Russian Politics - Instructions attached Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Russian Politics - Instructions attached - Essay Example The Russian Federation despite formally gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991 stuttered through to the end of the decade despite grave economic, political, and social problems, which President Yeltsin seemed incapable of dealing with. The Soviet Union had an economic system that proved to be highly ineffective, with the black market frequently providing essentials as well as luxury items. Hand in hand with the black markets went corruption and bribery. Black marketers frequently resorted to bribing communist party officials, the police and the KGB or they in turn extorted money off the black marketers. The Soviet leadership started to have concerns about economic stagnation, organised crime and to a lesser extent corruption in the early 1980s without understanding the extent of the economic malaise. Brezhnev had done nothing to halt economic decline and in fact worsened it by accelerating the arms race with the United States. It has been estimated that as much as 50% of the Soviet Union’s annual budgets was spent on weapons. By the 1980s the idea of abandoning the communist command economy in favour of capitalism and liberal democracy gained support in the USSR. For the reformers could look at the neo-liberal experience of the Thatcher and Reagan governments, the devastating economic effects in Argentina and Chile would have been more relevant. There was one group of pro-capitalist economists that hoped to bring in a market system to Russia, the ‘young reformers’.