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> amassed a giant fortune by taking control of businesses that once belonged to the Soviet state. The Soviet Union was so vast and disorganized, both accidenta
by skeeter2020 5y ago
> amassed a giant fortune by taking control of businesses that once belonged to the Soviet state.
The Soviet Union was so vast and disorganized, both accidentally and intentionally, that for decades after it collapsed they showed a trade surplus based on selling the resources hoarded to meet future central planning goals. You had a huge trade surplus, but the money just seemed to disappear. Officially there was nothing to spend it on, but individuals bringing back anything cheap and in-demand within their personal allowance ($2000 I think?) created an enormous grey/black market with no regulation, taxation or statistics. Many of these oligarchs were cogs in the middle of this machine and ideally suited to essentially become "fixers" on both sides of the market.
- agumonkey 5y agoDo you know any trusted sources about the structure of the soviet union and its collapse ?
- _jal 5y ago_Secondhand Time_ is good, although a Russian friend who lived through it has quibbles with parts of it. For coverage of the formation of the "new Russia", _Nothing is True and Everything is Possible_ is good.
- rodgerd 5y agoThis article https://www.ft.com/content/503fb110-f91e-4bed-b6dc-0d09582dd007 https://www.ft.com/content/503fb110-f91e-4bed-b6dc-0d09582dd... touches on it, mostly with a focus on the transition from Yeltsin's robber-barons to Putin's inner circle of billionaire nationalists.
- agumonkey 5y agoThanks, I already saw this earlier. I was more interested in the systemic flaws of the USSR. Failure in economic modeling, blinding ideology, that sort of thing.
- pvg 5y agoKotkin (of the New Yorker interview recently making the rounds, the Stalin bio, etc) wrote Armageddon Averted - one interesting and fairly brief summary.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]