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Positives of the Russian economy
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Russia and its Lack of a Government
The main problem in Russia is lack of a non-corrupt government. It is impossible to run any country, poor or rich, crime or no crime, healthcare or no healthcare, economy or no economy, without some sort of government. Russia needs assistance in the form of socialist diplomatic support, advice, and very carefully monitored loans. There is no question of producing a Marshall Plan for Russia of the sort that the United States pioneered after World War II, but Russia needs to make that plan, and the U.S. needs to let Russia know that plan will be supported. Although the conditions in Russia differ significantly from the post-war Europe, this struggling nation needs a similar plan to restore it's economy, government, and human rights. Russia is in a desperate state of despair, suffering from poverty, crime, and disease, and needs aid from the U.S. It is also in the interest of the U.S. to provide this aid, as long as the aid is targeted at areas that would best boost Russia's terrible statistics, and turn Russia into a successful trading partner.
Poverty is a huge problem facing Russia. In a country with such long traditions of statistical manipulation and hostility to the inquiries of the state, it is not easy to pin down the true extent of poverty in Russia. But there is little doubt that the picture is looking increasingly bleak. United Nations figures suggest that the purchasing power of average income in the USSR in 1987 was about $6,000 or 32 per cent of the level of the US (Andrew, "POVERTY: Bleak future for the poor"). By 1996, it was just $4,531 in adjusted terms, or 17 per cent of the US level (Andrew, "POVERTY: Bleak future for the poor"). Since the collapse of the Sovie...
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...more successful in the past, a socialist government owned system might be recommended for Russia. This type of economy would help stop the Russian plutocrats who currently run the economy. After Russia has a strong government, it can create its own social programs for the needy. Maybe after Russia restructures itself and obtains a strong government, then it can begin to slowly strife for capitalism and democracy, but for now Russia has larger problems and should follow Cuba's model of socialism.
Bibliography
Jack, Andrew, "POVERTY: Bleak future for the poor," http://www.ft.com/ftsurveys/sc3ee6.htm, Internet, 4/28/00
Lynch, Allen, Great Decisions, Report Card on Survival, New York, The Chase Manhattan Corporation, 1999
Powell, David E., The Dismal State of Health Care in Russia, 1999
Wolosky, Lee S., Putin's Plutocrat Problem, 1999
No war is fought without the struggle for resources, and with Russia still rapidly lagging behind in the international industrialisation race by the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for social unrest and uprising against its already uncoordinated and temporally displaced government. With inconceivable demands for soldiers, cavalry and warfare paraphernalia, Russia stood little chance in the face of the great powers of World War One. Shortages of basic human necessities led to countless subsistence riots and the eventual power struggle between the ruling body and its people. From the beginnings of WWI to 1916, prices of essential goods rose 131 percent in Moscow and more than 150 percent in Petrograd. Additionally, historian Walter G. Moss stated that in September 1915 that “there were 100,000 strikers in Russia; in October 1916, there were 250,000 in Petrograd alone.” Moss continues to exemplify the increasing evidence of social unrest and connects the riots to a lack of resources when he goes on to point out that “subsistence riots protesting high prices and shortages… also increased.” ...
Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
While most of Europe had develop strong central governments and weakened the power of the nobles, Russia had lagged behind the times and still had serfs as late as 1861. The economic development that followed the emancipation of peasants in the rest of Europe created strong industrial and tax bases in those nations. Russian monarchs had attempted some level of reforms to address this inequality for almost a century before, and were indeed on their way to “economic maturity” (32) on par with the rest of Europe. But they overextended themselves and the crushing defeats of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and the First World War in 1917 lost them the necessary support from their subjects and created “high prices and scarcity” which were by far “the most obvious factors in the general tension”
Norris, Floyd. "Bausch & Lomb and S.E.C. Settle Dispute on '93 Profits." The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 Nov. 1997. Web. 16 May 2014.
...r V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. Simon Schuster/ A Viacom Company, 1998. 542-553.
In the late 19th century Russia had been notably behind Europe economically, they weren’t in possession of the modern farming technologies that could efficiently provide for a large country. As a result 90% of the Russian population were peasants (Massey, 4). The serfs lived in deep poverty; they didn’t have the appropriate apparatus to produce enough crops and most of their landlords had unbelievably high demands. In an effort to reform the economy’s recession tsar Alexander II liberated the serfs. However this created more bad for both the serfs and the nobles. In the beginning the serfs saw this is a great victory and another reason to be thankful for their tsar. But as timed pass by the peasants saw this life of liberty and freedom to be increasingly difficult. The government directly compensated the nobles, while the less desirable land was sold to the peasants at a much higher price. They monthly rent they paid the nobles was replaced with paying the state (Massey, 5). And while the population nearly doubled between 1861-1917 poverty increased not only with the peasants but with the nobles as well. Nobles found it hard to assimilate them to a new life style where they would have to trade their lavish goods with farming tools and as result many of them acquired a large amount of debt. This period signifies a time where the people of Russia opened their eyes to the deep poverty and lives of oppression they were living. This is the point where the feelings of peasants who previously worshiped the tsar turned bitter. After consistent resistance to industrialization the tsar had finally given in, aggressive approaches were put in place and railroads grew more than 15,500 miles in 1880 (Massey,6). As the Industrial production con...
Russia, a vast country with a wealth of natural resources, a well, educated population, and diverse industrial base, continues to experience, formidable difficulties in moving from its old centrally planned economy to a modern market economy. President Yeltsin's government has made substantial strides in converting to a market economy since launching its economic reform program in January 1992 by freeing nearly all prices, slashing defense spending, eliminating the old centralized distribution system, completing an ambitious voucher privatization program, establishing private financial institutions, and decentralizing trade. Russia, however, has made little progress in a number of key areas that are needed to provide a solid foundation for the transition to a market economy.
Mackay, Tim. "The Ethics Of The Wolf Of Wall Street." Charter 85.2 (2014): 67.Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Preston, A. (2012). You eat what you kill: from scandal to catastrophe, the rise and fall of the investment bank. New Statesman, 141, 22
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government. The soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1. fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse.
(Dr. Minton F, Goldman) So what were the factors that contributed to the collapse of the super power and what is preventing Russia from re-entering the international community as a stabilized independent country. In the beginning, Communism seemed to be the utopian ideal for the people of Russia because it promised elimination of classes, guaranteed employment, and gave hope that "The creation of a comprehensive social security and welfare system for all citizens that would end the misery of workers once and for all." In 1917, when Lenin came to power the socialist dictatorship underwent radical changes in it's economic doctrines adopting the New Economic Policy giving control of the majority of means of production to the government. Lenin's government made many achievements and in fact throughout the majority of Communist rule, censorship and subordination of interest groups was imposed to stop dissension and increase conformity to the new government's policies.
Causes of Dictatorship in Russia Around the 20th century, the end of the First World War cleared the way for the formation of democratic regimes. Why they had not been successful, why the people didn't use the opportunity to establish a democratic political system and why did the dictatorships appear, is still unclear, but it is a very discussable subject. The decisive role in these processes is the human being. It was the object of the cause, but on the other hand he was also the subject executor of all the problems as well.
The Russo-Chechen war that ended in 1996 should have given the Russian government a feel of things to come when they decided to attack in late September of last year. Triggered by security challenges to the State, Russia decided that the democracy would be in danger if they didn’t act. Russia was in a politically unstable situation right now with the resignation of Yeltsin, and the current Presidential elections looming. Also looming on the political horizon was the concern over rampant corruption in the government. If they had done nothing Yeltsin’s party would have stood to lose, yet Putin, (Yeltsin’s successor) succeeded in focusing the medias attention on the war rather that the domestic corruption.
Exploring the October revolution and the establishment of communism, Richard Pipes concludes that the origin of communism can be traced back to the distant past in Russia’s history. Pipes states that Russia had entered a period of crisis after the governments of the 19th century undertook a limited attempt at capitalisation, not trying to change the underlying patrimonial structures of Russian society. (Pipes, 1964)