Can a “hostel” be turned into a penthouse?! Part 1.

Is it possible to build the economically successful Soviet Union or the economically viable Russian Federation? Well, purely theoretically?

Yes, I know, I know, gentlemen critics. I know that Russia is a prison of peoples and, apart from curses, does not evoke any other feelings or thoughts in you. And also in me. But is it interesting to raise a question about building a successful concept in a huge multinational state with a planned economy (as in the USSR) or strict administration of the national economic and financial aspects of life (as in the Russian Federation)? What are the possibilities for the functioning of an economic model capable of living off the surplus value received from the sale of its own products? Is such a model possible under the conditions, figuratively speaking, of the prison of nations?

Let’s try not to count the pain and humiliation experienced by the colonial and semi-colonial peoples of the Russian Federation, and assume that everyone is happy with everything and wants to live together in order to build a prosperous and orderly life of the European or Japanese model: pensions, medicine, education, social security are at the highest level, everyone pays taxes and there is enough money for everything, everyone says “danke shon”, “bitte shon” to everyone and crosses the road only on the green light.

For a long time I tried to imagine such a state, but it did not work out. The USSR here immediately disappeared. Because the planned economy is still remembered well, but the impressions from it are very bad. Widespread shortages, commodity hunger, poor quality of goods, indifference of personnel at all levels, reaching outright sabotage… No, I don’t want this. Moreover, I see that no plans will save the economy without material interest. Maybe because these plans are created by the same indifferent people, they do not correspond to the realities of life,  they are clarified and corrected ten times along the way, and in the end there is chaos and collapse in all directions. In a word, mismanagement.

And the second option, with strict administration in the economy? I see, it does not match here. After all, the intervention of an administrator from outside violates the workings of economic laws, and they, like the law of nature, are unified and indisputable. A rigid administrator is an extra link in production processes. And besides, it breeds corruption.

In the history of Russia since the Middle Ages, administrative policy has been of the same type. Management was carried out either by sending the magistrate to a geographic point “for feeding”, or a rigid multi-stage and clumsy administrative resource was established. There has never been space for creativity in the development of public administration. The result, respectively, was similar, i.e. very mediocre.

In fact, neither Yeltsin nor Putin had any other way in the economy but to build a renovated concentration camp again so as not to lose the reins of government. With the production of goods with a high degree of processing and the level of surplus value, as usual, it did not work out. Well, maybe they gave more space to the oligarchs and loosened their reins. They slightly added feed in the bowl of hard workers. They slightly humanized pass control. But all the same, they  had to leave the State Security Committee (KGB) controllers on the towers. They knew that otherwise everything would fall apart.

Therefore, we, dear readers, come to the conclusion that both planned and oligarchic economic models in Russia are not viable.

So the question arises: maybe, in addition to the economic model, Russia itself needs to be changed?

But we will talk about this later, in the second part of the article.