Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 23 – Vladimir
Putin’s Russia has now passed another milestone, albeit not one the Kremlin and
the Russian people are unlikely to celebrate: According to official statistics
issued by Rosstat and the calculations of experts at Moscow’s Higher School of
Economics, Putin’s stagnation rhas now lasted longer and is deeper than Leonid
Brezhnev’s did.
Over the last 11 years, Russia has
suffered two devaluations of the ruble and the most prolonged decline in the
standard of living in this century, with the economy at the start of this year
only 8.8 percent larger than that in 2008 (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/zastoy-rossiyskoy-ekonomiki-pobil-rekord-sssr-1028620532).
That means that the Russian economy
has grown on average 0.88 percent a year, just over a third of the world economy’s
growth rate, roughly have of the growth of the American GDP and nine percent of
the growth of the Chinese economy over this period, official statistics show.
Not only is this period of stagnation now
longer than was Brezhnev’s but it is deeper as well: in the 1970s, the Soviet
economy grew approximately 1.5 percent a year, nearly twice what it has managed
under Putin since 2008. And if the IMF
projections are to be believed, there is no end in sight.
But perhaps the most damning aspect
of the numbers about the Russian economy is this: economic growth in Russia today
is less than a third of the three percent achieved in the last year of Boris
Yeltsin’s reign, and Russia’s share of world GDO has fallen from 3.1 percent to
2.8 percent since Putin succeeded him.
Moscow consultant Andrey Movchan
says the explanation is simple: The security people in power in Russia now
understand only how to give orders and receive reports; they do not understand
how an economy works or how to open the way to development. Until that changes,
the economy – and that means the Russian people – aren’t going to escape from
stagnation.
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