Supposing a PoD no earlier than Gorbachev becoming Premier, and constrained by the Soviet Union breaking up more or less as per OTL, what's the best possible outcome for Russia in the post-Soviet world and how could you get there? By "best possible," I mean the one where the Russian people are best off in terms of their overall well-being, even if the Russian state isn't all that powerful or influential globally.
AHC: Best Possible Post-Soviet Russia?
- Thread starter Workable Goblin
- Start date
>their well being
Well obviously my cult religion “X” takes over and Russians know the freedom of mandatory crumpet eating and green lipstick.
Well obviously the heroic workers and peasants of the Soviet Union revitalize workplace Soviets and the third revolution finally succeeds.
Well obviously…
What is best in life is a fundamentally political question. As such it can only be answered from a particular political perspective. (Conan 1982).
The problem with asking for speculation which requires a political perspective is that it will be entirely a debate on the merits of political perspectives; and, be entirely not a debate on historical documents, relationships and causation.
It leads, as people hold foundational political beliefs rather strongly, to arguments of the unfortunate structure “I am moral, you are questionable, he is evil incarnate.”
The better way to approach this is to identify the variety of political beliefs of people in the past, and ask then about plausibly maximising their interest. Not particularly nationalist workers in military heavy industry will have a different interest to heavily observant orthodox upper managers in consumer industry.
Well obviously my cult religion “X” takes over and Russians know the freedom of mandatory crumpet eating and green lipstick.
Well obviously the heroic workers and peasants of the Soviet Union revitalize workplace Soviets and the third revolution finally succeeds.
Well obviously…
What is best in life is a fundamentally political question. As such it can only be answered from a particular political perspective. (Conan 1982).
The problem with asking for speculation which requires a political perspective is that it will be entirely a debate on the merits of political perspectives; and, be entirely not a debate on historical documents, relationships and causation.
It leads, as people hold foundational political beliefs rather strongly, to arguments of the unfortunate structure “I am moral, you are questionable, he is evil incarnate.”
The better way to approach this is to identify the variety of political beliefs of people in the past, and ask then about plausibly maximising their interest. Not particularly nationalist workers in military heavy industry will have a different interest to heavily observant orthodox upper managers in consumer industry.
I thought it was fairly obvious that the purpose of this specification was to make clear that the challenge is not about keeping the Soviet Union around or making Russia a superpower after the Soviet collapse, but instead about improving economic and other measures of population well-being. It's pretty obvious that especially in the 1990s these declined across the board and the recovery since then has been grossly imbalanced. I deliberately did not specify which measures to avoid pre-contaminating responses with my own opinions on what might be best, so that people could explore various possibilities instead of being railroaded into a particular outcome. This question specifically grew out of a post in another thread on a "Russian SpaceX" where I observed that the biggest problem with the Russian aerospace sector was the general weakness of the Russian economy, after all.
But if you really must insist on having things spelled out for you instead of using common sense, fine. Let's take "well-being" to mean maximizing HDI and per-capita GDP while preventing the Gini coefficient from going out of control. What possible changes could have been made to meet those objectives?
But if you really must insist on having things spelled out for you instead of using common sense, fine. Let's take "well-being" to mean maximizing HDI and per-capita GDP while preventing the Gini coefficient from going out of control. What possible changes could have been made to meet those objectives?
Would Russia taking (not keeping) those areas make it better for Russians than IOTL, in terms of the people's well-being, etc?
I edited my post to clarify what I meant.
By “Russians”, do you (and the OP) mean citizens of the Russian Federation, regardless of ethnicity, or ethnic Russians, including those who live in our timeline’s near abroad? Or do you mean both?
You sir.. Must obviously be running for a political office since the answer said alot of absolute nothing . Obviously all opinions are based on a point of view.. All politics, judged quality of. Life and everything else.
I mean citizens of the Russian Federation as "the Russian people". But then of course one could understand it in ethnic terms, too. I think it would be nice if the OP clarified what he means.
I would say within said borders since the Russian empire and Soviet union russified through deportation, forced migration, resettlement of ethnic Russians to non Russian lands.
Forbidding local language and culture. Belarusian is not Russian.. Oh its close.. So is Polish . But its not Russian.. Ukrainian is. Close but again.. Not the same .
So no . Inside current borders
The meaning of your question is quite clear but the problem is that everything that was tried in OTL within few post-Soviet years proved to be a failure: economic theories which looked good on paper did not survive contact with a reality and ‘universal solution’ for all social problems (western style democracy) did not work either.
Which scenarios were not tried?
1st, Immense foreign investments on a scale of at least Marshall’s Plan. Not sure if they would be productive without a complete destruction of an existing bureaucratic structure and physical extermination of the criminal structures which were controlling a big part of the economy. None of these prerequisites could be easily accomplished in conjunction with a democratic model which was a top ‘western’ priority in post-Soviet Russia.
2nd, establishment of an authoritarian regime from the very beginning. This may (or may not) prevent things from a complete deterioration even without a massive help from outside, especially if government is smart enough not to ask for economic advice the Ivy League ‘experts’. The result would be something like today’s Russia without memory of the 1990’s. A bonus: absence of the bad memories associated with the word ‘democracy’ (it seems to be quite unpopular in nowaday’s Russia).
I did not touch the foreign policy issues because they are seemingly out of scope of your question.
longsword14
Banned
I am curious about this. Which experts had their policies followed to some degree rather than used as poor theoretical crutches ?
It requires people that belive in Russia and not the dollar.
I would say short term marshal law.
Has to be removed in 1 year
Free open elections
Public discourse and complaints need to be heard
Salvage the older people who worked their entire lives under 1 system.. Don't make them suffer
Investment is a must from the outside. But i Woukd agree from any view that the investment belongs to Russia. It's an investment, sure pay a dividend to investors. But the investment is owned by Russia.
Allow competition slowly, not overnight. This should be a 5 year plan. Require qa reports, product satisfaction, testing and standards. Time-line to go from A to Z.
Russia will suffer at first.. That's a given
. But if the pain is short lived . Great
Decrease military tensions ..
Decrease threat postures...
The USA doubled down after the fall.
He bring the Russians into the fold, slowly but surely
Lots of things can be done.
It's not going to be USA 2.0
But Russia has the potential to be German success on massive steroids . That scares the shit out of the wesr if they ever got their shit together ..
AFAIK, the ‘shock therapy’ was implemented by Gaidar based upon advices from IMF and individuals like Jeffrey Sachs and others. It seems that the national specifics were mostly ignored in a favor of one size fits all approach (it worked in Pinochet’s Chile and Bolivia).
longsword14
Banned
People have always given economists in such conditions more value than they deserve. Russian problems persisted well outside the "shock". Compare Poland to Russia.
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That’s the whole point: you can’t blindly use advice of the people unfamiliar with the national specifics and examples from the different countries.
Poland, with all its problems, was by the late 1980s noticeably different from the SU starting from the fact that there already was a noticeable capitalist sector of economy, a widely developed entrepreneurship, etc. In the SU there was nothing of the kind. I had a chance to compare them in 1988 and the differences was quite shocking.
longsword14
Banned
And what I am saying is that the economists were never in the driver's seat. The Russian state kept printing money to prop up dead industries.
The economic reforms were more "native" than foreign, especially when you look at how ownership was given and to which people.
Every nation in NATO turned down its military posture and spending after Warsaw Pact imploded.
How do you reckon the US hardened its military posture ?
Again, I thought this was fairly obvious since I specifically referred to Russia several times in my post, but yes, I mean "citizens of the Russian Federation". Ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers outside of the borders of the state of Russia are strictly outside of the scope of this question.
Grey Wolf
Donor
There are clearly massive viable industries. In OTL these were "sold off" or pseudo-stolen by managers etc to become the oligarchs. This was not of itself necessarily a 100% bad thing as it created a capitalist class and prevented them being bought out by foreign interests. In the latter scenario, the Russian treasury might have benefitted from the money paid for them, but Russia as a power would be gone with American, French, German businesses owning its essential core industries.
BigBlueBox
Banned
Polish is nothing like Russian. Belarusian is close enough to be a dialect, and most Belarusians use Russian anyways. Belarusian nationalism was close to nonexistent 100 years ago and is close to nonexistent today.