Author of ‘Insufficiently Patriotic’ Economics Textbook Says Russia Becoming an African Country ‘with a Cold Climate’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 13 – Last week, Igor Lipsits, the author of an economic textbook that the education ministry denounced and removed from schools because it was “insufficiently patriotic” (kommersant.ru/doc/3874571). This week, in an interview with the Znak news agency, the economist provides a devastating portrait of the Russian economy and its future.

            Lipsits, says that in the week since his ostracism, he has received “an enormous number of approving letters and communications and a mass of wishes for his success. People know that in fact my textbook is extraordinarily patriotic: it has gone through 26 editions, and both teachers and children love it” (znak.com/2019-02-13/avtor_nedostatochno_patriotichnogo_uchebnika_po_ekonomike_rasskazal_pochemu_ne_verit_v_putinskiy_pro).

                “All my colleagues understand that the ministry’s pretensions about the text are completely insane and do not have any relationship to reality. Therefore, these attacks have elicited only a positive reaction and have strengthened among my colleagues a good attitude toward my person and my activities.”

            The most important characteristic of a good textbook, the economist says, is “truthfulness.”  If there are problems in the country, “about which even the president speaks, then why should we not talk about them in our textbook? Those who minimize these problems isn’t a patriot because he interferes with finding a solution.”

            But today, textbook authors have been “given to understand that textbooks must be written in an entirely upbeat way and blindly approve all the government is doing – or be silent. But this has no relationship to scholarship” and is harmful in raising the citizens of the future, Lipsits says. What is truly horrific is that this situation is getting worse.

            “Alas, I cannot today say any good words about the enlightenment ministry.”  And that is a big change even from Soviet times.  Then, one had to follow the ideological line but scholars found ways to “write something honest and true” and to send the message upwards. Tragically, their words were ignored; but that is a different matter.

            If Moscow continues to treat scholars as it is now, “we will again create a threat to the future of the Russian Federation. And this is a very horrific thing which we, the patriots of Russia, of course do not want to allow in any case. But no one listens to our presentations – the powers that be don’t need scholars” of any kind.

            Those on top use words which they do not know the meaning of and act in ways that do not promote what they claim they are pursuing, be it import substitution or anything else, Lipsits says.  “I cannot write about an economic breakthrough of Russia when that isn’t happening. This is lying.” Russia is in stagnation or decline.

            Lipsits’ textbook passed the original review process with flying colors. But then the ministry ordered a new one – and it denounced his book in absurd ways, not only declaring it to be anti-patriotic for failing to be a booster of the regime but also claiming that he was promoting alcoholism by talking about the way the state raises money by excise taxes on alcohol.

            Despite all the criticism, however, the economist says that he would not change anything in his book. “One must not tell pupils untruths.”

           

            In Soviet times, he continues, the country had good economists even when they had to write with one eye on ideology. But now the quality of economists has declined. Young people aren’t going into the field, and the powers that be have made it clear that they don’t want to listen to anyone who tells them anything they don’t want to hear.

            Many are talking about a new “ideologization” of Russian economics, he says; but that is not the greatest danger. Rather we are observing something worse: the gradual destruction of economics as a discipline “As a result, Russia will remain without economist scholars and economics as a branch of knowledge.”

            One sign of the direction things are going is at Rosstat where for the first time ever, the authorities have appointed as its head someone without economic training but who qualified for purely “nomenklatura” reasons.  “The majority of Russian economists today are certain that one must no longer believe Rosstat data.”

            The contempt that the top people in the regime show for genuine expertise and the failure of the government to adopt sensible policies not only means that Russians are being impoverished but that Russia faces “the degradation of infrastructure, science, culture and education” to the level of a country of the African type only with a cold climate.”

            That is something no Russian patriot – and Lipsits insists he is one – can possibly want.