Collapse of an Empire

Lessons for Modern Russia

Yegor Gaidar

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780815731146
• eBook ISBN: 9780815731153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

""My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse...."" —From the Introduction to Collapse of an Empire The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word—a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the ""shock therapy"" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: ""Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat."" Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why so

INDEX

Abalkin, Leonid, 158, 179–80, 186, 228, 298n35

Abkhazia, ethnic conflicts, 74, 174

Academy of Sciences, 108–09

Administrative rent, 45

Aeroflot, 196, 239

Afghanistan, Soviet war in, 102, 106, 170, 171, 281–82n80

Agrarian states, 13, 27–28, 264n2

Agriculture: in advanced economies, 83; agrarian revolution, 80–81; in North America, 81

Agriculture, in Soviet Union, 82–88; collectivization, 80, 82, 85; effects of currency crisis, 194; exports, 74; fertilizer supplies, 194; fuel required, 164; good harvests, 125, 205; individual farming legalized, 157; inefficiency, 89; investment, 86–87, 121, 129, 205, 275n15; kolkhoz (collective farms), 83, 85, 88, 187, 188, 209; labor, 82, 83; land reclamation, 75–76, 275n15; migration from countryside, 84; pesticide use, 77; production, 87; productivity, 83, 119, 121; resources shifted to industry, 74, 82; soil amelioration, 75–76; sovkhoz (state farm) sector, 85, 88, 187, 209; subsidies, 119, 121; technology, 194, 210; unreliable harvests, 86, 88, 95, 103, 125; virgin land development, 85–86, 125. See also Food supply; Grain

Akulinin, Viktor, 206, 239–40

Alcohol: alcoholism, 77–78; anti-alcohol campaign, 133, 134...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• ABOUT BROOKINGS
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• I The Grandeur and the Fall of Empires
• II Authoritarian Regimes: The Causes of Instability
• III The Oil Curse
• IV Cracks in the Foundation: The Soviet Union in the Early 1980s
• V The Political Economy of External Shocks
• VI Development of the Crisis in the Socialist System
• VII On the Path to State Bankruptcy
• VIII The Fall
• AFTERWORD
• NOTES
• INDEX
• BACK COVER