Bloomberg.com’s audio program On the Economy talks with Marshall Goldman about Gazprom, Putin, Medvedev, oil and gas, and the “Dutch disease.” Goldman’s new book Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia just came out on Oxford University Press. You can download the interview here.
(Top down, left to right: Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister; Viktor Zubkov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Shubalov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Sechin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Sobyanin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Ivanov, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksei Kurdrin, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksandr Zhukov, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister; Rashid Nuraliev, Minister of Internal Affairs; Aleksei Kudrin, MInister of Finance; Sergei Shoigy, Minister of Public Safety; Dmitri Kozak, Minister of Regional Development; Tatiana Golkova, Minister of Health and Social Development; Elvira Nabiullina, Minister of Economic Development; Anatolii Serdiukov, Minister of Defense; Igor Shchegolev, Minister of Communications; Andrei Fursenko, Minister of Education; Iurii Trutnev, Minister of Natural Resources; Aleksei Gordeev, Minister of Agriculture; Sergei Shmatko, Minister of Energy; Viktor Khistenko, Minister of Industry, Vitalii Mutko, Minister of Sport; Aleksandr Avdeev, Minister of Culture; Igor Levitin, Minister of Transportation; and Aleksandr Konovalov, Minister of Justice.)
Things to note are:
Putin basically brought his tail from the Kremlin into ..read more
Is oil a boon or a blessing? When it comes to Russia, more and more analysis are seeing it as the former. As Konstantin Sonin argues, the “natural-resource curse” is now a favorite among those who seek to explain Russia’s skewed trajectory toward democracy. For Sonin, the oil curse is now displacing other favorite explanations for Russia’s inability to extricate itself from the tar pit of backwardness. Sonin writes,
The arguments over why Russia repeatedly runs into roadblocks in its path toward democracy will continue as long as the country exists — which is to say eternally. The excuses used to explain these failures also seemed to be eternal: Russia’s subjugation under the Mongolian yoke; the immensity of Russia’s territory and its need for expansion; or the “unique Russian mentality” that is somehow not conducive to democracy. Even the country’s severe climate is cited as one reason for ..read more
