Better Russian economy post-1991

Zyuganov...
Ok - maybe. Significantly better - unlikely. He still need to deal with chechen economic black hole and oligarchs. He is also complete unknown value as an in-office politician. As an opposition he is loud but quite tame really.

What his victory may improve is how democracy is viewed by the populace. Most people just stopped caring after shootout of 1993 and fraudulent 1996 elections.
 
Maybe if the vouchers went only to employees, with some modest extra for seniority, and a somewhat lesser modest extra for management.

And employees can sell them after a period of time, but no one individual can accumulate more than a single seniority share?


Actual privatisation options:


Once a firm corporatized, its managers and workers got to pick among three privatization options. The first option (variant 1) gave workers 25 per cent of the shares of the enterprise for free, yet made these shares nonvoting. Top managers could purchase 5 per cent of the shares at a nominal price. In addition, after privatization, the workers and the managers could get an additional 10 per cent at a 30 per cent discount to book value through something that resembles an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The second option (variant 2) gave managers and workers together 51 per cent of the equity, all voting, at a nominal price of 1.7 times the July 1992 book value of assets. This, of course, represented a very low price relative to the market value of these assets in a highly inflationary environment. Workers could pay for these shares in cash, with vouchers (to be discussed later), or through the retained earnings of the enterprise, and could pay over some relatively short period of time. As in the first option, an additional 5 per cent of shares could be obtained by managers and workers at low prices through the ESOP. Finally, a third option (variant 3), imposed by the managerial lobby in the parliament, allowed the managers to buy up to 40 per cent of the shares at very low prices if they promised not to go bankrupt. For a variety of reasons, this option has hardly been used.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/privatizing_russia.pdf
 
Does nobody agree that Zyuganov winning in 1996 is okay?
No

He believed in the theory of communism (unlike many Russian politicians who wanted to be in the "party of power") so expect limits on free expression, political parties, private ownership etc while at the same time he has to deal with the problems of a bankrupt state.
 
Personally for me I think the really best alternatives are Putin and Zyuganov. Putin crushed the oligarchs for the people, and to the remaining to do something for the country or get shot. Zyuganov, I think, would have led a neoliberal-Lukashenko-style reformation of the Russian economy. Since the OP said post-1991, then sorry, these are the two PODS.

Or if Yeltsin dies after December 26, 1991 and before February 1992 and gets replaced by a moderate who would reform the Russian economy along Chinese lines. Then who would be the leader then?
 
Personally for me I think the really best alternatives are Putin and Zyuganov. Putin crushed the oligarchs for the people, and to the remaining to do something for the country or get shot. Zyuganov, I think, would have led a neoliberal-Lukashenko-style reformation of the Russian economy. Since the OP said post-1991, then sorry, these are the two PODS.

Or if Yeltsin dies after December 26, 1991 and before February 1992 and gets replaced by a moderate who would reform the Russian economy along Chinese lines. Then who would be the leader then?

Chinese style reforms where you reform the economy greatly but not the political system could well work. If you try both (Like OTL) it doesn't matter much who you would put in charge, it would be a mess at first. It was a mess for about a generation after both the American and French Revolutions I don't see how Russia could skip that.

Radical change is always messy. Countries, like people, have to make mistakes and fall on their faces a few times before getting it right. To learn how to walk an infant has to fall quite a few times before doing so successfully.
 
Chinese style reforms where you reform the economy greatly but not the political system could well work. If you try both (Like OTL) it doesn't matter much who you would put in charge, it would be a mess at first. It was a mess for about a generation after both the American and French Revolutions I don't see how Russia could skip that.

Radical change is always messy. Countries, like people, have to make mistakes and fall on their faces a few times before getting it right. To learn how to walk an infant has to fall quite a few times before doing so successfully.

I don't agree about China-style reforms. They were based in the extremely cheap nature of labour in China. Soviet labour was generally not cheap, and where it was cheap, it wasn't AS cheap as China's. Many Soviet workers were highly-skilled technical specialists. That isn't what China based its boom on.
 

abc123

Banned
I don't agree about China-style reforms. .

Another thing is, Soviet Union was FIRST communist country in the world, Land of workers and peasants ( TM ), light of the socialist world. So, if they betray Soviet ideals by making reforms a-la-China, that will not only end communism in their economy, but pretty soon the rule of Communist Party as well.
The basic promise of socialism and rule of CPSU was that they are better than capitalism/Tsarism. So, if they show that such claims are not true ( and Government of the USSR is returning to the old Tsarist/capitalist ways), why to leave CPSU at helm?
 
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I would go for moderate change. Let's say Yeltsin dies in January 1992. President Rutskoy, then Zyuganov, with the help of the Supreme Soviet and the increasingly-influential neoliberals, embarks on a program of moderate change, with some being re-nationalized, and then there would be another part which is free-market, and there are gradual reforms of the system. After successful economic reforms until about 2005, they then reform politically.

I've read Mr. Zhao Ziyang's "Prisoner of the State", and I agree that slow but steady reforms are the best way.

Link is here.

Actually, their systems are the same. It's just that Russia, when it became communist, was wealthier than China.

Soviet labor, while isn't as cheap as China's, would still woo the investors. "At least there's more opportunity there", is what they will say.

The Chinese and Soviet economies are just the same.

A system that has existed for 70 years cannot be trashed overnight. That is a fact.
 
I would go for moderate change. Let's say Yeltsin dies in January 1992. President Rutskoy, then Zyuganov, with the help of the Supreme Soviet and the increasingly-influential neoliberals, embarks on a program of moderate change, with some being re-nationalized, and then there would be another part which is free-market, and there are gradual reforms of the system. After successful economic reforms until about 2005, they then reform politically.

I've read Mr. Zhao Ziyang's "Prisoner of the State", and I agree that slow but steady reforms are the best way.

Link is here.

Actually, their systems are the same. It's just that Russia, when it became communist, was wealthier than China.

Soviet labor, while isn't as cheap as China's, would still woo the investors. "At least there's more opportunity there", is what they will say.

The Chinese and Soviet economies are just the same.

A system that has existed for 70 years cannot be trashed overnight. That is a fact.

The problem there is that the slow but steady reforms might be delayed and delayed until they never happened. China was Communist for a considerably shorter period than the USSR was.
 
' . . . (variant 1) gave workers 25 per cent of the shares of the enterprise for free, yet made these shares nonvoting. Top managers could purchase 5 per cent of the shares at a nominal price. In addition, after privatization, the workers and the managers could get an additional 10 per cent at a 30 per cent discount to book value . . . '

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/privatizing_russia.pdf
Too complicated.

And okay, here's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If there are rapid iterations and rapid-cycle feedback, people can get awfully good at something. I mean, look at how good people get at fantasy baseball. Some of the better ones really could run a team.

One interesting things is that workers may be more risk-averse than corporate managers in the West or previous Soviet governmental managers. At least at first. And then workers can learn to take a series of smart medium risks, rather than stupid risks.
 

abc123

Banned
I even think that selling the companies in a public auction ( if made under fair conditions for all and run by a honest government ) could be the best course of action.

Future owners should accept some conditions, like keeping the certain number of workers, investing a certain sum of money etc.
 
The Soviets never discover the oil and gas fields in western Siberia during the late 1960's. The petrodollars made it easy for them to avoid making needed reforms and paved the way for their demise when oil and gas prices collapsed in the 80s and 90s. It's called the resource curse. And its hitting them again as we speak.
 
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