A Russian version of an iron triangle
The Economist editors this week are asking whether modernization in Russia is possible, whether technology and economics can be changed without changing the political culture, and whether any change is possible in the face of an iron triangle of vested interests (the bureaucracy, the security forces, and the oligarchs).There are many assertions for your students to evaluate.
If you don't subscribe, check the library's copy or maybe you can use the library's identification to access the online version.
Try to forgive the headline writer for borrowing a label from China, but there was no handy title for Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin's reforms in Russia.
Another great leap forward?
Modernisation was the slogan proposed by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, in an article last September called “Russia Forward!”, published on a liberal website. “Should we drag a primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption into the future?” Mr Medvedev asked rhetorically. While admitting a vast array of problems, from economic weakness to alcoholism, he painted a picture of a Russia with nuclear-powered spaceships and supercomputers. In short, if Russia managed to modernise, it would once again become a world leader…Liberal critics quickly pointed out that modernisation in Russia is impossible without political liberalisation and institutional change. A country with weak property rights and a rent-seeking bureaucracy, they argued, can invent new ways of extracting bribes and robbing businesses, but not of creating intellectual wealth. Most recently Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, said modernisation was impossible without democratic reforms.
Yet the experience of Mr Gorbachev’s perestroika—which started with talk of technological renewal but ended in the collapse of the Soviet system—has persuaded the Kremlin to define modernisation strictly within technological boundaries…
In Russian history, it is Peter the Great and Stalin who are considered the great modernisers rather than Alexander II, who abolished serfdom, or Mr Gorbachev, who opened up the country. Brutality trumps mild liberalization…
[A] problem is that the modernisations of both Stalin and Peter the Great were driven by clear military goals. It is much harder, in an innovative economy today, to tell scientists what they should be inventing…
Russia’s ruling elite, which consists of a corrupt bureaucracy, the security services and a few oligarchs, lives off the rent from natural resources or administrative interference in the market. Competition and the rule of law undermine this arrangement. Corruption (see chart 2) holds it together, and ensures the loyalty of the bureaucracy.
The conflict between real modernisation and the vested interests of this bureaucracy is summed up in the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and now its most famous political prisoner…
Nonetheless, an unprecedented public discussion has now started about what the country’s priorities should be. Under cover of that debate, the Institute of Contemporary Development, a think-tank close to Mr Medvedev, has published an essay calling for the restoration of regional elections, respect for the constitution, and the elimination of state-affiliated companies and the federal secret police…
The main question for Russia, however, is not how to achieve that. The problem is that to vaunt modernisation, which implies that technological successes will make Russia a great world power again, is to set the wrong priority. Learning to live as a post-imperial state according to its means, rather than its ambitions, and learning to show more care for human life and dignity, are more important to Russia’s renewal than winning a geopolitical race…
See also: Anniversary of peristroika
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Labels: civil society, economics, political culture, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 4:49 PM
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