Tsar and boyars
Probably, all of us, as patriots of our country, should demonstrate optimism and instill in others the confidence that everything goes perfectly well. But if you are by nature not a completely stupid person, you still unwittingly notice that the situation in Russia is not developing in the best way, and the less reason for optimism, the further into the future we try to look.
Yes, we have a good army, which is actively developing and only getting better from year to year. But the USSR also had a good army, and where is the Soviet Union now?
Yes, new types weapons, Krymsky Bridge, good roads in unprecedented quantities, perpetual budget surplus, trade balance surplus, inflation at a record low ...
But somehow all this does not convince, understand? Here with the same inflation: I would understand pride if the Central Bank provided the current record low inflation at the refinancing rate of 2%. And with 8% and above this, sorry, any fool can. Or a budget surplus: perhaps it can be useful for a year or two, during the period of fighting hyperinflation. And what is he talking about now? Yes, except that the government is not smart enough to count its revenues and properly manage the money. The ideal is a budget in which revenues with expenses do not diverge a penny. And on the scale of a country like the Russian Federation, it would be wiser to have a small deficit, covered by borrowing in the domestic market. True, provided that the money is spent wisely. And this is almost fiction ...
And nevertheless, I absolutely do not share the point of view that is gaining popularity, that our power is somehow treacherous, completely corrupt, the Central Bank submits to the American Fed and so on. Our minds are really sparse, and the power is our own, flesh of the flesh.
I often have to read in the comments to my articles ironic attacks in the spirit of "again, the king is good, and the boyars are bad." And the people are probably right in something: the boyars are still picked up by the “king”, and a certain part of the blame for the boyar incompetence lies precisely with him. But let's still try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the need for change - from the thirst to carry everything to the ground.
The assertion that all the boyars are bad in our country does not stand up to criticism, if only because it seems to be good. Here, for example, Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov. It is difficult to say whether he always manages to achieve the highest possible result. But we have someone to compare: remember Shevardnadze or Kozyrev. Against their background, Lavrov looks just great, and indeed, by the general results of the work, it seems that it was simply impossible to achieve more.
Or, say, Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoigu. Well coped with the post of head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and even now, it seems, does not give reason to doubt that it is in its place. And, again, there is someone to compare with - remember the recent head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, who replaced Shoigu in this position, Vladimir Puchkov. Yes, at the post of Deputy Shoigu, he somehow managed to cope with it, but as soon as he gave the reins of government to the department, “something went wrong.” An interesting example of the predecessor of Shoigu as Minister of Defense, Anatoly Serdyukov. Although he is credited with the authorship of some positive changes in the Russian army (which is still a controversial issue), it’s still clear that he didn’t have a position like this: after all, people from his closest circle were blatantly stealing a matter of time, when they were recruited by foreign special services on such compromising material.
There are other "boyars", less significant and noticeable, coping fairly well with their duties. The head of the FSB, for example, whatever you say, and now terrorist activity in Russia is even less than in Europe itself. Or take the same Zolotov - literally until yesterday, the person coped well with the duties assigned to him and did not discredit the system and the "king." And the devil pulled him to call Navalny for the garages to fight with his fists ...
That is, hand on heart, we must admit that we have different “boyars”. There are also those that do not spoil the mass, and they are regularly pulling their “burlatz strap”.
But lately, more and more others are heard: illiterate, arrogant, self-confident. And this concerns not only the so-called economic bloc, but also various “politicians” of the Duma spill, all of whose activities, it seems, boils down to “stamping out” new laws and creating the appearance of political activity and pluralism.
Probably, we could demand from Putin (well, how “they could demand” - Navalny, too, so it seemed) to be more cautious in choosing advisers, assistants, ministers and other “service people”. But let's still not forget that he, despite his high position, is still a living person. And unfortunately sometimes it is human nature to make mistakes ...
Putin demonstrates a good selection of personnel where he himself is more or less well versed in the subject: in politics, geopolitics, in matters of internal and external security. And I do not agree with those who shout that his foreign policy allegedly led Russia into a sanctioned impasse.
The fact that our foreign policy position is far from ideal is a fact. But the point here is not Putin, but the quality of the challenges he faced.
Alas, miracles do not happen, and in a situation of confrontation with the real, without fools, masters of the world, possessing almost unlimited resources, it was just silly to count on an easy and quick victory. But it was impossible not to accept the challenge to us in Georgia, Ukraine or Syria.
As for Georgia and Ukraine, everything is simple, if you know how starfish eat. If you do not know, I will tell you. They, having grasped the victim with thousands of small legs on their rays, dumped out the stomach and simply digested the still living and fluttering prey. So the events at our borders were so enveloping us with an insatiable American stomach. Those who think that we needed to keep quiet in order to “carry it through” are mistaken - just in the absence of resistance, the digestive process in starfish goes the fastest.
According to the events in Syria, the situation is slightly different, but, nevertheless, our inaction there, too, could cost us dearly.
Incredibly, but the fact is that the Syrian campaign is the most profitable investment for Russia for all (probably) its history. And this is not about some abstract benefit, but about very specific money - rubles, dollars, euros, and so on.
After the start of the Ukrainian crisis and referendum in the Crimea, one of the ways to strangle Russia and pacify its ambitions was the collapse of energy prices. And this process even began to begin - we all remember how oil rapidly fell from more than a hundred dollars to thirty-six at the end of 2015. Although even earlier, at the end of 2014, the drop exceeded 50%, and the price was kept at the level of 50-55 dollars per barrel. It seems that during this period one of the Saudi princes in one of the social networks wrote a boastful post that his grandfather had helped to ruin the USSR, and now they will help to ruin Russia.
But as soon as the operations of the Russian VKS in Syria began, the situation on the oil market began to gradually but steadily change. And members of the Saudi royal family were suddenly noted on a visit to Putin’s Sochi residence, and the SA king himself made a state visit to Russia for the first time in history. And the OPEC + agreement was signed, and oil production began to be amicably reduced. In general, by some strange coincidence, the more they thrashed Saudi henchmen in Syria, the more expensive oil became. Is it really a coincidence?
No, do not believe those who pour crocodile tears for each of our bombs, allegedly spent aimlessly in Syria. Yes, for the price of another bomb, you can really buy a tram for the municipality. But this time, the opposite is true - every successful hit of our land mine brings the country tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. And collectively, we can talk about at least tens of billions of net profit. And this is without taking into account the increased demand for Russian weapons ...
Therefore, let us be objective - Putin is good in politics, and we need to be a completely stupid person so as not to notice.
But in the economy, unfortunately, the selection of personnel is disgusting. And there will be no references to external risks - after all, the sane economists should have seen a couple of decades ago the country's position in the area of providing the population with their own food, medicines, clothes, consumer goods and cars. All the more obvious were the problems in the machine-tool industry, electronics, aircraft industry and many more of the most diverse industries. And the fact that our entire “economic strategy” was reduced to the commonplace “sell oil - we buy the right product” just now led to the difficult situation in the country, to put it mildly.
Just in case, I want to advise everyone who starts to shout, how well we all have in agriculture, search in open sources, how many seeds we import, how many breeding eggs for our poultry farms and what dependence we still have on beef, for example. Armed with this information, you will surely be able to understand with what reservations we are all “good.”
Putin’s problem (besides the fact that he is not strong in economics) is that we simply do not have sane economists. The reason for this lies in the legacy that we inherited from the USSR.
Alas, Soviet economists understood Marx better than economics. By the end of the eighties, this somehow became very clear. And when the greatest Soviet “economist” Nikolai Ryzhkov fired the USSR in the leg, transferring trade with the former CMEA countries to dollars, the system naturally collapsed.
On the shoulders of these economists, the “young growth” of the illiterate MNF rooted in, who did not have enough knowledge to break through during the Soviet competition, but the Komsomol chuyka was enough to understand how the wind was blowing. And they quickly declared themselves to be marketers, were brought to the surface by the muddy waters of the nineties, and so they were fixed there, still holding their positions firmly.
Putin’s trouble (and all of us) is that he simply has no one to choose from. Before him, a dense line of stand or all the same Komsomol eighties, or they have learned graduates of the Higher School of Economics. And this, sorry, as the choice between horseradish and radish ...
Once again, shamelessly and loudly, I declare that in Russia there are simply no sane economists. And do not rush to sort out the names - I went through them dozens of times, but the result is always the same. They are neither on the right flank, nor on the left, nor in the center, if we still have one. Believe me, there is no difference from which side an economist has an extra chromosome ...
It is very difficult to say how it will end. We look pretty good on the external fronts, but all successes discredit the failures and weaknesses on the internal ones. Maybe GDP will make a miracle and find somewhere a couple of sane economists. Or maybe General Zolotov will challenge Maxim Oreshkin and will beat him behind the garages until he wiser (smiling for nothing, not such a hopeless option).
While one thing is clear: if Vladimir Vladimirovich “does not abandon his own people,” he should decide who his own is for him: the people of Russia or some of his worthless “boyars.” Because somehow it happened that the boyars themselves were no longer a people. And now "either - or."
And Putin, we probably still come in handy. It is like a tooth - it can be pulled out, it can be cured. But to pull out both more painfully and more expensively (it will be necessary to insert a new one) and more dangerous - the patient, that is, the system of state power in Russia, is not very healthy and may simply not survive such an operation.
With all the consequences, as they say ...
Yes, we have a good army, which is actively developing and only getting better from year to year. But the USSR also had a good army, and where is the Soviet Union now?
Yes, new types weapons, Krymsky Bridge, good roads in unprecedented quantities, perpetual budget surplus, trade balance surplus, inflation at a record low ...
But somehow all this does not convince, understand? Here with the same inflation: I would understand pride if the Central Bank provided the current record low inflation at the refinancing rate of 2%. And with 8% and above this, sorry, any fool can. Or a budget surplus: perhaps it can be useful for a year or two, during the period of fighting hyperinflation. And what is he talking about now? Yes, except that the government is not smart enough to count its revenues and properly manage the money. The ideal is a budget in which revenues with expenses do not diverge a penny. And on the scale of a country like the Russian Federation, it would be wiser to have a small deficit, covered by borrowing in the domestic market. True, provided that the money is spent wisely. And this is almost fiction ...
And nevertheless, I absolutely do not share the point of view that is gaining popularity, that our power is somehow treacherous, completely corrupt, the Central Bank submits to the American Fed and so on. Our minds are really sparse, and the power is our own, flesh of the flesh.
I often have to read in the comments to my articles ironic attacks in the spirit of "again, the king is good, and the boyars are bad." And the people are probably right in something: the boyars are still picked up by the “king”, and a certain part of the blame for the boyar incompetence lies precisely with him. But let's still try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the need for change - from the thirst to carry everything to the ground.
The assertion that all the boyars are bad in our country does not stand up to criticism, if only because it seems to be good. Here, for example, Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov. It is difficult to say whether he always manages to achieve the highest possible result. But we have someone to compare: remember Shevardnadze or Kozyrev. Against their background, Lavrov looks just great, and indeed, by the general results of the work, it seems that it was simply impossible to achieve more.
Or, say, Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoigu. Well coped with the post of head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and even now, it seems, does not give reason to doubt that it is in its place. And, again, there is someone to compare with - remember the recent head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, who replaced Shoigu in this position, Vladimir Puchkov. Yes, at the post of Deputy Shoigu, he somehow managed to cope with it, but as soon as he gave the reins of government to the department, “something went wrong.” An interesting example of the predecessor of Shoigu as Minister of Defense, Anatoly Serdyukov. Although he is credited with the authorship of some positive changes in the Russian army (which is still a controversial issue), it’s still clear that he didn’t have a position like this: after all, people from his closest circle were blatantly stealing a matter of time, when they were recruited by foreign special services on such compromising material.
There are other "boyars", less significant and noticeable, coping fairly well with their duties. The head of the FSB, for example, whatever you say, and now terrorist activity in Russia is even less than in Europe itself. Or take the same Zolotov - literally until yesterday, the person coped well with the duties assigned to him and did not discredit the system and the "king." And the devil pulled him to call Navalny for the garages to fight with his fists ...
That is, hand on heart, we must admit that we have different “boyars”. There are also those that do not spoil the mass, and they are regularly pulling their “burlatz strap”.
But lately, more and more others are heard: illiterate, arrogant, self-confident. And this concerns not only the so-called economic bloc, but also various “politicians” of the Duma spill, all of whose activities, it seems, boils down to “stamping out” new laws and creating the appearance of political activity and pluralism.
Probably, we could demand from Putin (well, how “they could demand” - Navalny, too, so it seemed) to be more cautious in choosing advisers, assistants, ministers and other “service people”. But let's still not forget that he, despite his high position, is still a living person. And unfortunately sometimes it is human nature to make mistakes ...
Putin demonstrates a good selection of personnel where he himself is more or less well versed in the subject: in politics, geopolitics, in matters of internal and external security. And I do not agree with those who shout that his foreign policy allegedly led Russia into a sanctioned impasse.
The fact that our foreign policy position is far from ideal is a fact. But the point here is not Putin, but the quality of the challenges he faced.
Alas, miracles do not happen, and in a situation of confrontation with the real, without fools, masters of the world, possessing almost unlimited resources, it was just silly to count on an easy and quick victory. But it was impossible not to accept the challenge to us in Georgia, Ukraine or Syria.
As for Georgia and Ukraine, everything is simple, if you know how starfish eat. If you do not know, I will tell you. They, having grasped the victim with thousands of small legs on their rays, dumped out the stomach and simply digested the still living and fluttering prey. So the events at our borders were so enveloping us with an insatiable American stomach. Those who think that we needed to keep quiet in order to “carry it through” are mistaken - just in the absence of resistance, the digestive process in starfish goes the fastest.
According to the events in Syria, the situation is slightly different, but, nevertheless, our inaction there, too, could cost us dearly.
Incredibly, but the fact is that the Syrian campaign is the most profitable investment for Russia for all (probably) its history. And this is not about some abstract benefit, but about very specific money - rubles, dollars, euros, and so on.
After the start of the Ukrainian crisis and referendum in the Crimea, one of the ways to strangle Russia and pacify its ambitions was the collapse of energy prices. And this process even began to begin - we all remember how oil rapidly fell from more than a hundred dollars to thirty-six at the end of 2015. Although even earlier, at the end of 2014, the drop exceeded 50%, and the price was kept at the level of 50-55 dollars per barrel. It seems that during this period one of the Saudi princes in one of the social networks wrote a boastful post that his grandfather had helped to ruin the USSR, and now they will help to ruin Russia.
But as soon as the operations of the Russian VKS in Syria began, the situation on the oil market began to gradually but steadily change. And members of the Saudi royal family were suddenly noted on a visit to Putin’s Sochi residence, and the SA king himself made a state visit to Russia for the first time in history. And the OPEC + agreement was signed, and oil production began to be amicably reduced. In general, by some strange coincidence, the more they thrashed Saudi henchmen in Syria, the more expensive oil became. Is it really a coincidence?
No, do not believe those who pour crocodile tears for each of our bombs, allegedly spent aimlessly in Syria. Yes, for the price of another bomb, you can really buy a tram for the municipality. But this time, the opposite is true - every successful hit of our land mine brings the country tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. And collectively, we can talk about at least tens of billions of net profit. And this is without taking into account the increased demand for Russian weapons ...
Therefore, let us be objective - Putin is good in politics, and we need to be a completely stupid person so as not to notice.
But in the economy, unfortunately, the selection of personnel is disgusting. And there will be no references to external risks - after all, the sane economists should have seen a couple of decades ago the country's position in the area of providing the population with their own food, medicines, clothes, consumer goods and cars. All the more obvious were the problems in the machine-tool industry, electronics, aircraft industry and many more of the most diverse industries. And the fact that our entire “economic strategy” was reduced to the commonplace “sell oil - we buy the right product” just now led to the difficult situation in the country, to put it mildly.
Just in case, I want to advise everyone who starts to shout, how well we all have in agriculture, search in open sources, how many seeds we import, how many breeding eggs for our poultry farms and what dependence we still have on beef, for example. Armed with this information, you will surely be able to understand with what reservations we are all “good.”
Putin’s problem (besides the fact that he is not strong in economics) is that we simply do not have sane economists. The reason for this lies in the legacy that we inherited from the USSR.
Alas, Soviet economists understood Marx better than economics. By the end of the eighties, this somehow became very clear. And when the greatest Soviet “economist” Nikolai Ryzhkov fired the USSR in the leg, transferring trade with the former CMEA countries to dollars, the system naturally collapsed.
On the shoulders of these economists, the “young growth” of the illiterate MNF rooted in, who did not have enough knowledge to break through during the Soviet competition, but the Komsomol chuyka was enough to understand how the wind was blowing. And they quickly declared themselves to be marketers, were brought to the surface by the muddy waters of the nineties, and so they were fixed there, still holding their positions firmly.
Putin’s trouble (and all of us) is that he simply has no one to choose from. Before him, a dense line of stand or all the same Komsomol eighties, or they have learned graduates of the Higher School of Economics. And this, sorry, as the choice between horseradish and radish ...
Once again, shamelessly and loudly, I declare that in Russia there are simply no sane economists. And do not rush to sort out the names - I went through them dozens of times, but the result is always the same. They are neither on the right flank, nor on the left, nor in the center, if we still have one. Believe me, there is no difference from which side an economist has an extra chromosome ...
It is very difficult to say how it will end. We look pretty good on the external fronts, but all successes discredit the failures and weaknesses on the internal ones. Maybe GDP will make a miracle and find somewhere a couple of sane economists. Or maybe General Zolotov will challenge Maxim Oreshkin and will beat him behind the garages until he wiser (smiling for nothing, not such a hopeless option).
While one thing is clear: if Vladimir Vladimirovich “does not abandon his own people,” he should decide who his own is for him: the people of Russia or some of his worthless “boyars.” Because somehow it happened that the boyars themselves were no longer a people. And now "either - or."
And Putin, we probably still come in handy. It is like a tooth - it can be pulled out, it can be cured. But to pull out both more painfully and more expensively (it will be necessary to insert a new one) and more dangerous - the patient, that is, the system of state power in Russia, is not very healthy and may simply not survive such an operation.
With all the consequences, as they say ...
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