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> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They we

• simonh 4y ago
  I thought most of the major assets got bought by connected oligarchs, sometimes by literally putting goons at the doors of the auction room to beat up anyone that tried to get in to bid against them. If the oils fields were actually owned by European companies, we’d be buying Russian oil from ourselves, not from Russia.
  • ptero 4y ago
    That was one way. Another was not paying salaries for months ("company has no money" was a common case) until employees sell their "vauchers" to those who wanted to buy.
    • patentatt 4y ago
      I've heard variations of this story a lot. Common people and workers received a share of the company they work for, but times were so dire most people sold them to those with money for a pittance. So foreseeable, why was it allowed to happen?
      • tylersmith 4y ago
        Some people chose to put their assets to work for later and others to sell their assets for cash right now. Why shouldn't people be allowed to make those decisions?
        • vkou 4y ago
          If you're starving, why shouldn't you be allowed to sell yourself into a lifetime of slavery in exchange for a meal today?
        • Spooky23 4y ago
          Exactly. Ditto for the goons. If your main skill is sociopathic violence and physical strength, why not use those your talents to intimidate and exploit the workers for your boss’s benefit?
        • zx8080 4y ago
          Shock therapy transition to capitalism plan meant people did not do the first choice. There were no choice, literally. Workers got shares in the companies they worked for without any alternative (get your share or continue receiving your salary).
        • simonh 4y ago
          Do you really, genuinely believe that these people had credible options, and were not deliberately coerced and engineered into desperate economic conditions in order to squeeze them into selling their shares for a pittance?
• bhupy 4y ago
  The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transition-to-a-market-economy-did-former-soviet-republics-fail/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti... A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market economies where large corporations start off as small companies and become dominant through innovation, growth, and generally meeting consumer demands.
  • thrown_22 4y ago
    And yet populations are collapsing in every former communist state. I don't know what you call it when a country loses 10% of it's population, like Ukraine did, but decimation is the dictionary definition.
    • iknowstuff 4y ago
      Uh you might want to re-read that definition.
      • d0mine 4y ago
        "the killing of one in every ten of a group of people as a punishment for the whole group (originally with reference to a mutinous Roman legion)." 10% is "one in every ten"
      • unmole 4y ago
        decimation /dɛsɪˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/ (noun) the killing of one in every ten of a group of people as a punishment for the whole group (originally with reference to a mutinous Roman legion).
  • einpoklum 4y ago
    Tell that to people in Belarus or Ukraine (not talking about the situation since 2014), Kazakhstan etc. Not sure about the situation in the others. A post talking about "GDP per capita" rather than what people's lives are like is kind of a joke.
• spamizbad 4y ago
  What’s crazy is the minds behind the Washington Consensus favored a form of extreme capitalism that no western democracy would ever tolerate such a system on their own soil. Some ultra-capitalist die-hards have even retreated away from Liberalism in general as they found it too restrictive for their extreme ideology (they know their economic regime could never gain sustained popular support; it would need to be imposed)
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    Case in point: at one point during the Greek crisis the IMF was the ones telling the EU and Germany that they were being too severe, and they pretty much initiated the Washington consensus
  • bolton_strid 4y ago
    What’s crazy is the minds behind the Washington Consensus favored a form of extreme capitalism that no western democracy would ever tolerate such a system on their own soil. It had been tried in many places already: Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, and (before 1979) Iran. The data were clear: it had worked very well for capitalists, but very poorly for people in the countries affected. And it mostly has come to the US. There are remnants of the welfare state, but your employer can basically do whatever he wants because he calls himself "a job creator"... and education is debt-financed... and getting sick will wipe out everything you have... and we've transitioned away from productive investment to asset bubbles... and you better not end up in a lawsuit because the rich have the best lawyers and lobbyists and therefore effectively own the court system (you only have a shot if you can find a rich person who hates your adversary enough to back you). The EU has held out to an extent, for now, but it won't if the Davos people get their way. The "Great Reset" is their plan to implement extreme capitalism under a guise of ecological caution and "woke" multiculturalism [1]. The Marshall Plan was written by people who believed market systems were superior to central planning given the technological level and geographical complexities (e.g., general low trust between nations) of the time--they were capitalists, but not capitalist ideologues. Alas, the successes (for "business interests", meaning rich people in the US) in Santiago, Jakarta, and Manila led them to become more brazen, to the point of using the former USSR for some of their most aggressive experiments to that point. ---- [1] This is not to say ecological caution isn't important (it is). Nor is it to disparage the broader set of social movements classified by their detractors as "woke", most of which have nothing but the best intentions. The issue with "woke capitalism" is that it retrenches in identity politics in order to divide working people against each other for Capital's benefit, and that it is designed not to provide significant help to people in marginalized groups (most of whom are working class, and who will therefore not be helped) but to neuter a powerful, morally righteous leftist movement toward genuine and universal social justice.
• baybal2 4y ago
  Russian citizen here, and one with enough self-honesty to talk about 199X without selling self-pity, unlike my compatriot here. > The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. Total bullshit. The West did put in nearly as much money as part of GDP in aid to early 199X Russia as US did in Europe after 1945. US aid was pouring from every hole up until mid-late nineties. I would argue America went too much Marshal on Russia, and you are reaping the results of this folly now. It was a giant mistake not to finish off the beastie, and not to SCALE UP the pressure after the USSR collapse to force genuine reforms. The West is responsible for much of CPSU's comeback happening in 200X, repeating how USA saved early CPSU from total collapse from food riots in early 192X out of pity. A giant mistake. US humanitarian aid was stolen many times over, sold again, stolen, and resold, giving a headstart to CPSU elements turning to banditry. It was totally unsupervised. US totally failed to empower the right kind of people back then with its aid. Subsequent entries by Western multinationals funded much of 200X mess in Russia, rise, and legitimisation of early Putin's mob regime. The first Western supermarket in Russia was literally inaugurated by the mob boss of Moscow. Much of Kremlin's current denizens owe their meteoric rises to megabribes they got from Western MNCs in early 200X, which they used to fund their political ascensions. ------------ Other post-USSR countries which did have their economies opened up, and claimed by the Western capital yearly on were super lucky to have the West "rob" them like that. Russia, or Central-Asian states were saved from such "robbery," and their economies at large stayed with the CPSU mobsters instead. ------------ "Russian Liberals" == Total intellectual dishonesty. They share as much the blame for Russian devolution into North Korea 2.0 as Putin himself. > short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agriculture in a matter of 4-5 years maximum; Good for them! They did live in apartment, unlike the 80% of Bloc's population, who lived in wooden barracks from fourties. They likely had a white collar job, and been on good terms with communist authorities. Not living in an apartment for 5 years is by far not a life breaking event, nor is anywhere close to worst shit happening to less elite people back then.
  • FpUser 4y ago
    We all know you love Russia.
• decebalus1 4y ago
  Cut the crap, paganel (lasa vrajeala). You're completely off topic and just wrong. The transition to the market economy for Romania was indeed painful in the 90s but that's primarily because the exact same communist apparatus was still leading the country and they held the reins on Romania's western connections. However, in the long run, I don't think I'm the only person to say it was successful and you can have a decent life in modern day Romania. Way better life than in Russia. And your attempt to blame Washington for how Romania's transition to capitalism unfolded in the 90s is just wrong. > got sold to Western companies I'm shaking my head to when reading such obtuse propaganda on hacker news. > Nobody had asked my parents, or us, who were mere kids and teenagers back then, if we were agreeing to the sacrifices that they were going to impose on us. They did. Through numerous elections, in which Iliescu and his cronies managed to build a state within a state. But of course, that's also Washington's fault.
• calvinmorrison 4y ago
  > Yes, I've started to become more and more bitter as the years have gone by. I feel this. It's not much fun being a end of Millennial. Maybe other generations felt this getting passed over but in general my friends who are older than me by a few years have fared a lot worse than those who are a few years younger than me. Some punk song summed it up Where we'll sell you dreams then make you work for free They handed us an economy thats destined us for poverty Then have the nerve to call us soft and lazy for complaining Cause they're from a generation where you could be what you wanted to be But baby I'm a 90's kid
  • deepdriver 4y ago
    Male life expectancy at birth in Russia fell by six years between 1991 and 1994. A drop that fast was practically unprecedented in developed economies. It’s not fun being a Millennial, as I know firsthand, but nothing comparable to 90s Russia in the aggregate. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41294-021-00169-w https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41294-021-00169-w
    • calvinmorrison 4y ago
      For sure, I was just commenting that it seems like sometimes generations get skipped. Pre-fall russians reminisce about the good times, people who skipped it entirely might see the better post soviet times, someone who got smacked in the early money making part of their career... less so.
• lumost 4y ago
  One aspect that I never hear about in the collapse of the soviet union. To what extent did opening the markets to quickly break soviet industry? While by the 1990s Soviet industry was notoriously in-efficient compared to western counterparts - it still existed and functioned. Opening the flood gates seemed to result in everyone rapidly selling equipment for scrap and killed any existing supply chains. Would the result have been different if Russia followed a Chinese model?
  • nradov 4y ago
    That's kind of a moot question because a slower transition was never even an option. The USSR was rapidly collapsing into anarchy. Especially in the outer areas, the security forces stopped obeying orders. In a lot of factories, workers simply left and looters hauled away everything of value. Industry ceased to function in a matter of months.
    • lumost 4y ago
      I'd be interested in understanding the "rapid collapse" more. Do you have any good resources on this? Was this due to the USSR being dependent on coerced demand/supply from other communist block nations?
• thrown_22 4y ago
  There was no such plan, there was the pillaging of Russia. Something so blatant even the small amounts of US capital used to facilitate it were stolen by Andrei Shleifer and the rest of the Harvard Board: >In August 2005, Harvard University, Shleifer and the Department of Justice reached an agreement under which the university paid $26.5 million to settle the five-year-old lawsuit. Shleifer was also responsible for paying $2 million worth of damages, though he did not admit any wrongdoing.[10][16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Shleifer#Scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Shleifer#Scandal
• petre 4y ago
  > most of the really juicy assets (like almost of all our banking sector, our oil resources etc) got sold to Western companies You're painting an incomplete picture. The assets got sold only after being looted by former regime cronies who enriched themselves in the process. It's entirely our own fault for failing to prevent this 32 years after the USSR collapse. Russians mistakenly fault Gorbachev for the USSR collapse. He only saw the writing on the wall and made a soft landing. The USSR was going to collapse anyway.
• sologoub 4y ago
  I rarely mention this these days, but people basically don’t believe me in the US when I describe how we survived the 90s by subsistence framing our little dacha plot. We got good at it too and helped neighbors survive couple winters. It’s hard to explain to someone that hasn't lived it what happens when government institutions truly collapse and nothing works. Part of me still wants to plant some potatoes because the store bought ones just don’t taste the same…
• fithisux 4y ago
  Well said.
• ako 4y ago
  Would it have been better if sovjet union would have ended? In the 80s sovjet union was in a very bad place economically, and it might also have collapsed if it didn't end.