Yep, it’s 1930s Germany all over again except, in that case, Germany at least had legitimate grievances imposed on them by the victors of World War One for the Nazi party to exploit; there was no other route out of hyperinflation and humiliation other than to tool up and fight back.
Almost all the ex-Soviet countries west of Russia have benefited enormously from Glasnost and Perestroika, and from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even Belarus and Hungary.
I looked at each country side by side ranked from worst performing to most improving. This is the order in which they’ve improved since 1990 - Tajikistan has gone backward, Armenia and Ukraine were doing very poorly:
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Turkmenistan
Armenia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia,
Belarus, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia.
You can compare any two of these countries over a long time period using this link and just swapping the country names:
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/russia/ukraine?sc=XE21
Fact of the matter is, the countries that followed the Moscow vision are all vastly worse off than the ones that decided their future would be better served with a more pro-Western stance. If you compare Russia to Ukraine you can see that Ukraine’s trajectory was almost identical to Russia’s until the setbacks from 2014.
As much as Belarus plays the pro-Russia card, it was playing both sides - and if you compare Belarus to Ukraine the difference is enormous. Belarus leapfrogged Russia in 2008 and has continued to improve since.
Russia feels persecuted because ITS OWN VISION has resulted in only its bigger western cities and northern oil/gas towns getting better off, while Russian controlled regions (east of the big Eurasian cities) have barely made it out of third world status. Result - enormous brain drain, and an economy that is almost completely dependent on energy, agriculture and mineral exploitation.
Russia hasn’t had a decent car marque since the Soviet Union had access to the Lada Riva and Yugo Zastava. Russia had a budding computer industry but still hasn’t got a brand to market outside the country. It’s finally got into the mobile phone market, 25 years too late to really be a player. White goods in Russia are all foreign imports.
If it wasn’t for Telegram and Kaspersky, Russia would have literally no IT brand recognition for anything outside its own borders.
This is what upsets Russia. But its inability to build and sell anything outside its own orbit has bugger all to do with what the West has imposed on it. China got with the program, Poland did, everybody else did except Russia.
The only reason I can’t buy anything that’s made in Russia is because they don’t make anything worth buying ANYWHERE in Russia. The only other country I can think of that’s as incapable of producing anything for a global market is North Korea.
Quite an achievement for a country so geographically vast that it spans a third of the international time zones.
Unlike Germany’s isolation and humiliation in the 1930s, Russia’s isolationism since Putin took over is entirely self-inflicted. They’re fast-tracking themselves into Hermit State status.
That was a great read! And thank you for the links.