XPost: soc.culture.baltics, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.russian   
   From: holman@mappi.helsinki.fi   
      
   In article <54qh9493qavtn9uekpqpe9ltfevcigd99v@4ax.com>, James A. Donald   
    wrote:   
      
   > > >> Finn's *had* to sell stuff to Russia, and *had* to   
   > > >> accept worthless rubles in exchange.  Big difference.   
   >   
   > > > Wrong.   
   >   
   > > This summarizes the course of this debate on 'Finlandization' right   
   > > there. A more verbose description would be severely anything but   
   > > flattery to Mr Donald.   
   >   
   > I repeat:  The Finns, the Czechs, the Poles, and the Hungarians, were   
   > getting pretty much the same deal.   
      
   And I repeat. You are WRONG.   
      
   The Finns and the Soviet Union did their trade according to a special   
   bilateral agreement using a barter-based clearing system denominated in   
   dollars and roughly determined by fluctuating world market prices.   
   Finland, being the economically more sophisicated of the two partners,   
   called the shots and dominated the relationship.   
      
   The Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians were, along with the GDR and other   
   satellite states, members of COMECON, the Eastern European equivalent of   
   the Common Market. The Soviet Union dominated the relationship in the   
   sense that it insisted that it work according to certain communist   
   economic theories. In the shorter and longer terms the system provided the   
   communist countries of Eastern Europe with considerably higher living   
   standards than the USSR had, and when it collapsed, they had far more   
   diversified and efficient economic infrastructure as well as the economic   
   know-how to be able to quickly re-orient their economies to the global   
   marketplace than Russia inherited from the USSR.   
      
   Now. almost twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, Russia is still   
   dotted with abandoned factories and a shabby industrial infrastructure of   
   uneven efficiency that is only partially able to satisfy the basic needs   
   of its population, while those of the former communist countries of   
   Eastern Europe participate fully in the world market place and provide   
   living standards at least ten per cent, in the case of Poland, and   
   arguably fifty per cent, in the case of the Czech Republic, than that of   
   Russia today.   
      
      
   > If it was such a great deal, why did no one accept it except at gunpoint?   
      
   It was not a matter of threats by gunpoint. In the case of Finland, the   
   justification was showing to the world that the USSR could coexist with a   
   prosperous capitalist country to the mutual benefit of both. For the USSR   
   the arrangement allowed each trading partner to concentrate on what it did   
   best: being a depandable supplier of cheap raw materiuals vs. being a   
   dependable supplier of consumer goods and more ambitious projects that the   
   USSR did not or could not produce. The downside was that it left little   
   incentive for either side to change and tweak that status quo, as would   
   always be the case in conditions of global competition without captive   
   markets.   
      
   COMECON was a totally different setup, being devoted to the idea of an   
   efficient division of labor and specialization between countries that had   
   had socialist economies imposed on them and were supposedly working   
   according to an ideology that did dismissed such concepts as world market   
   prices and profit as part of an alien and obsolete ideology.   
      
   > Everyone who tells us what a great deal it was stresses the stuff the   
   > Soviets got.  No one mentions the stuff the Finns and the rest got,   
   > because they did not get much.   
      
   All of them got far more than the USSR did because all of them, despite   
   the system functioning for more than four decades, always had standards of   
   living far higher than the USSR had. Although Finland, Poland,   
   Czechoslovkia, Hungary, the GDRm and the USSR all had war-ravaged   
   economies and a massive recontruction job to do in 1948, the year that can   
   be regarded as the beginning of these systemaric trade relationships, all   
   but the USSR had traditions of economic management and knowhow inheritd   
   from the pre-war period or rapidly acuired from contacts with other   
   countries that ensured that their economies were at an advantage compared   
   to the primitive and ideologically-driven Soviet economy. They were not   
   third-world economies relying primarily on extracting raw materials and a   
   few niche specialties such as munitions, but rather had sophisticated   
   economies that were able to the needs of their populations and produce a   
   surplus for export.   
      
      
   After more than forty years the situation had not changed. Finland, as   
   well as the four highly industrialized central European communist   
   economies, were far more developed and sophisticated than that of the USSR   
   during its final years, and they continued to provide their populaions   
   with living standards far higher than the USSR could, despite the economic   
   perversions that were part and parcel of trading according to communist   
   ideology. Although Russia has been trading according to standard   
   capitalist rules after the 1998 collapse of the post-communist ruble, with   
   the current Ruissian ruble now being a strong and fully convertible   
   currency, Russia still has a standar of living lower than that of any of   
   its former eastern European satellites.   
      
   Finland and the former communist block wound up with Manhattan, the   
   Russians wound uo with some shiny glass beads. Finland and the former   
   communist block countries emerged from the new economic conditions   
   precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet empire and economy with an   
   economic hangover, but were able to recover and are now global players in   
   the world economy. Russia has thusfar been content to contribute to the   
   world economy primarily as a supplier of raw materials. Thus Finnish Nokia   
   and Czech Skoda are known all over the world as suppliers of   
   sophisticated, state-of-the-art consumer products. The only Russian brand   
   names known all over the world are Lukoil and Stolichnaya. Although Russia   
   is a major producer of civil aircraft, its flagship airline, Aeroflot,   
   flied Boeings and Airbuses on its international routes. I happened to pass   
   the Russian embassy in Tallinn yesterday afternoon. The cars with Russian   
   diplomatic plates were Mercedes, BMWs, Hondas, and Peugeots. There was not   
   a single car of Russian manufacture among them.   
      
   Regards,   
   Eugene Holman   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)