(Putin Art) Russian economy

[Alina Israeli]

One great book (and a great read!) on the subject was by Игорь  
Ефимов "Без буржуев" (it's on the web) and the other  
one may be G. I. Khanin http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/public/eas93.pdf


On Sep 2, 2013, at 7:36 PM, Jules Levin wrote:

> On 9/2/2013 3:27 PM, Alina Israeli wrote:
>>
>> Yes, it was. However, there are several problems with this concept:
>>
>> 1. The whole country was working for the Military-Industrial  
>> Complex. The word was already coined by Eisenhower, we just did not  
>> know it in the Soviet Union. Everybody and his brother was working  
>> in the so-called почтовый ящик. Not the blue box that  
>> collects mail, but an organization whose name is secret. It helps  
>> GDP, no question about it.
>
> Back in the 80's there was an American statistician whose name  
> escapes me who devised an ingenious method for getting at the truth  
> of Soviet production.  He assumed that at least some of the official  
> statistics were more or less accurate, and he decided to look at the  
> numbers for rolling stock and tonnage shipped.  He assumed that in  
> principle, all e.g. steel production had to move away from the  
> factories, and using this method he lowered the official figures of  
> steel and other heavy industrial production significantly.  He  
> published a book that predicted the economic collapse of the Soviet  
> Union.
> An emigre I talked to in Los Angeles said he thought there was a  
> steady worsening of food production from 1918.  He gave examples of  
> food he remembered getting in a provincial restaurant in 1945 (!!)  
> that hadn't been on menus for decades, I think he said oysters...   
> Hard to believe, but who knows???  It was a strange country.
> Jules Levin
>
>
>
>

Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
WLC, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu






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