I’m currently listening to Richard Wolff discussing how crises in capitalism occur every 4-7 years give or take a few years. He gives a few American examples (he was on Chapo so that makes sense) has Russia had similar economic crashes in the late 90s and 2000s and 2010s? I don’t know as much about Russia but I know that capitalism has inevitable consequences that it wreaks quite often
The crashes Russia had were pretty bad, especially the one in the late 90s that led to Putin coming to power and starting to clean up some of the worst excesses. That crash was catastrophic and pretty much wiped out the currency and a lot of people’s savings, and it was a result of the decade of brutal shock therapy applied to post-Soviet Russia. A lot of people committed suicide and there was a real fear in the west of another revolution in Russia.
And yes there were subsequent ones too, but as a result of Russia’s general recovery over these past decades, these crashes have been getting less severe as time goes on: the 2008 crash was unavoidable since it was global but it was not as bad as the one in the late 90s; and the 2014 one which was triggered by western sanctions in response to the Crimean referendum led to Russia adopting policies which have made it much more autarkic and resilient to sanctions. You could also call the economic contraction they experienced last year as a result of the war and the new western sanctions a mini-crash but a rapid recovery is already happening thanks to good economic relations with China and the global south.
However the rules of capitalism still apply to Russia and no matter how well things are going now there will be more and worse crashes in the future. The only way to mitigate these unavoidable crises is to adopt policies resembling those of China, increase the role of the state sector and state control over the banks and the general direction of the economy, and Russia has been doing a bit of this in response to the economic pressures of the sanctions and the war, but not nearly enough.
The only way to completely eliminate this cycle is to adopt an actual socialist economic model but the current Russian ruling class is not interested in doing that.
Yea I remember a clip being posted and shared around in which some Russian politician essentially suggested switching to a form of socialism citing the popularity of Western Neoliberalism and Fascist Banderists as evidence of the evils ruining Russia’s economy and financial stability. Putin and a few others smirked and basically said “yes sure lol we’ll ToTaLLy ThInK AbOut iT”
I’m currently listening to Richard Wolff discussing how crises in capitalism occur every 4-7 years give or take a few years. He gives a few American examples (he was on Chapo so that makes sense) has Russia had similar economic crashes in the late 90s and 2000s and 2010s? I don’t know as much about Russia but I know that capitalism has inevitable consequences that it wreaks quite often
The crashes Russia had were pretty bad, especially the one in the late 90s that led to Putin coming to power and starting to clean up some of the worst excesses. That crash was catastrophic and pretty much wiped out the currency and a lot of people’s savings, and it was a result of the decade of brutal shock therapy applied to post-Soviet Russia. A lot of people committed suicide and there was a real fear in the west of another revolution in Russia.
And yes there were subsequent ones too, but as a result of Russia’s general recovery over these past decades, these crashes have been getting less severe as time goes on: the 2008 crash was unavoidable since it was global but it was not as bad as the one in the late 90s; and the 2014 one which was triggered by western sanctions in response to the Crimean referendum led to Russia adopting policies which have made it much more autarkic and resilient to sanctions. You could also call the economic contraction they experienced last year as a result of the war and the new western sanctions a mini-crash but a rapid recovery is already happening thanks to good economic relations with China and the global south.
However the rules of capitalism still apply to Russia and no matter how well things are going now there will be more and worse crashes in the future. The only way to mitigate these unavoidable crises is to adopt policies resembling those of China, increase the role of the state sector and state control over the banks and the general direction of the economy, and Russia has been doing a bit of this in response to the economic pressures of the sanctions and the war, but not nearly enough.
The only way to completely eliminate this cycle is to adopt an actual socialist economic model but the current Russian ruling class is not interested in doing that.
Yea I remember a clip being posted and shared around in which some Russian politician essentially suggested switching to a form of socialism citing the popularity of Western Neoliberalism and Fascist Banderists as evidence of the evils ruining Russia’s economy and financial stability. Putin and a few others smirked and basically said “yes sure lol we’ll ToTaLLy ThInK AbOut iT”