Prague Watchdog: The Economics Of The Vicious Circle
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posted by eagle on November, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
| November 23rd 2009 · Prague Watchdog / Demis Polandov | ALSO AVAILABLE IN:  |  | |  |  |
The economics of the vicious circle
By Demis Polandov, special to Prague Watchdog
Although to many Russians the economy of the North Caucasus often seems like a never-ending drain on the federal budget, it does in fact play an important part in the economy of Russia as a whole. The region accounts for 8% Russia’s industry, and 16%. of its agriculture. The North Caucasus is a major supplier of oil, gas and coal, and a manufacturer of agricultural machinery. It possesses significant resources of rare and nonferrous metal ores (lead, zinc, silver, tungsten and molybdenum), which are found particularly in Kabardino-Balkaria, and its hydropower resources exceed 50 billion kilowatt hours. At the same time, however, Russian government subsidies to the North-Caucasian republics are indeed extremely high. They contribute some 50% of the budgets of Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia-Alania. In Karachai-Cherkessia and Adygeya the figure is approximately 60%, in Dagestan a little over 70%, and in Ingushetia and Chechnya it is ... |
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RFE/RL: EU-Russia Relationship No Longer Worsening
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
November 18, 2009EU-Russia Relationship No Longer Worseningby Ahto Lobjakas
STOCKHOLM -- The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has emerged from the 24th EU-Russia summit in the Swedish capital describing it as "one of the best meetings we have had."
This verdict may look odd, given that nothing of substance was achieved during the more than five hours of talks today, preceded by a Swedish-Russian dinner last night.
But there was genuine relief among EU leaders -- reciprocated, to an extent, by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev -- that the downward spiral in the relationship of the last few years appears now to have brought to a halt.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, representing the current EU Presidency, began his postsummit analysis by spontaneously noting that the EU and Russia are locked into a "key strategic partnership" that has "trust and transparency as its guiding principles."
A little later, Reinfeldt found himself resorting to negatives in trying to explain why the EU and Russia must continue to cooperate despite their ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Putin’s System Represents The Triumph Of The 1970s Generation, Moscow Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, November 20 – Many writers have focused on the “shestidesyatniki,” the generation of the 1960s, as the chief motive force in the reform and ultimate destruction of the Soviet Union, but a more far more important role both in that process and in defining the nature of post-Soviet societies has been played by the “semidesyatniki,” the generation of the 1970s.
Indeed, Sergey Roganov argues, in an essay entitled “The Death of Communism and the Soviet Generation of the 1970s,” only by understanding the role of that cohort can we hope to understand not only what happened in Russia and the other post-Soviet countries but why (www.liberty.ru/columns/Zapiski-iz-pod-poly/Smert-kommunizma-i-sovetskoe-pokolenie-70-h).
If the nostalgia of ordinary Russians for the USSR is completely understandable – it was for many of them a period filled with stability and a source of pride – “the Soviet symbols and collections of citations of Lenin and Stalin [that ...
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Window On Eurasia: Will ‘Bloggerization’ Of Russian Bureaucracy Change Relationship Between State And Citizens?
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, November 19 – Following the example of President Dmitry Medvedev, an ever- increasing number of Russian officials and politicians are creating their own blogs, but the hopes of some observers that their use of this communication channel, still the freest of any in Russia, will by itself lead to the formation of civil society there are overstated and at least premature.
In a commentary on the Chaskor.ru portal today, Vladimir Tuchkov argues that the reasons for that lie both with officials, many of whom are extremely uncertain how to function in this new environment, and with the population, many of whom fear that officials will track them down using their IP-addresses if they say anything critical.
But despite those limitations and the fact that Russians remain far behind much of the developed world in terms of Internet use, the Chaskor.ru commentator suggests, “the bloggerization of the apparatus” can provide ...
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Window On Eurasia: Putin-Medvedev Tandem Destroying Russian State’s Capacity To Develop, Moscow Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, November 19 – Ongoing debates about the modernization of Russia have attracted attention to the unfortunate reality that “all the institutional innovations of the last decade are leading to the degradation of the state as a creative subject and to its conversion into a system of life support for a narrow circle of people,” according to a Moscow commentator.
In an essay on the Grani.ru portal this week, Dmitry Shusharin says that both those who say that the modernization of the Russian state requires the creation of an alternative state and those who argue that the population should move “out from under” its non-modernized form highlight this problem, even if they do not acknowledge it directly.
That becomes obvious, Shusharin suggests, is one “recognizes that it is not the critics of the current regime [who have] invented the parallel structures” and that it is not they who “have thought ...
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