Illusion of Transition: Russia's Muscovite Future

CEEC; Russia

Russia: An Abnormal Country

Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman recently rendered a summary verdict on the post Soviet Russian transition experience finding that the Federation had become a normal country with the west's assistance, and predicting that it would liberalize and develop further like other successful nations of its type. This essay demonstrates that they are mistaken on the first count, and are likely to be wrong on the second too. It shows factually, and on the norms elaborated by Pareto, Arrow and Bergson that Russia is an abnormal political economy unlikely to democratize, westernize or embrace free enterprise any time soonRussian economy; transition economics; comparative economic systems

New Demographic Evidence on Collectivization Deaths: A Rejoinder to Stephen Wheatcroft

Most Western scholars agree that the Soviet Union experienced a significant number of excess deaths during the 1930s which are attributable to forced collectivization from 1929 to 1932, the famine of 1933-34, Gulag forced labor, and the terror. Until comparatively recently, however, the official data required for a reliable estimate of the magnitude and incidence of these excess fatalities have been unavailable. In May 1984 I reported that new evidence had been released which shed considerable light on one aspect of this important problem: forced collectivization between 1929 and 1932.1 The evidence took two forms: a revised natality series for the 1930s, and a previously unpublished population statistic for 1933, both provided by the distinguished Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis.2 On the basis of this information, previously published Soviet vital statistics, and 1926/27 census data, two alternative estimates of excess deaths attributable to forced collectivization were computed.3 The first, derived without adjustment from these Soviet statistics and computed using the method employed by Frank Lorimer in his classic League of Nations study, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (1946), indicated that the Soviet Union sustained 5.8 million excess fatalities from January 1, 1929 to January 1, 1933 that were attributable to forced collectivization. The second estimate, which took into ac- count the possibility that the official, census-based mortality rate for 1927 may have understated the real rate, yielded a lower figure, 5.1 million. These findings led me to conclude that the approximately 5 million excess deaths attributed by Murray Feshbach to "the liquidation of the kulaks and forced land collectiviza- tion in the early thirties" was well founded and broadly substantiated by Urlanis's data

Demographic Analysis and Population Catastrophes in the USSR: A Rejoinder to Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver

Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver have recently attempted to settle the controversy over the economic and demographic consequences of Stalinism by "demonstrating . . . how sensitive estimates of excess mortality are to the assumptions that are made about de- mographic data and the 'natural' course of demographic change" because they think that "the demographic evidence has been misunderstood and misused, and that the sensitivity of demographic estimates to assumptions made about the levels of mortality and fertility, as well as about the accuracy and completeness of Soviet census data and vital statistics, has not been given adequate attention.", This formulation suggests that readers of the Slavic Review do not realize how difficult it is to estimate the Gulag forced labor popu- lation and to quantify the casualties caused by collectivization, Gulag, and the Terror; that they are unaware that estimates of these sorts are controversial; and that they do not fully appreciate how specific errors mar the credibility of some analysts' calculations

Currency and Financial Crises of the 1990s and 2000s

We survey three distinct types of financial crises which took place in the 1990s and the 2000s: 1) the credit implosion leading to severe banking crisis in Japan; 2) The foreign reserves’ meltdown triggered by foreign hot money flight from frothy economies with fixed exchange rate regimes of developing Asian economies, and 3) The 2008 worldwide debacle rooted in financial institutional opacity and reckless aggregate demand management, epi-centered in the US, that spread almost instantaneously across the globe, mostly through international financial networks.

Grexit and Brexit: Rational choice, compatibility, and coercive adaptation

Abstract This article combines a rational choice framework with an analysis of contemporary European Union institutions to elucidate the causes of Grexit and Brexit. It shows that the sustainability of the EU in part or whole in “normal” times depends on member compatibility and coercive adaptation. If members share the same values, including a common vision of transnational governance and a commitment to mutual support (solidarity), the EU should be able to stick together through thick and thin. If, on the contrary, members hold incompatible outlooks on the distribution of transnational powers and solidarity, then the EU will be vulnerable to dismemberment. The EU today is prone to disunion because its members no longer share a common view of mutually acceptable transnational government and policy; powerful members insist upon bending recalcitrant members to their will (coercive adaptation), and participants hold contradictory attitudes towards solidarity on a variety of issues. Winston Churchill and Robert Schuman in the late 1940s hoped that their post-war Europe project would be something more than a “single market”; that it would become the cornerstone of European peace. They appreciated the value of cooperative economy, but considered material benefits icing on the cake. Brexit and Grexit are best seen in this larger perspective underscoring the wisdom of conciliation

Russia's Warped Transition: The Destructive Consequences of Ethically Unconstrained Utility Seeking

The Russian transition economy is best understood as a system that decriminalizes all power-seeking behaviors proscribed by textbook general competition. It is failing because the government sanctions oligopoly, monopoly, asset-grabbing, rent-seeking, elite misappropriation of state funds, the mis-administration of state assets, the mis-regulation of the private sector, and the forced suppression of competition. The efficiency losses caused by these abuses are examined in the factor, product, finance, distribution, and redistribution markets. The analysis suggests that the Russian economy won't recover until it empowers competitive efficiency and recriminalizes private and social exploitation.

Primary accumulation in the Soviet transition

The Soviet background to the idea of primary socialist accumulation is presented. The mobilisation of labour power and of products into public sector investment from outside are shown to have been the two original forms of the concept. In Soviet primary accumulation the mobilisation of labour power was apparently more decisive than the mobilisation of products. The primary accumulation process had both intended and unintended results. Intended results included bringing most of the economy into the public sector, and industrialisation of the economy as a whole. Unintended results included substantial economic losses, and the proliferation of coercive institutions damaging to attainment of the ultimate goal - the building of a communist society