Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 29 -- In yet another
way, the Russian government is recapitulating the last years of the USSR: the government
has adopted the strategy Mikhail Gorbachev did in 1989 t “accelerate economic
development” by forcing defense industries to shift to the production of
high-tech civilian goods.
According to the Finanz.ru portal, Moscow
officials are trying to escape the stagnation they now face by drawing on one
of Gorbachev’s favored tactics, promoting economic acceleration by shifting
defense production to civilian use (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/uskoryat-rossiyskuyu-promyshlennost-reshili-po-receptu-poslednikh-let-sssr%E2%80%A8-1028481050).
As at the end of the 1980s, the
portal continues, this shift will occur at the direction of the center rather
than on the basis of decisions by factory managers responding to economic
opportunities, a pattern that again now as 30 years ago means that it will likely
be far less successful than its advocates now hope.
Factories that have been making
tanks will be ordered to produce medical equipment, computers, and the like, forcing
them to make transitions that few of them are ready for and likely introducing
real chaos into the sector, something that may mean that military production
will fall without civilian production increasing.
But just as in 1989, officials are busily
convincing themselves that such “conversion” can be the salvation of the
Russian economy -- and for the same reason: declining oil prices mean that Russia
can no longer afford to purchase many things that its own population needs and
wants.
Even more intriguing, Finanz.ru
says, is this curious fact: Gorbachev himself is again among the chief
advocates of such a policy, despite all the problems it created for him at the
end of his Soviet presidency (nsn.fm/policy/policy-gorbachyev-vozrazil-putinu-po-povodu-skovorodok-na-voennykh-zavodakh).
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