What analysts do not say
At the end of the 1990-s in the Russian press it was popularly believed that the country needed a long-term development strategy. As an example, China was usually cited, for which such a strategy worked already then, but the overall mainstream development program of the Russian Federation was not created this way. Instead of it, programs appeared in branches and departments: rearmament of the army, housing construction, education, etc. In general, instead of the master plan, we received only its similarities that did not work well in a stable environment and would hardly work with the onset of lean years. . A comprehensive strategic project was required, as they say, just yesterday, and separate derivatives of the long-term plan were to be medium- and short-term horizons. By and large, the launch of such strategies was to occur even after the financial crisis of 1998, when with the fall of the ruble the mechanism of revival of the domestic industry was activated. But oil prices, which sharply jumped on demand from China and India, caused the illusion that a master plan was not needed.
However, it's all about planning in a calm, peaceful time. At the moment, the era of very different projects, plans for survival in extreme conditions. It must be admitted that now Russia is in a position where the rapid depletion of accumulated resources continues. The depletion of resources is not only monetary, which should work to support the ruble. Everything is much more complicated. There are intangible resources that cannot be measured. That is, it is impossible to measure in absolute numbers. For example, such a resource is public confidence in the government and its willingness to endure difficulties in the absence of political and moral guidelines. If the country's leadership does not keep a “hand on the pulse” of public sentiment, then one day it may become clear that these important resources have quietly dried up.
Forecasts and Prophecies
The raw material orientation of the economy remains. Budget revenues largely depend on the dynamics of world energy prices. We are losing the competition in the global market, which is more and more oriented towards the innovation sectors, the new economy - the economy of knowledge and technology. A significant part of the Russian economy is still in the shadows.
(Message from the President to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. July 8 2000.)
These words sounded a decade and a half ago. Today, the population of the Russian Federation continues to watch oil quotes with a sinking heart, counting how many goods with a changed course they can buy for their money. This is the result of the development of a country without a plan and strategy, which allowed officials to substitute real activity with its imitation. After all, if there are no concrete figures to which it is necessary to pull up, then anything can be given out for the success of a concrete leader.
Confusion has now come to the community of experts, who sometimes give the most fantastic predictions. Let us give a few examples to clarify what exactly we are talking about.
So, some economists ahead of time started talking about a possible paralysis of the Russian banking system almost as if the disaster of the country as a whole. A common mistake of Russian financial analysts is that they transfer someone else's experience to domestic soil, without taking into account local peculiarities. In the Russian Federation, the financial sector is a feeder for the elect, with the real economy practically not intersecting due to transcendental interest on loans. In the West, everything is different. There credit is the foundation. But it is according to Western patterns that our home-grown predictors for some reason measure their own economy.
Political scientists have also gone a short distance away with their reasoning about the imminent start in the Russian Federation of a brutal clash between oligarchs related to the collapse of the economy. The basis is, of course, the Ukrainian example. It cannot be said that this is absolutely impossible in our country, but two differences between countries cannot be missed.
The first difference: in Ukraine, decentralizing and chaotic beginnings were traditionally strong, while in Russia everything is much more centralized and authoritarian. Moscow does not yet allow the autonomy of the oligarchs to the extent that Kiev has always allowed it. Remembering the unforgettable Kuchma, one can say with a clear conscience that in this respect Ukraine is not really Russia.
The second difference. In Russia, in Russia, the ruling classes have already looked at the experience of their neighbors and are hardly in a hurry to repeat it. A similar “before Ukraine” could happen in the Russian Federation, but “after Ukraine” such a path is unlikely.
Examples can be cited to infinity. The most common mistake of analysts is that they too freely dispose of the word “collapse” and its synonyms, without giving transcripts to the general public.
And really, what is, for example, “economic collapse”? Something like that which took place in the late USSR? But a very specific type of economy collapsed there - a planned one that simply stopped working. A market type, even a market-oligarchic one (different from a real market economy, just like toilet paper differs from emery cloth) is arranged quite differently, and it is not so easy to sharpen it.
In modern Russia, the collapse of the economy, and of the country as a whole, is possible only with an illegitimate change of power, a coup d'état. And with a coup with equal chances of both successful and disastrous. In the event of a successful coup, many regions will refuse to recognize the coup and may seriously consider declaring independence - it is not for nothing that US Ambassador John Tefft traveled around Russia so much. In case of an unsuccessful coup, the situation is no less piquant: some subjects of the federation can recognize putschists before their defeat, thereby cutting off their own ways to retreat. After the restoration of the legitimate central authority in Moscow, such shifter nomenclatures do not have any other choice, except for all the same separatism, otherwise their heads will fly among the first.
Ring of enemies
Under current conditions, it is important not to repeat the mistakes of Gorbachev, who surrendered the outer contour of the defense, collapsed the economy and allowed the emergence of armed conflicts around the perimeter of the borders. The latter circumstance played an almost decisive role in the 1991 disaster. As a result of the rejection of the suppression of nationalist riots, the Soviet Union was immediately involved in several local wars on its territory. In conjunction with the frustration of the government and the collapse of the economy, there was an interception of power and a natural disintegration.
It was not for nothing that we remembered the occurrence of conflicts along the Russian borders, because more and more threatening signals are coming in from all sides. For example, in the Baltic States and Poland, military exercises are constantly being held under the sign of fighting the threat from Kaliningrad, which is presented in the Western press as something militarized and dangerous to the extreme. The question arises - how can Kaliningrad, which has a population of less than a million people, could threaten thirty-eight million Poland, a member of NATO? Right, no way. And the maneuvers are not at all like defensive ones. If a certain subject is afraid of an evil bear, then it would be logical to build a high fence near the forest, and not to go to the den for a bear skin with pitchforks at the ready - namely, our Eastern European neighbors are clearly preparing for the second way.
Naturally, today an attack on Kaliningrad would look insane, and the chances of success of the aggressor would not even be zero, but negative. However, is there any groundwork for the future? And the future is not so remote.
The tone of the media in neighboring countries of the Russian Federation also leads to suspicions. If in April 2014, the comments were frightened and confused, now printed and electronic publications are increasingly allowing themselves to scorn and snooty attacks on Moscow. A very significant change. Very little remains to the famous “colossus on the clay feet”.
In addition to Kaliningrad, there are a dozen more potential hot spots. Suffice it to mention two major official territorial disputes, three or four frozen conflicts in the CIS space (Transnistria, Armenia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Tajikistan) in which Russia participates in one way or another. Even one such conflict will become a serious test for crisis management. And already two or more conflicts that broke out at the same time can lead to a catastrophic overstrain of forces. It is precisely from this that a competently composed strategy providing for a variety of options can save.
Conventional planning provides for the prosperity of resources for the development of the country, a stable socio-economic situation in the country and a relatively calm external environment. An extreme or crisis plan considers the existence of a nation in conditions of limited resources, increasing internal instability and a frankly hostile external environment. Also an integral part of the extreme plan is to counter plans, let's call them so, hostile forces. Here it is important to understand, at least in general terms, what an enemy plan is and what means it will use. Until such an understanding arises, the country is doomed to receive blows from the outside — every time more and more sensitive. There is a certain limit beyond which the state falls. In physics, such examples are sufficient: this is the critical mass of uranium or the Oppenheimer-Volkov limit, beyond which the neutron star becomes a black hole. However, in the case of a randomized human society, it is practically impossible to understand what will be the limit. Therefore, it is so important not to bring the country to this limit, so that later it will not be overlooked.
Rocking the state boat is not at all a cartoonist oppositionist in a rainbow leotard and with a white ribbon on his shoulder. The ostentatious destruction of food in front of millions of people living below the poverty line, and parole for Vasilyeva destabilize the situation more than a whole army of bulk and a hundred hundred swamp rallies. This is understood even by officials - those who are smarter and with the most developed self-preservation instinct. The famous phrase about the Russian revolt, which is always merciless, did not lose its topicality in the twenty-first century.
The ultimate goal of all external hostile forces is clear - to bring the Russian nation to a state in which it can no longer influence anything. Like the position in which the once great Greeks found themselves today. To do this, it is not necessary to destroy Russia to the ground. It is enough to achieve a separation of two or three regions, and economic ties will be broken, and Russia will be thrown back decades ago - until new ties are established.
In order to avoid such an outcome, a crisis plan is necessary, which should include, if not all scenarios, then very many. Whether such a plan is being created now is a big question. No less a question - who to trust the creation of such a plan. If the “specialists” of the HSE or “effective managers” like Serdyukov, then the result will be appropriate. We need new people, and with them - new ideas. But where do they come from in conditions of poorly working social elevators?
Сonclusion
Russia came to the fateful 2014 year with a whole fan of unresolved internal and external problems. Trying to solve them at once, now, in extreme conditions is dangerous and stupid. Not to decide at all - a crime. Only a faithful and balanced plan, which will rely on the trust of the people, will allow not only to survive difficult times, but also to see the overthrow of the enemy.
However, it's all about planning in a calm, peaceful time. At the moment, the era of very different projects, plans for survival in extreme conditions. It must be admitted that now Russia is in a position where the rapid depletion of accumulated resources continues. The depletion of resources is not only monetary, which should work to support the ruble. Everything is much more complicated. There are intangible resources that cannot be measured. That is, it is impossible to measure in absolute numbers. For example, such a resource is public confidence in the government and its willingness to endure difficulties in the absence of political and moral guidelines. If the country's leadership does not keep a “hand on the pulse” of public sentiment, then one day it may become clear that these important resources have quietly dried up.
Forecasts and Prophecies
The raw material orientation of the economy remains. Budget revenues largely depend on the dynamics of world energy prices. We are losing the competition in the global market, which is more and more oriented towards the innovation sectors, the new economy - the economy of knowledge and technology. A significant part of the Russian economy is still in the shadows.
(Message from the President to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. July 8 2000.)
These words sounded a decade and a half ago. Today, the population of the Russian Federation continues to watch oil quotes with a sinking heart, counting how many goods with a changed course they can buy for their money. This is the result of the development of a country without a plan and strategy, which allowed officials to substitute real activity with its imitation. After all, if there are no concrete figures to which it is necessary to pull up, then anything can be given out for the success of a concrete leader.
Confusion has now come to the community of experts, who sometimes give the most fantastic predictions. Let us give a few examples to clarify what exactly we are talking about.
So, some economists ahead of time started talking about a possible paralysis of the Russian banking system almost as if the disaster of the country as a whole. A common mistake of Russian financial analysts is that they transfer someone else's experience to domestic soil, without taking into account local peculiarities. In the Russian Federation, the financial sector is a feeder for the elect, with the real economy practically not intersecting due to transcendental interest on loans. In the West, everything is different. There credit is the foundation. But it is according to Western patterns that our home-grown predictors for some reason measure their own economy.
Political scientists have also gone a short distance away with their reasoning about the imminent start in the Russian Federation of a brutal clash between oligarchs related to the collapse of the economy. The basis is, of course, the Ukrainian example. It cannot be said that this is absolutely impossible in our country, but two differences between countries cannot be missed.
The first difference: in Ukraine, decentralizing and chaotic beginnings were traditionally strong, while in Russia everything is much more centralized and authoritarian. Moscow does not yet allow the autonomy of the oligarchs to the extent that Kiev has always allowed it. Remembering the unforgettable Kuchma, one can say with a clear conscience that in this respect Ukraine is not really Russia.
The second difference. In Russia, in Russia, the ruling classes have already looked at the experience of their neighbors and are hardly in a hurry to repeat it. A similar “before Ukraine” could happen in the Russian Federation, but “after Ukraine” such a path is unlikely.
Examples can be cited to infinity. The most common mistake of analysts is that they too freely dispose of the word “collapse” and its synonyms, without giving transcripts to the general public.
And really, what is, for example, “economic collapse”? Something like that which took place in the late USSR? But a very specific type of economy collapsed there - a planned one that simply stopped working. A market type, even a market-oligarchic one (different from a real market economy, just like toilet paper differs from emery cloth) is arranged quite differently, and it is not so easy to sharpen it.
In modern Russia, the collapse of the economy, and of the country as a whole, is possible only with an illegitimate change of power, a coup d'état. And with a coup with equal chances of both successful and disastrous. In the event of a successful coup, many regions will refuse to recognize the coup and may seriously consider declaring independence - it is not for nothing that US Ambassador John Tefft traveled around Russia so much. In case of an unsuccessful coup, the situation is no less piquant: some subjects of the federation can recognize putschists before their defeat, thereby cutting off their own ways to retreat. After the restoration of the legitimate central authority in Moscow, such shifter nomenclatures do not have any other choice, except for all the same separatism, otherwise their heads will fly among the first.
Ring of enemies
Under current conditions, it is important not to repeat the mistakes of Gorbachev, who surrendered the outer contour of the defense, collapsed the economy and allowed the emergence of armed conflicts around the perimeter of the borders. The latter circumstance played an almost decisive role in the 1991 disaster. As a result of the rejection of the suppression of nationalist riots, the Soviet Union was immediately involved in several local wars on its territory. In conjunction with the frustration of the government and the collapse of the economy, there was an interception of power and a natural disintegration.
It was not for nothing that we remembered the occurrence of conflicts along the Russian borders, because more and more threatening signals are coming in from all sides. For example, in the Baltic States and Poland, military exercises are constantly being held under the sign of fighting the threat from Kaliningrad, which is presented in the Western press as something militarized and dangerous to the extreme. The question arises - how can Kaliningrad, which has a population of less than a million people, could threaten thirty-eight million Poland, a member of NATO? Right, no way. And the maneuvers are not at all like defensive ones. If a certain subject is afraid of an evil bear, then it would be logical to build a high fence near the forest, and not to go to the den for a bear skin with pitchforks at the ready - namely, our Eastern European neighbors are clearly preparing for the second way.
Naturally, today an attack on Kaliningrad would look insane, and the chances of success of the aggressor would not even be zero, but negative. However, is there any groundwork for the future? And the future is not so remote.
The tone of the media in neighboring countries of the Russian Federation also leads to suspicions. If in April 2014, the comments were frightened and confused, now printed and electronic publications are increasingly allowing themselves to scorn and snooty attacks on Moscow. A very significant change. Very little remains to the famous “colossus on the clay feet”.
In addition to Kaliningrad, there are a dozen more potential hot spots. Suffice it to mention two major official territorial disputes, three or four frozen conflicts in the CIS space (Transnistria, Armenia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Tajikistan) in which Russia participates in one way or another. Even one such conflict will become a serious test for crisis management. And already two or more conflicts that broke out at the same time can lead to a catastrophic overstrain of forces. It is precisely from this that a competently composed strategy providing for a variety of options can save.
Conventional planning provides for the prosperity of resources for the development of the country, a stable socio-economic situation in the country and a relatively calm external environment. An extreme or crisis plan considers the existence of a nation in conditions of limited resources, increasing internal instability and a frankly hostile external environment. Also an integral part of the extreme plan is to counter plans, let's call them so, hostile forces. Here it is important to understand, at least in general terms, what an enemy plan is and what means it will use. Until such an understanding arises, the country is doomed to receive blows from the outside — every time more and more sensitive. There is a certain limit beyond which the state falls. In physics, such examples are sufficient: this is the critical mass of uranium or the Oppenheimer-Volkov limit, beyond which the neutron star becomes a black hole. However, in the case of a randomized human society, it is practically impossible to understand what will be the limit. Therefore, it is so important not to bring the country to this limit, so that later it will not be overlooked.
Rocking the state boat is not at all a cartoonist oppositionist in a rainbow leotard and with a white ribbon on his shoulder. The ostentatious destruction of food in front of millions of people living below the poverty line, and parole for Vasilyeva destabilize the situation more than a whole army of bulk and a hundred hundred swamp rallies. This is understood even by officials - those who are smarter and with the most developed self-preservation instinct. The famous phrase about the Russian revolt, which is always merciless, did not lose its topicality in the twenty-first century.
The ultimate goal of all external hostile forces is clear - to bring the Russian nation to a state in which it can no longer influence anything. Like the position in which the once great Greeks found themselves today. To do this, it is not necessary to destroy Russia to the ground. It is enough to achieve a separation of two or three regions, and economic ties will be broken, and Russia will be thrown back decades ago - until new ties are established.
In order to avoid such an outcome, a crisis plan is necessary, which should include, if not all scenarios, then very many. Whether such a plan is being created now is a big question. No less a question - who to trust the creation of such a plan. If the “specialists” of the HSE or “effective managers” like Serdyukov, then the result will be appropriate. We need new people, and with them - new ideas. But where do they come from in conditions of poorly working social elevators?
Сonclusion
Russia came to the fateful 2014 year with a whole fan of unresolved internal and external problems. Trying to solve them at once, now, in extreme conditions is dangerous and stupid. Not to decide at all - a crime. Only a faithful and balanced plan, which will rely on the trust of the people, will allow not only to survive difficult times, but also to see the overthrow of the enemy.
Information