Suchergebnisse

This article examines in detail the corruption endemic in pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. In doing so, it analyzes such aspects as bribery, extortion, organized crime, and human networking (called blat) in their political and private dimensions. The article concludes with a reference to recent measures adopted by the Russian government to curtail corruption. Adapted from the source document.

Recent polls show that Belarus is the country the Russian people view most favorably. In this article, the author examines this perception by presenting a variety of data, comparing Belarus first with the other Soviet Union republics/post-Soviet independent states and then with Soviet/post-Soviet Russia itself. Armed with this data, the reader is prepared to judge whether the favorable perception is justified. Adapted from the source document.

The Soviet Union was broken up by internal forces. Today, Russia faces a potential threat to the long-term integrity of a vast proportion of its territory. That challenge is from China, and relates to all of Russia east of the Ural Mountains, i.e., Siberia and the Russian Far East. The author here examines the territorial, demographic, socioeconomic, cultural and other factors that set the context for this threat; and discusses possible scenarios for the eventual outcome. Adapted from the source document.

More than one and a half decades have passed since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. As a result, its Union Republics have become fifteen independent States. Sixteen years is a sufficient time to permit a comparison between the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present. For this purpose, we have aggregated data relating to the territories, the population and economies of the former Union Republics, which are now free, and compare these with the corresponding data relating to the USSR prior to its collapse. We then ask: How do the combined economies of today's now independent former Soviet Union Republics, which we will call the Successor States, compare with the economy of the USSR in, say, 1990? This will enable us to test the validity of an argument we have advanced elsewhere, which is that, other things being equal, the Soviet Union, as a socioeconomic and political entity, was primarily destroyed not by a failure of its economy, but by domestic social factors, notably the behavior of its bureaucracy. The data assembled in this article provides considerable support for this thesis. Adapted from the source document.

Since fall 1990, the rapid deterioration of the Soviet economy has spawned the creation of many economic projects that could alleviate the crisis. Most of thes programs have been viewed primarily in ideological & technical-theoretical terms. Arguing that no meaningful understanding of the current situation is possible without consideration of the powerful social factor, an attempt is made to explain the heterogeneous nature of the Soviet social structure, which is composed of the core & the periphery, the core being the bureaucratic pyramid whose base is the population. Due to the social division of labor, the Soviet bureaucracy is stratified horizontally (eg, the Communist Party, the military); but due to the functional division of property, it is also stratified vertically (eg, central, regional). In its totality, the bureaucracy is the owner of the national wealth & its means of production. Various promising economic programs are discussed, but it is concluded that no program, no matter how good, can be implemented, since the problem is not in the programs themselves, but in the political sphere. At present, the balance of power between & within the bureaucracies & between the bureaucracy & the rest of the population is such that no central government exists that is strong enough to impose its will on the paralyzed nation. 38 References. Modified AA