When America won the Cold War and the USSR collapsed into the Russian Federation there was a little known bill known as the FREEDOM Support Act of 1992 (Freedom for Russia and Emerging Eurasian Democracies and Open Markets Support Act, FSA, HR 282) passed by the United States Congress. In addition to financing commitments which aimed to support the transition to liberal democracy, there were sent economic theorists to radically reconstruct the Russian economy. They wanted what was called Shock Therapy. In economics, shock therapy is the sudden release of price and currency controls (economic liberalization), withdrawal of state subsidies, and immediate trade liberalization within a country, usually also including large-scale privatization of previously public-owned assets.
Jeffrey Sachs was one of these men. He said "We have the best hope right now, the best reformers, the most westward looking leaders in this country. But there are people around who want to close up. That are the xenophobes, that are the extreme nationalists, that believe that the west has stabbed this country in the back. There are real possibilities of political disaster lurking here. Its not a matter of days, but it is a matter of weeks and months. The people must have hope." I look at those words, and I see the West today and its economic entwining with China. Biden seems like he might best be thought of as America's Boris Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin gave himself completely over to the American economists, and so doomed Russia's attempt at liberalizing. Market Democracy, or the idea that market forces more closely resemble voter choice and more efficiently fulfill it, overcame and replaced all attempts at political constituting or socializing the population into a foundation securing liberal democracy in Russia. Shock Therapy was rapidly instituted, and nothing was allowed to slow it down. Not even a collapse of Russian markets and the pricing of basic goods skyrocketing, of which faster and deeper Shock Therapy was thought to solve rather than worsen.
Things didn't work out like the theorists imagined. Prices soared and no one could afford the most basic goods. Russians sold all of their belongings, and jobs paid-in-kind. Chair-makers, for example, would pay their workers in chairs rather than cash because chairs held value more consistently into the future. Then came the privatization came, and every Russian was given stock vouchers to purchase shares in previously state corporations. You can tell what happened next, they sold them for food, fuel, and clothing for a fraction of their worth. There emerged a new elite who had the capital to purchase the stocks third or fourth hand, they became who we call today The Oligarchs.
Next in 1993 almost exactly a single year after the FREEDOM Support Act passed, when all was thought lost to the lunacy of Western Theorists and their horrid Market Democracy, Russia's vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy, denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide" in parliament. Tanks of the Taman Division shelled the Russian White House (which confusingly serve as the seat of the Russian parliament) in response and Yeltsin suspended parliament and announced he would rule by decree. Russia would now be liberalized by force, just as other Americans in the CIA had convinced governments to do throughout the world. Instead the Oligarchs became the real power and Yeltsin their puppet.
Finally in 1998, the market collapsed after years of oligarch loans propping up a massively deindustrialized economy. Banks couldn't payout during the Bank-runs thereafter. A harsh tough nationalism was imposed, and the economic reforms were over. Vladimir Putin became the new Russian President. The oligarchs were arrested or exiled. The people had grown tired of liberty, and in its place like every other occasion in the history books came Order.
Jeffrey Sachs was one of these men. He said "We have the best hope right now, the best reformers, the most westward looking leaders in this country. But there are people around who want to close up. That are the xenophobes, that are the extreme nationalists, that believe that the west has stabbed this country in the back. There are real possibilities of political disaster lurking here. Its not a matter of days, but it is a matter of weeks and months. The people must have hope." I look at those words, and I see the West today and its economic entwining with China. Biden seems like he might best be thought of as America's Boris Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin gave himself completely over to the American economists, and so doomed Russia's attempt at liberalizing. Market Democracy, or the idea that market forces more closely resemble voter choice and more efficiently fulfill it, overcame and replaced all attempts at political constituting or socializing the population into a foundation securing liberal democracy in Russia. Shock Therapy was rapidly instituted, and nothing was allowed to slow it down. Not even a collapse of Russian markets and the pricing of basic goods skyrocketing, of which faster and deeper Shock Therapy was thought to solve rather than worsen.
Things didn't work out like the theorists imagined. Prices soared and no one could afford the most basic goods. Russians sold all of their belongings, and jobs paid-in-kind. Chair-makers, for example, would pay their workers in chairs rather than cash because chairs held value more consistently into the future. Then came the privatization came, and every Russian was given stock vouchers to purchase shares in previously state corporations. You can tell what happened next, they sold them for food, fuel, and clothing for a fraction of their worth. There emerged a new elite who had the capital to purchase the stocks third or fourth hand, they became who we call today The Oligarchs.
Next in 1993 almost exactly a single year after the FREEDOM Support Act passed, when all was thought lost to the lunacy of Western Theorists and their horrid Market Democracy, Russia's vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy, denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide" in parliament. Tanks of the Taman Division shelled the Russian White House (which confusingly serve as the seat of the Russian parliament) in response and Yeltsin suspended parliament and announced he would rule by decree. Russia would now be liberalized by force, just as other Americans in the CIA had convinced governments to do throughout the world. Instead the Oligarchs became the real power and Yeltsin their puppet.
Finally in 1998, the market collapsed after years of oligarch loans propping up a massively deindustrialized economy. Banks couldn't payout during the Bank-runs thereafter. A harsh tough nationalism was imposed, and the economic reforms were over. Vladimir Putin became the new Russian President. The oligarchs were arrested or exiled. The people had grown tired of liberty, and in its place like every other occasion in the history books came Order.
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