As The Wheel Turns

At a time when the presumed real power in Russia has chosen to resurrect Stalin's image in the popular imagination by re-writing him into national history as a heroic patriot who drew the country into a new image of itself, proud and nationalistic with the USSR a world power to be reckoned with, along comes its factual President, Dmitry Medvedev seeming to contradict his mentor, Prime Minister Vladamir Putin.

When state economic enterprises and other valuable state assets were being virtually given away to the lowest bidders -insider acquaintances and friends - by Boris Yeltsin clumsily attempting to bring an unstable Russia into modernity and democracy, creating the powerful and wealthy oligarchs, Mr. Yeltsin's chosen successor went about returning those enterprises to the state, by charging some of those oligarchs with sternly indictable offences and re-possessing their acquired enterprises.

Now, it appears that matters have turned full-cycle again. Just as when collectivization under Stalin failed; agriculture collapsed, and industry and manufacturing were debased with inferior products, Russia once again is plagued with state institutions that don't operate efficiently, leaving the country in a perilous economic state. It can't have helped too very much that while president, Vladimir Putin placed his old KGB cronies in powerful administrative positions.

"As far as state corporations are concerned, I think they have no prospects in the current environment", claimed Mr. Medvedev in his annual state-of-the-nation address, while his prime minister looked on. The Russian president spoke of his disdain for the "primitive" structure of the economy in his country, and spoke desperately of the need for its modernization. The return to state-run monopolies a decided failure.

Russia was enjoying prosperity not all that long ago, when Vladimir Putin was still president, thanks to its fossil-fuels extraction and the high price of oil. When the price of a barrel of oil fell so low that profit became pencil-thin, and then the global financial collapse carried it to the brink of bankruptcy, the economy looked wan and tired, and reality set in. Massive worker layoffs from Soviet-style industries has further wounded the country.

And now, imagine, a return to privatization. Some state enterprises are to be sold, in an effort to slice into state involvement in the economy. As an obvious nod to the simple human fact that when there is money to be made, private enterprise needs no encouraging kick from government.