Crimea on Bumpy Road to Becoming a Russian Province

Natalya Rudenko's ears were still ringing from being shouted at by a father demanding that the Ukrainian-language school she has run for 17 years in Crimea's capital now teach in Russian when local officials turned up at her office to dismiss her.

Russia promised it was necessary to take control of the Crimea and guarantee no further ethnic language discrimination against any ethnic group, and then actually harshly discriminates against a Crimean school teaching the Ukrainian language by ordering the closing of the school. This school closure represents the new Bolshevist Fascism of Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin at work in Putin's new Russian regime.

To be honest, I think living conditions will probably improve in the short term. Putin has a lot to gain by showcasing the Russian takeover as a success, and lot to lose if Crimea goes down the gutter.

So he will pump billions into the region to artificially prop up the economy until Crimea is no longer of use as an effective Potemkin region.

“Why not? They are already a Russian conquest.”

Because such language discrimination and intimidation is a violation of Russian law and international law, and it highlights the fraudulent nature of Russia’s claimed purpose for unlawfully invading and annexing Ukrainian territories in violation of numerous international bilateral and multilateral agreements and treaties.

I found the article, published in a Swedish-run newspaper, to be very interesting. The school used to prepare students to learn at their nation’s top universities, which taught in Ukrainian. Now, that they’re part of Russia, there’s no point in teaching them Ukrainian, because their new nation’s top universities teach in Russian.

I can plainly empathize with the poor woman who used to run the college. But this doesn’t strike me as hateful bigotry, but necessary transformation. And, for the record, Dugin : Putin :: Jeremiah Wright : George Bush. Dugin is Putin’s most hated, fiercest critic, not his ally.

The Russians aren’t stupid. A common language is vitally important if one wants to preserve one’s country and culture. I know it’s heresy, but multiculturalism is an absolutely ridiculous concept. It’s like picking the Tower of Babel as as a guide for building unity. Democrats, of course, probably don’t even know how that tower turned out, but diversity, especially in language, does not make us stronger. It only makes it more difficult to communicate and share a common culture or purpose!

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~To be honest, I think living conditions will probably improve in the short term. Putin has a lot to gain by showcasing the Russian takeover as a success, and lot to lose if Crimea goes down the gutter.

So he will pump billions into the region to artificially prop up the economy until Crimea is no longer of use as an effective Potemkin region.~

Russia is a $20,000 income economy which is in a class of West Virginia. Ukraine is a $3000 income economy which is in a class of Congo.

Any assumption that Crimea has a chance to perform worse under a new rule is a blatant agitprop.

“Now, that they’re part of Russia, there’s no point in teaching them Ukrainian, because their new nation’s top universities teach in Russian.”

Russia spans numerous time zones and is the home to many ciltures and languages. Due to the Soviet era deportations and diaspora of Ukrainians throughout Russia, especially Siberia and Moscow, Ukrainian language and culture is the third largest such language and culture in today’s Russia.

Russia’s laws mandate a requirement that Ukrainian language and communities must be respected and safeguarded against discrimination. Nonetheless, the Putin regime has exercised its totalitarian power to unjustly influence the current Russian courts to abrogate those legal rights in recent court rulings against Russian Ukrainians and their national organization representing their community’s rights under Russian laws.

This latest school shutdown in the Crimea is particularly noteworthy because of the role of the political platform of National Bolshevism and its openly self-declared Fascist objectives to persecute non-Russian populations is actually being put into effect in Russia and Russia’s latest conquests.

You realize the only real reason GDP per capita is higher in Russia is because they happen to be the largest seller of oil and natural gas in the world. Unlike Ukraine.

So by necessity, Putin does have to pump that oil money around, although regional income inequality is enormous nevertheless. Kursk province bordering Ukraine (of WWII fame) actually has an average income roughly equal to Ukraine.

Moscow is like living in Spain. Chechnya is like lraq. And Tyumen actually rivals the United States. (Thanks oil!)

That totally misses the point. Ukrainian was taught in the Crimea to prepare students for university in Ukraine, not so they could hang out in Siberia and the Urals.

And yes, there is a National Bolshevist movement in Russia, as would be expected considering Russia’s history. But they are enemies of Putin.

~You realize the only real reason GDP per capita is higher in Russia is because they happen to be the largest seller of oil and natural gas in the world.~

Nice theory, but it is ignoring numerous factors to match reality. First of all Russia is more populous than traditional petrocracies. If you are going to split combined Russian oil revenue since 2000 between it’s citizens it won’t be much higher than $10 a week. And I’m not including operating costs of oil companies.

Isn’t it hard to match Spain (or even Iraq) being a petrocracy like that?

It also makes sense to compare a Russian GDP dynamics to traditional petrocracies to check your theory. Let’s take Venezuela, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

All of the above were about $200 billion economies in 1999 after Asian recession. Now SA and Norway are $500-600 billion economies and Venezuela hasn’t progressed too much at all.
Russia is somehow is a $2 thrillion economy now.

Isn’t there any flaw in your theory after all? What if they have any other drivers in their economy?

You might only be right in that said oil revenue makes the most money for the Russian government which taxes extraction industry like crazy.
On the other hand it doesn’t bother the rest of businesses and individuals on that matter much.

I did, just to be brief. But the driving factor behind the resurgent Russian economy is still mostly because oil prices increased 500% since 2000.

More populous, but the vast majority of the oil money is concentrated in the Moscow metro region and in the hands of the oligarchs. Which was the point in my earlier post, actually.

Speaking of oligarchs, one of the good things Putin did was stop the rampant stealing during Yeltsin era. Now they only steal what Putin lets them steal, which is still better.

And as for your examples regarding SA and Norway economies having increased about 250-300% since 1999, well it turns out Russia is much the same.

Chart below shows Russia's real GDP increasing from 1 trillion in 1999 to 2.6 trillion today. 260% growth and consistent with your figures. Venezuela is doing terrible for obvious reasons.

Real GDP (PPP) is the golden standard for calculating economic growth by most financial, media and business organizations. When Bloomberg, WSJ and even RIA Novoski reports on economic growth, read the fine print and realize it’s PPP. It’s for a reason.

Nominal is basically adding all rouble transactions in the Russian economy together and converting to dollars.

PPP or burger index are quite an imaginary multiplicators but you are off point if you think adding it makes Russian economy any worse.

Add another $600 billion to their economy as far as BigMac is more affordable in Moscow than it is in DC.
And Norway shrinks dramatically because burger goes over $10 in Oslo.

Bottom line is oil makes about as much share in total Russian economy as it is in US economy.
And they have tons of domestic manufacturing, though most of it consumed at home and barely exported. There is no such a trade surplus between Russia and China as it is between US and China.
There are Russian-built motor vehicles, HDTVs, mobile devices, and home appliances including cheap plastic crap which is all Chinese-made in US and Europe.

If you were in Russia in the 1990s you would know that the value of the rouble decreased so much that translating into US dollars became totally distorted.

Unsurprisingly, this is why nominal GDP is so different and much less noteworthy than PPP in this case. In America, PPP is always the same as nominal because of the problems in translating currencies to dollars.

And I’m not saying the Russian economy is worse at all! In fact, Real GDP is higher in Russia than your figures. My point is that Russia’s economic boom is mostly due to huge quantities of oil and gas, used to subsidize all kinds of industries actually, aka protectionism.

~If you were in Russia in the 1990s you would know that the value of the rouble decreased so much that translating into US dollars became totally distorted.~

You are right but Weimar moment happened in a period of 1992-1998 there, and I’m intentionally starting a year later so it is irrelevant in our discussion.

Once again, all of the above including PPP doesn’t add any more than 30% to real economy.

If it was a single trick pony petrocracy for sure their chart would look just slightly better than Norway and SA, with or without currency transactions.

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