Jim Hlavac
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Foreign Affairs
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Russia has been an empire from the dawn of time. There has never been a
period in the history of the vast stretch of land from the Baltic Sea and the Polish
border all the way to the Pacific Ocean that a king or emperor wasn't ruling. The
whole concept of liberty, freedom and democracy and limited government is so
new in Russia that they are going through fits and starts of getting the right
things done.
However, the Russians have recognized that there are models to follow and
they are lisisining to Western Europe and the United Sates in creating their new
system. While it will still be statist in the short term, the long trend is towards
greater freedom and wealth.
There was a perception over the past decade to think that Russia was the
big powerful and rich country -- and in fact it was really a tradition bound,
technologically undeveloped nation with lots of gilding and guns. It was easier to
have a big military when you stripped the country of all the available wealth to
build it.
And there was during the time of Stalin when million of Russians died. There
can be no doubt that Stalin basically killed them by one means or another. It
was touted for decades around the world that Stalin sand communism, and
scientific socialism solved the unemployment problems because of the concern
for the workers. Without the statistics and without any other sources of
knowledge other than the government of Stalin himself there were thousands of
bureaucrats and governemntalists and others who bought the story -- and had
no problem believing him because they were largely convinced that the state
was for the good of the people -- and the part that they forgot to see was the
fact that if you kill twenty or thirty million people unemployment has got to go
down. And if you make it a crime not to work and actually send the unemployed
to jail then anyone can solve an unemployment problem.
What transpired in Russia under the communists was far worse than under
the czars. The Russians jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
But the reality of economics overcame the system. And the desire for all
people for freedom and material goods because it allows them to do less for
more simply swamped the small crack in the wall that Gorbachev put in the wall
around the Soviet Myth.
We are still not able to grasp the basic backwardness of Russia -- where a
simple highway system and accurate maps don't exist.
So you'll hear people talk about worrying about Russia coming back as the
big country it is and doing something against America -- or pushing its weight
around Europe. The Russian economy is silted, the infrastructure poor, the
system in an uproar as the last vestiges of the communist state still is dying.
The Parliament is filled with socialists who want to cling to the dream and still
blame America for infecting their people with western ideas.
period in the history of the vast stretch of land from the Baltic Sea and the Polish
border all the way to the Pacific Ocean that a king or emperor wasn't ruling. The
whole concept of liberty, freedom and democracy and limited government is so
new in Russia that they are going through fits and starts of getting the right
things done.
However, the Russians have recognized that there are models to follow and
they are lisisining to Western Europe and the United Sates in creating their new
system. While it will still be statist in the short term, the long trend is towards
greater freedom and wealth.
There was a perception over the past decade to think that Russia was the
big powerful and rich country -- and in fact it was really a tradition bound,
technologically undeveloped nation with lots of gilding and guns. It was easier to
have a big military when you stripped the country of all the available wealth to
build it.
And there was during the time of Stalin when million of Russians died. There
can be no doubt that Stalin basically killed them by one means or another. It
was touted for decades around the world that Stalin sand communism, and
scientific socialism solved the unemployment problems because of the concern
for the workers. Without the statistics and without any other sources of
knowledge other than the government of Stalin himself there were thousands of
bureaucrats and governemntalists and others who bought the story -- and had
no problem believing him because they were largely convinced that the state
was for the good of the people -- and the part that they forgot to see was the
fact that if you kill twenty or thirty million people unemployment has got to go
down. And if you make it a crime not to work and actually send the unemployed
to jail then anyone can solve an unemployment problem.
What transpired in Russia under the communists was far worse than under
the czars. The Russians jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
But the reality of economics overcame the system. And the desire for all
people for freedom and material goods because it allows them to do less for
more simply swamped the small crack in the wall that Gorbachev put in the wall
around the Soviet Myth.
We are still not able to grasp the basic backwardness of Russia -- where a
simple highway system and accurate maps don't exist.
So you'll hear people talk about worrying about Russia coming back as the
big country it is and doing something against America -- or pushing its weight
around Europe. The Russian economy is silted, the infrastructure poor, the
system in an uproar as the last vestiges of the communist state still is dying.
The Parliament is filled with socialists who want to cling to the dream and still
blame America for infecting their people with western ideas.