Trajectories of Economic Transformations. Lessons from 2004 for 2024 and Beyond. Valery Kushlin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of income, consumption, savings, property, etc. Academician Dmitry Lvov characterizes our Russia today in two of its images – rich and poor. “Rich Russia is home to about 15% of the population, which accumulates 85% of all savings in the banking system, 57% of cash income, 92% of property income, and 96% of foreign currency spending. In Russia, 85% of the population lives poorly. It has only 8% of property income and 15% of all savings27.

      In 1990, the USSR ranked 33rd among all the countries in the world on the Human Development Index, at its worst, and Russia, which had already undergone reforms, ranked 63rd at the beginning of 2003.

      Privatization in the Structure of Reforms

      The institutional side of the transformations was dominant throughout the entire period of reforms, and the privatization of state property became the central point in it. This, by design, should lead to the emergence of more efficient owners. In fact, the question of efficiency in its generally accepted sense did not arise at all during privatization. The organizers of this process were dominated by two aspects of motivation: 1) the distribution (almost free) of the most attractive pieces of property among the most active figures of the reforms; and (2) the final burial of social property as a phenomenon and socialism as a system of economic management.

      Indicative is the admission of Anatoly B. Chubais, who was its chief manager during the main stages of Russian privatization, in one of his interviews in 2002. Speaking of the goals of privatization at the stage of the loans-for-shares auctions, he emphasized that “there was a singular task at hand: creating large capital that could prevent the return of communism in Russia. Ninety-five percent of the task was political and only five percent is economic.” Yes, Chubais admitted, “one can make fair claims to the procedure of these transactions from the point of view of classical economic theory. But large-scale private property was created in the country in a very short time.”28

      As we can see, economic efficiency was in fact of minimal importance in the acts of privatization of state property. But the political emphasis emphasized by Chubais as the dominant of privatization should probably be regarded in a wider range of motives than just the eradication of communism. Rather, behind this political slogan there is a very pragmatic motivation of a narrow stratum of people who received a gift of a huge amount of money in a short period of time property, to prevent its new redistribution.

      As for the interests of society, which, by definition, must be protected by the state, they were pushed to the fore in the course of privatization – against the background of the private interests of the established oligarchs, as well as powerful shadow figures.

      Here is just one aspect of the losses suffered by Russian society (represented by the state) from the distorted orientation of privatization, which is noted over time by Ilya Klebanov (then Minister of Industry, Science and Technology of the Russian Federation): “I consider it a big mistake that during the privatization of defense enterprises, the state did not value its intellectual property in any way. In fact, it ceased to own the rights to developments that were created with state funds and always belonged to the state. It simply took it out of its pocket and, saying ‘take it’, gave away its property for free. That’s wrong… Together with the Ministry of Property and independent appraisers, we conducted a study of several private defense enterprises and found out that all their capital, machine tools, real estate, etc., is only ten to fifteen percent of the amount that this enterprise would be worth together with intellectual property. It turns out that the defense industry was sold on the cheap.”29

      Hasty steps to eliminate the leading role of the state in such spheres of activity as the production and sale of wine, vodka and tobacco products had an even greater impact on the bleeding of the national economy. It is known that revenues from these sectors of the economy have almost always been extremely significant for the state treasury. It is no coincidence that the problem of the “vodka monopoly” was unequivocally solved by the state in its favor back in tsarist times. Concessions in favor of private business in the field of wine and vodka products, cigarette and tobacco products, medicines, etc., have become key miscalculations of state economic policy. In the full sense of the word, they “slaughtered the chicken” that laid the main “golden eggs” for the state budget. It is impossible not to notice that the decisive beginning of these steps was set within the framework of the USSR, during the period of “perestroika”.

      The outward amorphousness of the goals of economic transformation in Russia had its reasons. The absence of clearly expressed goals of reforms from the standpoint of society was primarily in the interests of the shadowy inspirers of the processes of breaking the old order. In the context of the blurring of strategic goals and in the absence of institutional constraints, it was easier to achieve the redistribution of the main parts of the previously social wealth, efficient capacities, and natural resources in the clearly defined personal interests of the new “elite,” which was locked in several positions with the criminals.

      The Cost of Reform Programs

      Criticism of the actions of the reformers’ government on the pages of the scientific press is quite often and rightly built around the thesis that there is no clear program for the transformation and development of the economy. Official circles usually respond to this by referring to the existence of several government economic programs related to the implementation of market reforms. Yes, there have been and continue to be such programs covering periods ranging from one to 4—5 years. Options have also been developed long-term socio-economic programs (for example, the well-known program of German Gref). However, none of these programs had the scope and status of a national strategy for socio-economic development. And the Gref program (claiming to be a strategy) was not even officially published and remained a semi-draft. It is impossible to name a single program document where the ultimate goals of economic programs would be presented in the form of reasonable parameters available for public scrutiny and would be supported by balance sheet calculations linking effects and costs in time and space.

      The lack of a clear strategy for economic transformations was aggravated by the fact that there was no objective monitoring of reforms from the standpoint of results, and the government did not have the desire to self-critically evaluate its reform programs and actions. Meanwhile, there were numerous reasons to do so in a timely manner. It was necessary to at least analyze the assessments of qualified experts from the outside, if there was any distrust of critics inside the country. Here are some of the public assessments of the course of economic reforms in Russia, made by foreign experts whose reputation is beyond doubt.

      For example, Joseph Stiglitz, the world-renowned economist and the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, in his analytical report Macro- and Microeconomic Strategies for Russia prepared jointly with David Ellerman, put forward very serious critical observations30. Subsequently, Stiglitz has developed these observations in articles and in a book on the contradictions of globalization that has received worldwide resonance31.

      Let us cite a few excerpts from the above-mentioned report, because they were made at a time when there was an opportunity to correct many things. “Russia’s experience of transition from communism to the market has turned out to be much more complex than it seemed a decade ago. The increase in prosperity promised by the market did not materialize; moreover, GDP fell by more than 50%, and the share of the poorest population increased from 2% to 50%. It is necessary to recognize these facts СКАЧАТЬ