Window on Eurasia: Putin is Statist Not Soviet on Economic Policy, Aleksashenko Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, September 9 – Moscow’s economic policy now is completely dependent on “the personal views of Vladimir Putin” and thus an examination of his thinking in this area is critical especially as Russia enters a period of recession and development will depend entirely on the actions of the state, according to Sergey Aleksashenko.

 

            The director for macro-economic research at the Higher School of Economics lays out his views in an article in “Pro et Contra” (carnegieendowment.org/files/ProEtContra_63_all.pdf). His conclusions have now been summarized in ten points by Slon.ru journalist Nikolay Dzis-Voynarovsky (slon.ru/economics/ekonomicheskaya_doktrina_putina_10_punktov-1153872.xhtml).

 

            According to Aleksashenko, Putin’s views are not a coherent doctrine but rather a collection of attitudes and ideas which sometimes come into conflict when he tries to implement them.

 

• First, “Putin is not or at least is not yet a supporter of a return to a Soviet planned economy.” He continues to support the idea that prices should be set by the market.
   
• Second, he “has not been a supporter of any reforms. From [Putin’s] point of view, any reforms violate the balance of interests and thus destabilize the situation.”
   
• Third, “Putin trusts personalities more than principles” and thus has surrounded himself with people who do not always agree.
   
• Fourth, Putin continues to live in fear of another 1998 crisis and is convinced that it was caused by a budget deficit. As a result, he is a deficit hawk and won’t try to spend his way out of the current economic difficulties.
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  Fifth, Putin has a dual view of the supremacy of law. On the one hand, he believes that all citizens and enterprises must obey the law. But on the other, “he does not consider that the state is required to observe laws and more than that [believes] the state can change them at any moment.”
   
• Sixth, Putin is a dirigiste and is “certain that the government cannot be mistaken.”
   
• Seventh, he “does not believe in competition and private initiative.”
   
• Eighth, he thinks that all major enterprises in Russia were created on the basis of Soviet shares and that “the state has the right at any moment to take those shares back and hand them to another owner.”
   
• Ninth, Putin is against massive foreign investment because “he understands that he cannot act in the same way with foreign businesses than he can with Russian ones.”
   
• And tenth, he believes that since all major enterprises in Russia created in the 1990s arose as a result of the actions of the state, the state should play the same role now.