
The Soviet Union Is Gone, but It’s Still Collapsing - jseliger
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#browder
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Nomentatus
I kept looking for a pony in this pile, but I didn't find one. No new facts,
ending with a call to, well... non-action or at least no mentioned action,
just a hollow call. I can't find the citation, but I've read a much better
article this week that pointed out that 75% of Russian GNP is now government
authored; that just doesn't fit the kleptocracy narrative of an economy being
handed to a private mafia. (Up from less than 40% a decade or more ago.) Which
directly contradicts the standard narrative echoed by this fluff article, of
private ownership run wild, sucking all the economic activity away from the
state toward individual owners. This data point suggests a very different
story: that a concerted effort by a group - not a single individual - is being
made to reconstruct a Soviet Union 2.0 that works somewhat better than
Communism 1.0 and isn't visibly tied to Marxist ideals - communism with
lowered expectations, as it were.

