Word: sovietism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When the Soviet Union was disintegrating during the late autumn of 1991, a band of disillusioned demonstrators gathered in Red Square. Bobbing along in their midst, under the shelter of the Kremlin's looming brick walls, was a placard that read 70 YEARS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE. The accusation was an angry and poignant truth. But then Russia was reborn under the old tricolor flag and set a new course toward not just reform but total transformation. And now, with the collapse of the economy and the paralysis of the government, that hopeful path has also run into...
...have passed. Yeltsin is a spent force and shows no sign that he understands what the problem is. Chernomyrdin and the people he brings in with him think the problem is too much reform, and they intend to reverse it. When the country was first breaking out of the Soviet system, its initial step was to free prices. Now, with the ruble devalued and inflation inevitable, the communists are calling for price controls, and Chernomyrdin is listening...
...acquisitions but about production as well. And the simple fact is that Russia does not produce. The old rust belt--defense-oriented enterprises employing tens of thousands each--are still lurching along, turning out things so costly and so shoddy that no one wants to buy them. In Soviet times, workers joked that they pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them. Now the line could be that the workers pretend to make things and the factories pretend to sell them. The plants can't pay their taxes or their workers, and instead barter some of the stuff...
...have no money, they can't pay their taxes. That means the government is always short of funds and the deficit keeps growing. It's even worse than that, says Brookings Institution fellow Clifford Gaddy. The basic problem, he says, is Russia's "virtual economy." Stuck with the unreformed Soviet industrial sector, the country turns out goods that are worth less than the value of the labor and raw materials that go into them. "This is eating the core out of the Russian economy," says Gaddy, "and everyone is ignoring...
...trying to cobble together a coalition involving Communists and other opposition parties, but Monday's rejection was a bid by the opposition-controlled Duma to secure further concessions before confirming him in a later ballot. Western lenders are alarmed at the concessions Chernomyrdin has already offered, such as reintroducing Soviet-era price and exchange controls. Any further horse-trading will simply confirm doubts about a Chernomyrdin government's ability to stop the economic hemorrhaging...