has neither created nor invented anythong of worth. The carcass of an exhausted economy has been divided up among a tiny minority, and that part of it on which the people depend for their basic needs, discarded.
The Russians have swapped the failings of a command economy, which deprived consumers of choice, for a desperately flawed attempt at emulating the market economies of the West, which seem likely to make them among the poorest and most deprived in the world. Whatever human rights violations were committed under the communist system, and they were very many and serious, virtually the entire population had its basic needs guaranteed for forty years following 1945. Under the economic reforms introduced by Boris Yeltsin and now taken up by Vladimir Putin, most Russians have seen their life savings become worthless as their currenceis have been devalued. John Gray suggests that western politicians are equally to blame, As he says, 'The crackpot policies that were foisted on Russia had nothing to do with the country's needs and everything to do with the neo-liberal hubris that had gripped western governmtents.' The shelves that stood empty for decades may now be full of consumer goods, but few can afford to buy them. When the Soviet Union broke up, the fate of Russia was far from inevitable, but forcing Russians to play by the rules of a game in which only a few can possibly be winners, the West ensured that it would be the direst aspects of the legacy of Stalin and Brezhnev which would emerge to lead the Russian people in to darkness.
