Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
December 29, 2021
What Putin Learned From the Soviet Collapse
When the Soviet Union dissolved 30 years ago this month, on December 25, 1991, its end followed decades of economic dysfunction. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, hoping to implement reforms, referred to the 1970s and 1980s as zastoi, the era of stagnation. Yet though he recognized the problem, Gorbachev couldn’t save the ailing socialist system. Indeed, his failed attempt at systematic reform ultimately led to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
On the surface, Russia’s economy appears similarly dysfunctional today. Per capita incomes have not improved over the past decade. Russia’s share of global output has declined since 2008. And large sectors of the economy remain technologically backward or in desperate need of modernization. The general economic state could once again be described as “stagnation.”
Just as Communist Party leaders in Beijing have studied Soviet history in an effort to avert its repetition, so have leaders in the Kremlin.
Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government are unlikely to suffer the same fate as their Soviet forebears.
They have learned the lessons of failed Soviet attempts to reverse decline in the 1970s and 1980s, and many key attributes of the Russian economy and Russian economic policy reflect a desire to avoid repeating the Soviet experience under Gorbachev. As the Russian economist Sergei Guriev recently remarked, “Russia’s macroeconomic policy is much more conservative, inflation is under control, there are large reserves, a balanced budget and no external debt,” and as a market economy Russia is “much more efficient and resilient” than the Soviet Union.
Read the full article from Foreign Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Russia-China Relations One Year after the Invasion of Ukraine, with Bonnie Glaser, Dmitry Gorenburg, Richard Weitz, Yusuke Anami
Podcast
As Russia has become increasingly isolated on the international stage following its invasion of Ukraine last February, it has sought to deepen its ties with remaining partners...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Yusuke Anami, Bonnie Glaser, Dmitry Gorenburg & Richard Weitz
-
Russia Won’t Sit Idly by After Finland and Sweden Join Nato
Commentary
Russia will seek to increase conventional deterrence along its northwestern flank as soon as it has the capacity to do so...
By Nicholas Lokker & Heli Hautala
-
Russian President Putin Plans to Move Tactical Nuclear Weapons into Belarus
Podcast
Here & Now's Robin Young speaks with Jeffrey Edmonds with the Center for New American Security about Russia's plan to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which shares...
By Jeffrey Edmonds
-
Putin’s Forever War
Commentary
More than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a grim reality has settled in: the war will not end soon. Despite the heavy fighting in and around the eastern city of Bak...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Erica Frantz
