In the context of the obvious divergence of interests of the existing social groups, it is difficult to count on the coincidence of assessments of the effectiveness of economic transformations among different segments of society. The number of people who are dissatisfied with the transformations is very high, and many are inclined to criticize these processes at the conceptual level. There are reasons for this, because the role models – the economies of highly developed countries – are in many ways more discredited than before. Under the influence of the aggravation of contradictions, the uncertainty about the future of the peoples of formerly prosperous countries is increasing. Local and international financial and economic crises have become more frequent. In the full sense of the word, some respectable concepts of transition to a market economy developed by international institutions on the basis of classical schemes for developing countries and countries with economies in transition have gone bankrupt. A striking example is the widespread negative effectiveness of the transformation programs formed on the basis of the so-called Washington Consensus.
With the rejection of the alternative economic structure to capitalism, it seems that all systemic obstacles to the establishment of homogeneity of economic space on the entire planet and to the harmonious socio-economic development of the world along the well-trodden track are being removed. Meanwhile, the latter is just an appearance. In fact, there are growing contradictions associated with the unevenness of economic development, the struggle for limited resources, and the new scale and quality of structural changes in the global world.
World-renowned philosopher and sociologist Alvin Toffler argues that “the recent shifts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are only minor firefights compared to the global power struggle that lies ahead. And the competition between the United States, Europe and Japan has not yet reached its climax.”3
The development of events in the world in the first years of the third millennium showed unexpected and very tough conflict situations that manifested themselves in the “prosperous” spaces of Europe and America, not to mention the Middle East and Africa.
But so far, in the literature, the theme of the struggle for power, touched upon by Toffler, reflects the side of the contradictions between the present and the future, which is limited to the interests and lifestyle of the most highly developed countries of the world. The rest of the world is present in the arguments only as a general background, as a condition for the implementation of the strategies of highly developed countries. Such an accentuation of research is a typical feature of the works of modern social scientists living in the West: apparently, it reflects stable priorities of thinking that exclude the manifestation of a deep interest in the needs of peoples who are not included in the “golden billion.” Meanwhile, future processes in the world are not reducible to relations between the United States, Europe and Japan (for all their significance). The most unexpected turns in world processes may occur, which will be determined by the nature of the development and resolution of contradictions between the North and the South, between the West and the East, between transnational corporations (TNCs) and the rest of the world, between religions, etc.
So far, there has been almost no scientific research on the content and trajectories of possible transformations of the economic systems that have developed in highly developed countries. Most researchers and politicians prefer to think that everything in these countries will continue to follow the well-trodden path. However, given the real trends, there is less and less hope for such scenarios.
In this context, materials on economic transformations in post-socialist countries, especially analytical and evaluative materials on such a large-scale and truly complex country as Russia, are becoming increasingly important. They are important both for finding the right decisions regarding the outcome of the experiments that have been initiated and the fate of hundreds of millions of people living in these territories, and for eliminating the mistakes of “arrogance” on the part of global strategists. It just so happened that the course of history created a unique test site in the space of the former USSR and the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). This consideration was fundamental in shaping the idea of this book.
The book is based on materials on the economy in the former Soviet Union and, first of all, on materials from Russia. This emphasis is due, firstly, to the author’s personal interest as a citizen of his country, and secondly, to the author’s direct impressions of the behavior of high state structures both during the period of transformations and long before the collapse of the USSR. Thirdly, the author proceeds from the fact that it is the post-Soviet (especially Russian) transformations that today have a sufficiently representative factual base to make broader generalizations about hypotheses about the future of economic transformations in the world. Both the geopolitical position of the object of study (USSR, Russia) and the scale of the phenomena observed here during economic transformations provide grounds for global assessments.
An important circumstance that predetermines the choice of the vector of economic policy in specific countries and in the world is the correlation of forces of the functioning scientific and economic schools. Therefore, to the extent possible, when considering the main topics of economic transformations in Russia and in the world, the book traces the changes in the contours of economic thought that affect real life. Such an analysis is directed by the author to determine the scientific basis for the implementation of further economic transformations in Russia in the most effective way for the country.
Part I: Prerequisites and the Course of Transformations in Russia
Chapter 1. The Turn of the Millennium: A Time for New Directions
The transformation processes in Russia and other post-socialist countries began and unfolded at a time when the world of highly developed countries seemed to be rushing forward at full speed and ideally embodying the phenomenon of socio-economic progress. At the turn of the second and third millennia, however, the intellectuals of the world began to talk more and more often about the sense of a dead-end path based on the evolution of the age-old system of capitalist economy. The reason for this was the frequent economic and financial crises in various parts of the world economy, the aggravation of contradictions between competing centers of economic dynamics, including between traditional allies within the bloc of highly developed countries, the emergence of fundamentally new processes and forms in the global economy that cannot be explained within the framework of the usual scientific and economic concepts, the growing threats of energy (and resource shortages in general), and the lack of harmony between industrial development and the preservation of the human environment, the unevenness of scientific and technological progress (STP) and the ambiguity of its consequences for different countries and social strata.
The famous philosopher Jean Baudrillard, professor of sociology at the University of Paris, put it succinctly: “We are moving at an increasing speed, but we do not know where.”4
A Local Knot of Global Contradictions
In the last quarter of the 20th century, the aggravation of contradictions in socio-economic development manifested itself in all countries and regions of the world, but not simultaneously and with varying intensity. Despite the spurring effect of globalization, which has provided a significant head start to countries that have concentrated the potential of transnational capital on their territories, the world economy has not accelerated, but even slowed down. Average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in the world fell from