USSR-Russia. 1988-2018. Timeline.

Follow along folks...our Russian friend is telling us that there was corruption UNTIL his hero Putin took over

 

No, I did not say that You made it up.

 

That's not true. All soviet system was based on "blat"(service of key people to their friends, relatives, other key people) system. Key peoples in soviet system in upper level of course was party nomenclature, in lower level peoples, who distributed the goods. For example, if you were meneger in some store, you where one of the first persons in town. Why? Because of constant deficit. Can someone imagine, that there are no meat at the shop? Can someone emagine, that you have to wait 10 years to by a car and simple toilet paper is a luxury good? This was the reality in the "wealthy" USSR. In this reality was wery useful to know some "key" person, who can get a goods for you. In fact all soviet society lived in this contstant corruption. As for upper class nomenclature, they had special shops without deficit. Simple prole could not use theese shops of upper class. And of course, this uper class party nomenclature was owners of the state who can avoid law and it led to decadence of the elite. Thre reasons of collapse of USSR is not perestroika, the reasons are hidden even into Lenin and Stalin times, in the basics of the system, wich suppressed inicjative, inovation and competition. Perestrojka was an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the collapse

 

Russkies love their dictators....

For Russians, Stalin is the ‘most outstanding’ figure in world history, followed by Putin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...history-putin-is-next/?utm_term=.c2818e94776b

 

there was meat in Soviet shops, in most part, and always in eateries; there were also eateries with your place of work; schools and kindergartens were provided with food very well. Soviet public transport was so low-priced, you would not want a car; and there also was a black market, where you could buy everything you need, although at a higher price; the food market places were also in abundance there, so, whenever shops lacked certain product, you would go to the marketplace, where private sellers like peasants would sell their stuff.

perestroika was an attempt to import corruption from the West in its full shape, but luckily that has failed. Russia is not nearly corrupt as the West and has never been, Soviets or not; it has always been the West being most corrupt and spreading corruption all over the world.

 

This is, rather, a terminological dispute. If you consider "blat" corruption, the Western world is corrupt through and through

 

For a good (fictional) account of how the Soviet economy worked, read Francis Spufford's Red Plenty. No centrally-planned economy can run very efficiently -- look up the 'socialist calculation problem' to see why. (This does NOT mean that everything owned by the state should be privatized, nor that the state should not do some regulation of the market. It just means, when how many 10mm helical machine screws to produce this year is decided by the central planning bureau, you will have too many, or too few, or ones that are not quite10mm in diameter. )

I think Balancer somewhat idealizes the old USSR. But those who think the people in it were starving, and lived in fear of the secret police taking them away in the night, ... don't know anything about it. When I briefly resided there (for a few months, in 1985), it struck me that the Soviet living standard was similar to my Southern relatives in the 1950s, although without automobiles. That is to say, all the basics, no luxuries. Packaging was primitive. Service in shops was done with bovine indifference. Quality was often poor. But it wasn't Somalia.

And there were annoying and mysterious shortages: for instance, in Kharkov, where I was, you could almost never buy cheese. Anyone who made a trip to Kiev or Moscow brought back as much cheese as they could carry. Why? It was the Black Earth Zone! I asked many people about this, and no one had an answer. My bet is that the page for cheese on the Five Year Plan for Kharkov got mislaid.

You couldn't get blue jeans. They were a precious gift, one of the best things you could bring to someone. Why? It's not high technology -- why couldn't the system produce blue jeans? It's what happens when you don't get signals from the market.

I brought along my microcomputer (a 'BBC Micro') and a (heavy) small monitor, and our (no doubt KGB) overseer -- the "Mayor's Assistant for Foreigners" arranged for me to give a talk on "Microcomputers in Education" in Akademgoruduk, and in Tallinn. It was clear that the people who came to my talk -- for the most part, very talented mathematicians and computer scientists -- were thinking, "Why can't we make things like this?" By that time, I believe all intelligent people in the Soviet Union knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the system ... but there was no agreement on how it should change. There couldn't even be open discussion about it.

So there was definitely an economic problem. But here's the thing: there was no poverty like we experience it in the West. Everyone had a job. Everyone had a flat, supplied by the state. There were no homeless, no dangerous neighborhoods. My wife and I walked around everyone in Kharkov (a big industrial city) sometimes until 2 in the morning, and never had a problem. (Yes, yes, yes ... I am sure there were isolated exceptions to these generalizations -- I occasionally saw an old woman begging, for i instance. But the generalization is true.)

However, everyone knew that the system was not working. And, of course, it was a one-party state, with pretty strict control over what you could read, travel abroad (essentially impossible except on official missions), no free speech. The state controlled everything. Not how a modern people should live.

It finally came apart, thanks to Mr Gorbachev, to whom all praise.

Then the robber-capitalists moved in from the West, and helped the Communist-bureaucrats-turned-oligarchs steal the place blind. Right wing economic ideologues said that what the Russians needed was "shock therapy" -- they actually used this term. So instead of a slow transition towards Yugoslav-style socialism as the next stage, and/or a Chinese approach ... the Russians watched their orderly society go up in smoke.

So for them, "democracy", Western-style, is associated with the destruction of a society that, for all its problems, provided safety and security for its citizens. Dissidents, instead of losing their job teaching and having to work sweeping floors, now got a bullet in the back. The Eastern European buffer zone between Russia and Germany became an extension of NATO.

The world watched, and laughed, as President Yeltsin, elected with the direct, open, unashamed intervention of American money, stumbled drunkenly out of his airplane.

Then Mr Putin came along to apply the Rod of Correction. He didn't come from nowhere, and he didn't arise because Russians yearn for a cruel master. He was a response to the conditions CREATED BY WESTERN INTERFERENCE. The same people who tore Yugoslavia apart, and who have ignited sectarian mass murder in the Middle East in the name of 'bringing democracy to the region'.

Are you unhappy about this, my fellow Westerners? I certainly am. I had hoped that Russia would become a liberal democracy and take its proper, leading, place in Europe. I still believe that it will, some day.

But let's not criticize the mote in our neighbor's eye, and ignore the beam in our own.

 

Not exactly In the USSR there was both good and bad.

There are good things that we will never see either in Russia or in the West. For example, a high level of personal safety and real tolerance. High social guarantees. Education. The most powerful social elevators. Pride of the country - space projects, etc.

There are things I care about the care of. For example, low economic efficiency. Poor level of service. Formalized and stagnating ideology, which has no response from the population.

I believe that Russia in terms of living standards caught up with the USSR by about 2010 and now the standard of living has already become noticeably higher than the Soviet one. Therefore, I do not want the return of the USSR in the form of 1985 (this year can be considered the period of the maximum prosperity of the USSR). Another thing is that the USSR, if it had not disintegrated, would not have stopped on the spot and would have developed further. And Russia in 2018 should not be compared with the USSR in 1985, but with the USSR in 2018 And here it becomes sad how much could be lost. By the way, for America too. While the US needed proof that they were the best, they also developed much faster. After the collapse of the USSR, the United States lost its competitor, whose presence required more active development.

And specifically this topic is not even for comparison with the USSR. As I just wrote, it is necessary to compare with the USSR-2018, and this is impossible This topic I started to show what a deep failure in Russia in the 1990s and how the country gets out of there. Because, indeed, a lot of people try to judge Russia for the period of the 1990s or the beginning of the 2000s. But progress since then is quite large. I would like to get into now, for example, in the 2000s even less than in the USSR And the 1990s are generally remembered as a nightmare. Even despite the fact that these were the years of my youth, and my youth is always remembered romantically

 

This happened in 1999.

Hundreds of innocent Russians murdered by Putin and the KBG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings

why did they do it? to justify a 2nd Chechen War.

 

Yes, often after 5 hours standing in the row, people could get a blue chicken. My family often drive ~ 50 km to by a sausage in the shop of Estonian SSR, because they for some reasons had a better suply of meat products. Can someone, who lived in western capitalizm, can even imagine, that there is no sausage at the shop? And my grandmother was a department manager at the department store, so she where the "usefull" person. But even she sometimes coud not get a meat products.

Yes, and soviet peoples did not want a meat products, fruits, toilet paper and other goods too, that's why there was a constant deficit of customer goods. They just wanted to produce an AK47 for every ****** in Africa four free.

And yes, you could buy something on the black marker for x times higher price. Not everyone could afford it.

Yes, and that's why according to Corruption Perceptions Index Russia is on honorable 131 place. And who is guilty in this situation? People of Russia? Government of Russia? Officials of Russia? Of course not, guilt lies on West.

 

So, you want to tell me, that in West, to get for example 1 kg of orange, it is better to know someone between workers of the shop, otherwise you can only dream about an orange?

 

I do not know, I bought oranges in the USSR without any blat When they were, of course. When they were not there, they could not be reached by the blat.

I do not know how about the problem of domestic corruption in the US. But I have a friend of 7 years lived in Canada (in Hamilton), obtained citizenship, etc. He says that the level of domestic corruption in Canada far exceeds the level of the USSR and modern Russia. I believe him, because he is not exaggerated to exaggerate

 

Balancer: I am skeptical about corruption in Canada. It would be interesting to get your friend to provide some concrete examples. (According to the anti-corruption organization, Transparency International, Canada is among the top dozen or so countries for lack of corruption -- the US is not there, by the way.)

As for the US: the main form of corruption is open, and protected by a Supreme Court decision: if you are very wealthy, you can buy politicians, I mean, donate large sums to their campaigns. Lots of people on both the Left and the Right in the US don't like this, but it's hard to change, for obvious reasons.

As for 'traditional' corruption: not getting a contract to build a school unless you pay off a councilman, or 'hire' his nephew to do nothing. I think this is, and always has been, existent in the big cities in the US. But I don't know enough about it to cobympare the US to other countries, except to say that I think it's not very great, and in any case, is way down the list of problems Americans need to deal with.

Being an optimist, I am hoping that Putin realizes that if he wants Russia to really grow, he must provide a climate where people feel that if they start a business, invest their money, it will not be subject to an extra 'tax' by corrupt officials -- and that he will therefore deal with corruption, not because he is a nice man, but because he wants to lead a strong country, not a Northern African Republic. (Note what's happening in China, where corruption is also a problem, and whose leaders want it to be a -- no, the -- leading nation of humanity before the end of the century.)

In other words, that he follows in the footsteps of Lee Kuan Yew, who pulled Singapore up from Third World to First in two generations. He was an authoritarian, and Singapore is still not a liberal democracy -- you can be bankrupted in the courts, or even sent to prison, if you are too critical of the ruling regime. (By the way: have you, dear reader, heard of sustained criticism of Singapore for their lack of liberal democracy? No? Ever wonder why?)

What Lee Kuan Yew did do, was to make Singapore a good place to do business: it's just a tiny island, no natural resources: it's just a big port. But there is almost no corruption there -- officials are paid very well. It's not a sentimental country: drug dealers are simply hanged. Not much of a drug problem, for some reason. Comes in at the top in international comparisons of educational achievements. And a kind of welfare state, in the sense that everyone is forced to act sensibly and save their money against ill-health, or the desire to buy a house, or unemployment. But not yet a liberal democracy. But they're moving in that direction.

So the best thing anyone interested in Russia's future could do would be to have a biography of Lee Kuan Yew translated into Russian, if it hasn't been already, and send Mr Putin a copy.

 

All very interesting an informative. The overriding question is, what now? Throughout history, the Russian people have show a remarkable resilience and great ability to endure suffering. They have also embraced "strong leaders" and even despots like Stalin. Putin provides both leadership and hardship (sanctions) that go straight to a distinctly Russian worldview. So what about Putin?

Several years ago Putin expressed a belief that I found both troubling and prophetic. As the free world celebrated the collapse the Soviet Union and the loss of its satellite nations, Putin labeled it the worst disaster of the Twentieth Century. It's debatable if Russia is marching backward to the first half of that century, but it is troubling to have to ask the question. It appears Putin may have sidelined that ambition since the United States and NATO are such formidable obstacles.

Putin's loathing of democracies, especially of those of the West, are a constant irritant to him. Since he can't launch a successful conventional military strike, he has decided to employ Russia's considerable software and Internet expertise to his advantage. For the last decade, Russia has launched a relentless attack on democratic governments. Russia has invaded social media of the West with the goal of disruption, deception, and division. Putin has had his greatest success in deceiving and dividing the United States.

The payback on a small investment has been huge. What has our response to Putin been? Where are NSA and CIA that are keenly aware of the shenanigans? Unknown. Currently, the Justice Department are carrying the water for the nation. And, therein hangs a tale.

 

"Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".

Winston Churchill

 

All of us non-Russians are at a huge disadvantage in trying to understand Russia, because we have not lived there.

Of course that's true for every country, about every other country.

I regularly have to explain to British people, including very conservative ones, that, no, the police in America don't routinely shoot innocent Black teenagers; that, no, although the US does not have a national government health insurance system, the great majority of population are not excluded from medical care; and no, it's not the case that walking down the street in an American city -- and REALLY not the case in small towns and even large ones in most of the country -- routinely exposes you to random or directed gunfire. And the British speak the same language as the Americans, watch American movies and TV shows (maybe that's part of the problem), and are at the same level of historical development.

I don't buy the "Russians want a strong master" stuff. It's lazy, stereotypical thinking, along the lines of the snobby Europeans who say "Americans have no culture". (Of course there is a grain of truth to both of those stereotypes, as there is for every stereotype.) What the Russians want is what everyone wants: they want security, first of all; then prosperity; then, eventually, they want, or will want, liberty as we know it in the West.

But the Russians are conservative. (All people, except a few intellectuals, are conservative: they prefer to go slowly, not to make wild experiments, not to try to order society on the basis of some abstract theory or set of principles. One step at a time.)

You can't understand Russia today without understanding, first, the old Soviet Union -- what it was that people there actually liked about it -- and then, Russia in the 90's, overrun with American 'advisors' urging "shock therapy" for their economic/social system, interfering in their elections, financing ex-Communist gangsters to buy up Russian industry and natural resources at a fraction of the real value.

You also have to understand that the genuine liberal democratic leadership in Russia -- having grown up in a totalitarian system -- were woefully unskilled at how to do politics: the importance of building a base among the masses of voters, of being -- or appearing to be -- patriots who wanted a strong Russia. Many of them seemed to be more interested in being in looking good to the West. (I don't want to do a disservice to brave people who were suddenly thrown into a totally new universe. But that's how it looked to me -- in fact, they remind me now of a certain section of American liberalism, disdainful of ordinary people, obsessed with pursuing their pet reforms and virtue signalling.)

I think in his wildest dreams, Mr Putin would like to be in the same place the US used to be: the dominant world power: not through invading and conquering -- how well has that worked, in the last hundred years? -- but through being strong economically and militarily. In his not-wild dreams, I suspect he would like to be among the Big Four -- the EU, the US, and China making up the other three, (although the EU doesn't have an army so they're only there by courtesy).

How can he get there? By assassinating foreign leaders who appear to be countering his ambitions? By sponsoring bloody coups d'etat and overthrowing democratically-elected governments? By outright invading small countries that have unpopular leaders who are also opposed to his country? In other words, by doing what the US has done for decades? [Interesting bit of history for Americans, here. A free book from Project Gutenberg, written in 1920, by American Army officers, about their experiences in Russia fighting the Bolsheviks.]

I hope not, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Better to encourage economic growth in Russia, stop harassing the ineffectual opposition, start appointing judges who can rule against powerful politicians without fearing the consequences, jail more corrupt officials, and get rid of that dreadful Chechen killer he's appointed to hold the Chechens down -- sadly, necessary at the moment -- who thinks he can extend Chechen methods to Moscow.

In particular, interfering in American elections in any other way than finding methods of presenting the 'Russian case', is likely to backfire badly. America can generate its own internal chaos without outside help, and its university faculties and student body at the elite universities have already shown they want to destroy American liberty and don't need any foreign help.

Also: Possible illicit Russian interference in American politics, whether it's been happening or not, is causing the world to turn upside down: American Leftists, who have spent their whole lives sneering at their own country, hating the CIA, loathing the FBI .. have overnight turned into "patriots", damning foreigners who dare invervene in their lovely land, and cheering the CIA and FBI. It's making my head explode. Stop it.

 

Something like this:

- http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/18/world-bank-corrupt-companies-canada_n_3948280.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/scandalpalooza-canadian-edition/article12691571/

At the domestic level, according to a friend, corruption has a different distribution than in Russia. For example, the police in Canada are much less corrupt than in Russia. There are no complaints. But the doctor without a gift will serve you last. That the insurance company is less critical of you after the insured event - you need to give a bribe. Accelerate the examination of small businesses, so as not to drag on for a long time, also through gifts ...

 

Yes, and someone got a car after 10 years waiting in a row. But if you know the right person, you could get all necessary things when you need it. And how do you think, when these persons, who had allways lived in this "service for service" system, had become a state officials, they do not continue the practise to help their frends, realitives and so on, using power, wich they got as a state official?

So, one people said something,and you believed him on word? That is not a good practice.

 

Thats strange, people bribe an insurance company and after this insurance company pays bigger insurance indemnity from the funds of ... insurance company?

 

Speech, of course, about corruption is not the insurance company as the subject of the operation, but about specific people who conduct appraisals

 

it cannot be a frequent thing, because private owner will fix the problem or he will lose in the competition struggle. This is not even close to the USSR's overall corruption - blat system.

 

Interesting ... I have a friend in Canada, who is a Marxist and therefore not a Canadian chauvinist ... I'll see what he says about this.

As for the police in Canada. Although I have never heard them accused of corruption, but I have heard credible accounts of their abusing their power -- including from someone inside the Canadian justice system.

As for corruption in the old USSR (not Russia today, where the problem is different in scale and kind) -- someone said that under socialism, you had to pay bribes to do things that were actually legal. Under capitalism, you pay bribes to do things that are illegal.

 

Yes, I already answered you (just do not remember in which topic) that I do not know about the police in Caneda, everything is fine there.

Yes, this is a fairly accurate definition

 

I've taught for many nationalities. Most even.
Teachers enjoy a healthy amount of kudos in all societies, and a reasonable level of pay.

Asians however give their teachers insane amounts of kudos. I have been spoilt by it.
I CBA to teach in English schools, but he reason is neither pay nor kudos. It is a poisonous work environment. Government work with all that goes with it.

 

Yes. Almost everywhere in the world, teaching is "government work", but in some countries, it's unpleasant government work. It's always been a mystery to me why governments with poor or mediocre education systems put up with it. It's student behavior, mainly, plus bureaucratized systems with mountains of reports to write, lesson plans to create, inspections to worry about.

My libertarian side says, 'What do you expect of a government-operated enterprise? You can't make a planned economy work." But my socialist side says, "It works pretty well in some countries, including in countries which are burdened by a planned economy in everything."

And there is at least one government school in England where you might enjoy teaching: Google on "Michaela Community School".