A DYING BEAR WITH NO CUBS:

A Russian Economy In Reverse Gear (David Ignatius, July 12, 2009, Washington Post)

Russia today often seems to combine the worst aspects of a free market and a command economy. It has the dealmaking and corruption of the new capitalism, and the top-heavy bureaucratic inefficiency of the old communism. The result is an economy that seems stuck in second gear, even as those of the nations Russia sees as its peers -- Brazil, India and China -- continue to accelerate.

Konstantin Remchukov, a former industrialist who is now publisher and editor in chief of the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, says that the economic mess reminds him of the lyrics of a rock song by the Russian band DDT, which was popular in the last days of the Soviet Union: "We fight to the death Tuesday for Wednesday, without understanding Thursday."

Russia's basic economic problem is that it is a developing economy trying to pretend that it is a developed one. "Nobody in the West really understands how deep is the abyss we have to overcome," says a top Kremlin adviser who also runs one of the country's biggest companies. Communism turned people into "aliens," he explains, and the economy won't really be modern until it's run by a generation that has no memory of the old system. That's more than a decade away.

What generation?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 13, 2009 6:39 AM