Total Licensing Winter 2007 - (Page 125)

Warning : session_start : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : session_start : Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 TOTAL LICENSING were routinely pilfered and only the Black Market could help. There might be bread and sugar, but then there was no flour to be found. One year condensed milk in blue cans arrived – then it was gone – never to come back! Suddenly, there was canned seaweed from the Far East – but no one knew what to do with it. The Soviet Union was spending billions on the Arms Race, but there was not enough usable toilet paper. of patience and respect for authority, relieved only by streams of vodka which was cheap and plentiful always , begun to lust after the lifestyle of their European neighbors. This, they had increasingly been able to see on foreign TV, in foreign movies and publications, that began to sneak in and be smuggled across the Glasnost borders. Slowly, the young members of the Soviet “nomenklatura” Army of civil servants, the university professors, scientists, economists, even production bosses, became despondent and started to tinker with the system. It was a deep intellectual malaise. How could a fabulously rich country, blessed with so many resources, be so abjectly poor and unhappy? Secretly photocopied texts began to appear and be passed from hand to hand, opening eyes! Maybe - Marx and Engels had been mistaken Our columnist after all! George Medina at the Gorbachev in 1987 Moscow Book Fair started to allow small private businesses. So-called cooperaSVYAZI a chain of connections was the only way to get a pair of tives were founded all over Russia. smuggled-in jeans. Medical care By 1989, a progressive newspaper might require an elegant crystal held the first ever round table vase for the head doctor. There discussion for cooperatives who were two economies – the official wanted to start private banks Russia up to then had only government one and the shadow one. central banks . Coincidentally, this also was the year when the BerTHE NEW WORLD BREAKS OUT! By 1985, arrived Gorbachev with lin Wall fell. By 1990 only sixteen Glasnost and Perestroika, and years ago , Gorbachev was seeking momentous changes, previously foreign capital for a 500 day plan unimagined and unchartered, be- to turn to a Market Economy. Bogan to spread out in what was to ris Yeltsin came to power and the remain the core lands of Stalin’s economy was still trying to find or former Empire. The Soviet Union, accommodate new systems. Pounable to longer carry the burden litical parties began to function and of the sum of past erroneous deci- the Communist Party had lost a lot of its followers. In Moscow, a man sions, imploded. Central planning that theoretically, still active today, Luzhkov, became through Gosplan, the gargantuan Vice-Mayor, and in 1992 he became state planning agency in Moscow, Mayor. He built as his idol Robert was to provide everything for Moses had done in New York the the Soviet citizen – medical care, modern Moscow of over 10 million schooling, work, transportation. It people we described at the beginhad to plan how to allocate every ning of the column. At the same pound of grain, every yard of fabric, time also appeared Anatoly Chuevery Soviet produced typewriter, bais, who under Yeltsin became the sewing machine, or car. It could father of privatization in 1991. not! And the Russian people slowly While all this upheaval was going waking up from their induced sleep on, bright young men, some educated, some self-educated, began to experiment with Capitalism. They traded, smuggled, imported, exported, scratched, and saved! They saw competition as a game in which to succeed by any means - fair, or often foul. They took as their models the American “Robber Barons” Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Gould, and Rockefeller – and like them, once wealthy, tried to ennoble themselves by culture, charity, and interest in politics. Those who made it to the top, the most famous ones, worked harder, were more ruthless, more lucky, and more daring. They were only the front runners of hundreds, who in one way or another were able to take advantage of the privatization opportunities that presented themselves, as by auctions and private bidding, the State turned the tremendous wealth of Russia’s industrial empire of steel, oil, gas, automobiles, mineral extraction, etc. stretching from the Amur in the Pacific through the Urals to the Caucasus over to private hands. It was assumed these new capitalists would be forced by self-interest to manage more efficiently than the previous local apparatchniks. Often it later became apparent that these very same managers who benefited from their local connections and knowledge became self-seeking capitalists themselves. The always feared and meddlesome KGB organization played at politics; it had dangerous, large Soviet and postSoviet dossiers of information, and its network of informers was not really disabled or powerless. There is no question that greater efficiency was gained The Cross is now but most of it legal again might not have flowed into a more equitable economy, but served to enrich by millions and billions, the profits of the new proto-capitalists, bankers, and media moguls. As the media explosion brought its benefits to Russia it brought advertisements, stock swindles, mass marketing, political influence, and more. Yes, this proto-capitalism also brought alliances between capitalists and politicians. The most f a m o u s DISCOVERS RUSSIA one would be the king-making influence of a committee composed of Berezhovsky, Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, Vinogradov, to keep the now ailing Yeltsin on his throne. Through their money and controlled media they built Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996. They were driven by their wish for the stability of the known, the reliable, and the continuation of profits and unfettered freedom for capitalists. From 1985 to 1996 is really only a few years, and fed by these unique and one-time conditions, the beginning of crude capitalism, based on Russia’s immense land mass transversed the same distance that American capitalism, fueled by America’s wealth and land mass, had transversed in 150 years since the more gradual Industrial Revolution. There had not been enough time elapsed in Russia for the appearance of a John Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Eugene Debs, Robert Kennedy, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Alan Greenspan, or Susan B. Anthony to inject their thoughts to influence events. Of course, good things also flowed from the changes after a while. The price of oil increased and the West started to invest in Russia. Russia became a consumer society with cheap imports and strange foreign foods, first imported, then locally produced which varied the staple traditional fare. Travel opened up, 125  Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Total Licensing Winter 2007

Total Licensing Winter 2007

https://www.nxtbookmedia.com