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Russia's 'shadow market' for you ..
Russia's 'shadow market' : By ANDREY BORODAEVSKIY - Friday, April 13, 2012
- on japantimes.co.jp : http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120413ab.html
'We should keep in mind that Russia is a country that has spent 70 years in an inhuman experiment aimed at arranging all sides of socioeconomic life within a giant centrally planned system. Even if this time is over, many features of today's life go on reminding us of this heavy and in many ways onerous heritage.
Under the so-called Socialism, each family lived on its own, striving to survive at any price. It was especially hard in the God-forsaken countryside and in small towns around the widely spread great country. Almost everything was forbidden. People sat in jail for a handful of grain collected at the borders of a collective field. Taxes for keeping cattle, pigs and even chicken sometimes made keeping them practically impossible. People paid for every apple tree or currant bush in their garden (or preferred not to have them at all).
In this tragicomic situation it was only natural for families to try and invent occupations that, remaining hidden, could add at least something to their incomes — in order to survive (in the crudest and direct sense of this word). In the cities, clandestine "capitalists" emerged ..' ..
'.. In 1985, my friend Lev Timofeyev wrote a book on the subject, titled "The Technology of Black Market or the Peasant Art of Starving", which was published in the West and broadcast into Russia. For this, he landed in jail and was freed only two years later, in Mikhail Gorbachev's time. This civil and intellectual act brought him worldwide eminence and recognition within international academic communities.
What was so ubiquitous at that time not so long ago has not fully gone away. Illegal and quasi-legal activities still remain, and laws and administrative rules remain in many ways unchanged since the days of Stalin and Khrushchev. However, something essential was added.
Nowadays, corruption in all spheres and on all levels of socioeconomic life reigns supreme and does not show any signs of diminishing in any considerable way. Here is an ugly example: After a short period of relative freedom, practically all kinds of gambling (including mostly harmless ones like those all over Japan) were roughly pushed back into the shadow zone.' ..
'.. The overall size of the shadow market in Russia is estimated at between one-tenth and one-fifth of the legal and statistically registered market transactions of consumer goods and services.' ..
'.. Many kinds of shadow incomes are not only illegal but also immoral — such as bribes taken by legions of state officials including police, traffic inspectors, environmental officials and the sanitation and health services. All are "milking" individuals as well as small and midsize businesses and taking kickbacks that private firms have to regard as everyday "production costs" when fulfilling government orders at all levels. There is also organized prostitution and brothels; underground casinos and the production of counterfeit alcoholic beverages of both famous and bootleggers' own brands — in many cases not only of low quality but also dangerous to one's health.' ..
'.. We must not ignore such controversial heterogeneous manifestations of the chronic imperfection of Russia's socio-economic system. Nowadays, the Internet makes the sphere of individual activities even more heterogeneous and controversial because, in it, one can find almost anything — from valuable medical and culinary advice, to services in compiling one's horoscope, to vile pornography.
To better understand the grotesque way we currently live, our society has to contemplate the widely spread of illegal and quasi-legal activities and then sort them out.' ..
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Russia's 'shadow market' for you ..
Russia's 'shadow market' : By ANDREY BORODAEVSKIY - Friday, April 13, 2012
- on japantimes.co.jp : http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120413ab.html'We should keep in mind that Russia is a country that has spent 70 years in an inhuman experiment aimed at arranging all sides of socioeconomic life within a giant centrally planned system. Even if this time is over, many features of today's life go on reminding us of this heavy and in many ways onerous heritage.
Under the so-called Socialism, each family lived on its own, striving to survive at any price. It was especially hard in the God-forsaken countryside and in small towns around the widely spread great country. Almost everything was forbidden. People sat in jail for a handful of grain collected at the borders of a collective field. Taxes for keeping cattle, pigs and even chicken sometimes made keeping them practically impossible. People paid for every apple tree or currant bush in their garden (or preferred not to have them at all).
In this tragicomic situation it was only natural for families to try and invent occupations that, remaining hidden, could add at least something to their incomes — in order to survive (in the crudest and direct sense of this word). In the cities, clandestine "capitalists" emerged ..' ..
'.. In 1985, my friend Lev Timofeyev wrote a book on the subject, titled "The Technology of Black Market or the Peasant Art of Starving", which was published in the West and broadcast into Russia. For this, he landed in jail and was freed only two years later, in Mikhail Gorbachev's time. This civil and intellectual act brought him worldwide eminence and recognition within international academic communities.
What was so ubiquitous at that time not so long ago has not fully gone away. Illegal and quasi-legal activities still remain, and laws and administrative rules remain in many ways unchanged since the days of Stalin and Khrushchev. However, something essential was added.
Nowadays, corruption in all spheres and on all levels of socioeconomic life reigns supreme and does not show any signs of diminishing in any considerable way. Here is an ugly example: After a short period of relative freedom, practically all kinds of gambling (including mostly harmless ones like those all over Japan) were roughly pushed back into the shadow zone.' ..
'.. The overall size of the shadow market in Russia is estimated at between one-tenth and one-fifth of the legal and statistically registered market transactions of consumer goods and services.' ..
'.. Many kinds of shadow incomes are not only illegal but also immoral — such as bribes taken by legions of state officials including police, traffic inspectors, environmental officials and the sanitation and health services. All are "milking" individuals as well as small and midsize businesses and taking kickbacks that private firms have to regard as everyday "production costs" when fulfilling government orders at all levels. There is also organized prostitution and brothels; underground casinos and the production of counterfeit alcoholic beverages of both famous and bootleggers' own brands — in many cases not only of low quality but also dangerous to one's health.' ..
'.. We must not ignore such controversial heterogeneous manifestations of the chronic imperfection of Russia's socio-economic system. Nowadays, the Internet makes the sphere of individual activities even more heterogeneous and controversial because, in it, one can find almost anything — from valuable medical and culinary advice, to services in compiling one's horoscope, to vile pornography.
To better understand the grotesque way we currently live, our society has to contemplate the widely spread of illegal and quasi-legal activities and then sort them out.' ..
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