MOSCOW, December 26 - RIA Novosti. Economic reforms, which took place in Russia 20 years ago and are known as " shock therapy", were inevitable, but it was quite realistic to mitigate their negative consequences for citizens, according to direct participants in those events interviewed by the Prime agency.

In their opinion, a repetition of the scenarios of the 1990s in today's Russian economy is impossible, since it has switched to a market economy, financial institutions have been formed, and the export of resources brings significant income. At the same time, experts emphasize the need to fight corruption and get rid of oil dependence in order to completely exclude such options.

Dramatic liberalization

In January 1992, the liberalization of prices for goods and services actually began in Russia - they were exempted from state regulation practiced in the Soviet era. At first, a markup limit was set, but later it was canceled. At the same time, state control over prices for a number of socially significant goods and services (milk, bread, housing and communal services, etc.) is still preserved to some extent.

Price liberalization has become one of the most important links in Russia's transition from a planned economy to a market one. However, it was not coordinated with monetary policy, as a result, most enterprises were left without working capital.

The Central Bank was forced to turn on the printing press, which accelerated inflation to unprecedented levels - several thousand percent a year. This has led to the devaluation wages and incomes of the population, irregular wage payments, the rapid impoverishment of citizens.

As a consequence, hyperinflation caused a drop in demand, exacerbating economic downturn, as well as real compression money supply, on which the additional burden of servicing the shares and bonds that appeared as a result of the first wave of privatization fell. In addition, depreciated Soviet savings that have not been indexed.

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of those dramatic events, the Prime agency turned to economists who held leading positions in economic departments in the 1990s and asked them to tell what was the prerequisite for the reforms and whether it was possible to minimize losses for the economy and society.

How it all began

A brief review of the reasons for the economic situation that had developed before the arrival of the reformist team led by Yegor Gaidar should begin with Stalin, the President of the Russian financial corporation Andrey Nechaev, First Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation.

"He carried out a crazy and bloody collectivization, actually breaking the back of agriculture in an agrarian country, his associates continued this. As a result, the country was unable to feed itself. The maximum import of grain was 43 million tons per year, and the entire supply of livestock products to residents of large cities was based on imported feed, "reminds Nechaev.

“There was nothing to pay for imports - the only commercial product of the USSR that was in demand was oil. Prices for it fell in 1986, for 2-3 years they tried to survive on foreign loans under Gorbachev’s reforms. As a result, external debt country in a short period of time exceeded 120 billion dollars, although back in the early 80s the Soviet Union had practically no external debt. Five years later, in 1991, the USSR was gone," he states.

The scientific director of the State University Higher School of Economics, ex-Minister of Economics of the Russian Federation Yevgeny Yasin agrees with the idea that the experiment with a planned economy failed - the socialist system outright lost to the capitalist one. "It was not Russia that lost, but those who set up this experiment. It became clear that it was necessary to switch to the Western model, of which Japan seemed to be the most successful model at that time," he recalls.

According to Yasin, liberalization and privatization were inevitable, and they had to be carried out as quickly as possible, since it was clear that the reforms would definitely be painful. Only then could institutional building begin. "There were similar disproportions in other countries, but not with such severe consequences as we have," he added.

Chinese script failed

Critics of the reforms argue that, on the contrary, liberalization should have been preceded by privatization, and that by institutional reforms, the creation of a viable private sector. They also talk about the "Chinese way", when the planned economy is partly preserved.

"There was not and could not be a question about the Chinese version with the slow introduction of market relations under strict state control in Russia in 1991," Nechaev is sure.

"If in the late autumn of 1991 and in January 1992, in the highly monopolized Soviet economy, we would have been engaged in the gradual creation of market institutions that develop competition, Russia really could not survive the winter of 1992," he said.

According to him, the Latin American path with the construction of state capitalism does not lead to long-term success and promises colossal risks, which is exemplified by the default of Argentina.

The then President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, was also offered another alternative - the forcible seizure of grain from the peasants, commissars in factories, a total rationing system. Fortunately, he did not go for it, recalls the first minister of economy of the Russian Federation.

The model of a soft, smooth transition to market rails could be implemented, but not in Russia in the early 90s, when the Soviet system completely collapsed, Oleg Vyugin, chairman of the board of directors of MDM Bank, former deputy head of the Ministry of Finance and first deputy chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, is sure. "The authorities of the USSR were already inactive, and the new ones started from scratch and did not function properly," he explained.

Among the main costs of privatization of those years, Vyugin named the principle "whoever comes first, that is the owner." The problem is that the rules of the game were unclear and not enforced.

"Was the privatization fair? Absolutely not. Could it have been possible to find an alternative and postpone this process? Alas, not too," argues Nechaev. According to him, the seizure of state property was already underway in the country, and it was necessary to try to somehow introduce this process into a legitimate framework.

The inevitability of shocks

In general, experts are sure that it was impossible to do without those reforms - otherwise, Russia would have faced other, perhaps even worse, trials.

Any reduction in economic activity - and it was evident in the early 90s - leads to the fact that the burden of inflation and unemployment falls on the less protected sections of the population, Vyugin argues. The question of whether this could have been avoided, he calls rhetorical. "At that time and in those conditions, there was nothing else left, and no one offered anything else," he states.

"If it weren't for those reforms, we simply would not have survived the current crisis, against the backdrop of the general collapse of the Soviet system, other, perhaps even more serious, shocks would have happened," Yasin argues, in turn.

It is possible that something could be done less painfully, somewhere to stretch the terms, but it is fundamental to carry out these reforms so that everyone is happy, it would not work out in any way, he believes. "I remember - Gaidar then said that what we are doing should be done either under a bloody dictatorship or under a charismatic leader. Fortunately, we did not have the first, but we were lucky with the second - we had Yeltsin with his charisma, which he ended up donating," Yasin said.

"Could something have been done differently? Of course, yes. Probably, it was possible to introduce not VAT, but a sales tax. Chubais considers the development of so-called voucher privatization funds to be his serious mistake. But it seems to me that we did not make conceptual mistakes, but only those who do nothing are not mistaken in nuances.In those terribly difficult months, Gaidar saved the country and really laid the foundations for a new market economy", - concluded Nechaev.

The current economic authorities in Russia are of a similar opinion. "I think there was no way out. Only in this way it was possible to solve the situation with food. Everything else dragged on behind this. We would not have been able to do anything otherwise. Revolutionary decisions bring results due to some kind of primary impoverishment of fellow citizens. There are no other options ", - believes Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak.

The decision could not be stretched in time, he is sure. "Leave prices under control for certain socially significant goods? Look, these targeted solutions do not work anywhere. How much help did Egypt receive with its price control? The hope that by controlling prices it is possible to ensure social stability - yes, during life maybe one politician, maybe two. Then everything goes back to normal," Storchak said. An increase in production is necessary for economic growth, but with price controls it is unlikely that it will be possible to ensure a decent increase in capacity, he added.

No repetition expected

According to the economists interviewed, those reforms, despite their severity, have borne fruit. "The economic growth that we observed from the beginning of the 2000s until the crisis can be used as an argument that liberalization has paid off. Thanks to a set of reforms, in a short period of time, a huge country has moved from state dictate to a market economy, in fact, without the participation of external capital , managing on their own," says Vyugin.

Yasin also generally assesses the reforms of the early 1990s as successful. “Now we are also going through difficult times, but there can be no talk of anything like this,” he said.

In general, experts are confident that a repetition of the situation of the early 90s with a total deficit and hyperinflation in the current Russian economy is impossible.

The hyperinflation of the 90s was caused by the collapse of the system of the former government, Vyugin recalled. Now this is hardly possible, the institutions of the market economy and regulators are formed and firmly on their feet. "Of course, everything is man-made, but it is unlikely that the country's leadership and the current economic system fail," he said.

Another thing is a certain jump in inflation. It is possible if external shocks have a negative impact on the Russian economy - for example, oil prices collapse, then it will be necessary to reduce budget commitments and borrow on foreign markets, which is very costly and problematic in the current situation, Vyugin believes.

“At that time, an absolutely unique situation developed, incomparable in scale with any crises, the fall in oil, the collapse of the eurozone and other disasters that we fear,” Yasin recalls. “Now we live in a market economy, we export energy resources, we have financial institutions. , the inflation that we are seeing is also high for our economy - we need about 2-3% per year, then growth is possible to intensify. But there will be no hundreds or thousands of percent per year."

Nechaev, for his part, believes that today's Russia retains many of the risks of the late Soviet Union, including dependence on raw material exports and "terrible levels of corruption." "We are still sitting on the same two pipes, it's just that oil costs not $17, but $100-120, and we can behave a little differently," he stated.

The experience of the last decade of the 20th century shows that the most serious challenges of the present are of a global nature. Globalization has become the main force that stimulates the world economy, competition, distribution of resources and international order in the field of technology. As a consequence, political and economic priorities are shifting from local and national levels to regional and international ones. Under these conditions, the need for new systemic responses to multilateral issues is growing, the importance of more effective international cooperation, but at the same time there are big threats.

globalization as main trend modern world development is main feature development of the world economy at the end of the 20th — early XXI century. This was facilitated by such an important factor as the activities of governments towards the liberalization of trade and capital markets, privatization and deregulation of economic activity. The second important foundation of globalization, significantly increased financial flows, the rapid development of information and communication technologies, their comprehensive worldwide use. All this led to the fact that the first half of the 1990s was marked by significant economic growth, according to at least for most countries in the world. Particularly noteworthy is the US economy, which was characterized at that time by record growth rates, which gave impetus to dynamic development the world economy as a whole.

The economy grew at a slightly slower pace European countries. Japan in these years was not able to get out of the state of recession. World economy experienced less turbulence in the 1990s than in the 1980s. According to the UN, in specified period GDP developing countries, grew on average per year by 4.3%, while in the 80s (by 2.7%. The average annual growth rate of developed countries in the 90s was 2.3%, and in the 80s 3%. At the same time in countries with transition economy there was a fall in GDP: in the 90s it was 2.5% per year compared to 1.8% in the 80s. In the first half of the 90s, the decline in national production here reached a critical figure (50% over three years. As noted in UN documents, in many countries with economies in transition, there was a significant increase in poverty and unemployment, the state of education, health care, wage salaries, pensions, provision of services, public transport and other social services.

Some improvement in the situation was observed in the second half of the 1990s, but a number of countries, especially Central Asia, continued to experience significant difficulties. In the 1990s, the volumes of the world foreign trade. According to the UN, the annual growth rate of global exports was 6.4%, reaching $ 630,000,000,000 in 2000. Countries that develop have become important players in world trade. Their exports grew by 9.6% annually. Many countries achieved some success in the second half of the 1990s of Eastern Europe and the Baltics, which managed to redirect their exports to Western Europe. In African countries, the situation is much worse. On the whole, it can be argued that so far neither the countries with economies in transition nor the countries of Africa have received any positive results from globalization.

Ladygina Anastasia Olegovna

Faculty of Economics Southern Federal University Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation

Abstract: From the mid-80s to the 90s in Russia, there was an accumulation of new shadow norms and shadow organizations, conditions were created for the shadow economic activity. In the second half of the nineties, the shadow economy was institutionalized. The article discusses the causes of this phenomenon in the period under review.

Keywords: shadow economy, transition period, institution, state

Transformation of the shadow economy in Russia in the 90's

Ladygina Anastasia Olegovna

the Faculty of Economics, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation

Abstract: Since the mid 80's to the 90's in Russia the accumulation of new shadow norms and shadow organizations, the conditions for informal economic activities have been created. In the second half of the nineties the institutionalization of the shadow economy occurred. The author demonstrates the causes of this phenomenon in the reporting period.

Keywords: shadow economy, transitional period, institute, polity

A review of the shadow economy in the planned economy shows that the preconditions for its dawn were in place by the early 1970s. It included people who economic activity using state property. They had a special relationship with criminal subjects, outlined at the turn of the sixties by a certain framework. The state system of trade was thoroughly permeated with the system of the shadow economy. This was the initial stage of the emergence and spread of this phenomenon, in which there were no institutions of shadow economic activity.

As time went. There was an accumulation of new shadow norms and shadow organizations in the country, best conditions for shadow activities. In the 1990s, the fundamental value orientations of the population were significantly deformed, the shadow way of life became commonplace for a significant part of it, and the authority of state power in the eyes of society fell. A considerable number of people have entered the path of crime.

By the mid-90s of the last century, the scale of the phenomenon under consideration reached 41.6% of the country's gross domestic product. Compared with other post-socialist countries, this figure is low. But at the same time, it should be mentioned that by this period the share of the shadow economy in some countries has noticeably decreased, which cannot be said about our country.

The data in Table 1 show an assessment of the dynamics of the size of the shadow economy in countries with economies in transition in 1989, 1992 and 1995. According to them, in turn, it is clear that by the mid-nineties the share of the shadow economy in Russia, as well as in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, increased.

Table 1 - The scale of the shadow economy in post-socialist countries according to the method of D. Kaufman - A. Kaliberda, in % of GDP


Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bulgaria




Kazakhstan






Slovakia

Uzbekistan

The fact that in the second half of the nineties, shadow activity began to turn into a special social institution, evidenced by data showing the share of the shadow economy in the production of GDP, which in 1996 reached 46%, and in 1997 and 1998, according to various estimates, the volume of the shadow economy ranged from 50 to 70% of Russia's GDP.

Various factors influenced the growth of the shadow sector in Russia during the period under review. But I would like to highlight the obvious miscalculations and mistakes in the implementation of economic reforms by state bodies.

Firstly, state structures at that time they lost the ability not only for strategic, but also for operational management of the economy. The existing management vacuum has been filled with mafia-shady connections and relationships, the mores and customs of wild capitalism, which is characterized by enrichment through speculative operations, deceit and extortion, the widespread personal, clan relations that merge with mafia structures, and so on.

Secondly, during the implementation of the economic reform model, which includes mass privatization, rapid price liberalization, one-time "opening" of the economy to the outside world, restrictive monetary policy, severe tax pressure on production, a destimulating mechanism for legal economic activity has developed, which is pushing it into the shadows to this day.

Finally, with the connivance of the state in Russia, a social structure, which has a high shadow potential. A large proportion of the population classified as poor, unemployed and fictitiously employed, social bottom, refugees from hot spots former USSR, demobilized from the army and in a state of post-war shock are a breeding ground for the shadow economy.

Both the state itself and its bodies have become active participants in shadow operations. Its representatives profited from privatization, sold natural resources, built financial pyramids, provoked financial crises.

It is also necessary to pay attention to such reasons for the rapid development of the shadow economy in the 1990s as:

a) economic:

The catastrophic destruction of the entire system of the national economy in connection with the liquidation of the USSR. These include: rupture of cooperation ties, barter, overstocking and shortages, non-payments, as well as mass theft;

The impoverishment of the majority of the population against the backdrop of the fabulous unjust enrichment of a group of people from President Yeltsin's entourage;

collapse financial system country, namely: an exorbitant budget deficit, hyperinflation, the transition to cash settlements, including foreign currency, and money surrogates, government borrowing pyramid and so on;

liquidation state system economic and financial administration and control;

Establishment of prohibitive (up to 50% of GDP) tax burden;

b) legal:

The emergence of a legal vacuum, that is, the erroneous introduction of the principle “everything that is not prohibited by law” into law enforcement practice in conditions when the old laws no longer worked, and new ones did not yet exist;

Formation of a significant criminal sector in the economy;

The destruction of the law enforcement system by constant reorganizations;

Corrupt use of legislative, executive, and law enforcement agencies in the interests of the shadow economy;

Formation of legal nihilism among citizens;

c) socio-political:

The destruction of the ideological foundations of public life, that is, the entire system of state ideology was ousted;
At this stage, the alignment of forces has fully developed. All the main sections of the market were clearly divided and controlled by one of the oligarchic financial and industrial groups along with the corrupt officials who patronize them. The rest of the criminal "competitors" were expelled from the economic niches they occupied.

At the turn of the century organized economic crime in Russia has ceased to be criminal and through the oligarchic financial and industrial groups became predominantly bureaucratic and governmental. The criminal elements gradually lost their power more and more.

Thus, the period under review is a stage of formation and solid strengthening of shadow economic activity in Russia. There are many reasons for this. And they need to be known in order to understand how this phenomenon arose and how it can be ousted from the socio-economic system of our country.

Bibliography:

Tarasov M. Strengthening the role of the state in limiting the shadow economy in Russia // Problems of theory and practice of management: International journal. M.: 2002. No. 2

Burov V.Yu. Determining the scale of the shadow economy // Bulletin-economist. 2012. No. 4

Latov Yu.V. Economy outside the law: essays on the theory and history of the shadow economy. M., 2001

Gamza V. A. Shadow economy and corruption: how to break vicious circle? // Investigator. Federal edition. 2007. No. 11

Lunev V.V. Crime and shadow economy. 2005. No. 1

Gerasin A.N. Shadow processes in the economy modern Russia. M., 2006

The social forces that initiated at the turn of the 80-90s. transformations in the Russian economy, were originally supposed to complete the transformational transition within two relatively short stages: at the first, to carry out a quick and radical reform of property and the economic mechanism, at the second, an equally quick “turn on” of market incentives, almost immediately and automatically leading to to the rise of the economy and the growth of living standards. Numerous forecasts were made and promises were made that cardinal changes could be carried out in a few months, in "500 days", that overcoming the recession and improving living conditions would happen by "next autumn" and so on.

In fact, the transformational changes in the Russian economy turned out to be extremely complex, contradictory and lengthy, they took place in the context of political upheavals and the collapse of the state. In the first half of the 90s. the transformation of the economy was carried out already in the conditions of post-Soviet economic and political realities. The main element of the measures taken at this stage was privatization (mainly in the form of a check), as a result of which the share of state-owned fixed assets decreased from 91% (at the beginning of 1992) to 42% (in 1995); in the share capital of the state by the middle of 1995 was 11%. In the course of changing the system of economic management and the economic mechanism, the idea of “cutting off” the state from the economy was implemented. The role of the dominant economic ideology was acquired by the concepts of monetarism borrowed from abroad, limiting the functions of the state by regulating the money supply in circulation (these concepts were developed in relation to the conditions of a highly developed market economy with a well-functioning monetary and credit mechanism and long-term trends in economic growth).

In practice, Russian vulgarized pseudo-monetarism led to chaos in the economy, which arose as a result of shock "liberalization" of prices and the subsequent hyperinflation (in January 1992. consumer prices increased by 245%, by the end of 1992 by 26 times, then during 1993 - by another 4 times, in 1995 - by 2.3 times). crash national currency led to the dollarization of the economy. In fact, an inflationary confiscation of the savings of the population and an inflationary redistribution of public wealth were carried out, which, combined with an almost free distribution state property new owners ( monetary value funds of enterprises turned out to be repeatedly underestimated relative to their real value, sometimes - many thousands of times) and inflationary-concessional lending to commercial banks - led to the implementation of some historical analogue of the initial accumulation of capital. In 2004, when summing up the results of privatization, it was calculated that the state budget received about $9 billion from the sale of privatized property and facilities; for comparison, it can be noted that in Bolivia, where privatization was also carried out in the 1990s, more than $ 90 billion was received, despite the fact that the scale of the economy of this country is an order of magnitude lower than that of Russia and a much smaller share of the public sector was privatized.

The robbery of the population was continued further through the criminal activity of private "funds", banks and "financial pyramids". During this period there was a consolidation of those social forces in whose interests the changes in the economy were carried out. These are the nomenklatura bureaucracy, which has doubled in number and carried out the “conversion of power into ownership”, the administration of enterprises (on average, accounting for 5% of those employed at enterprises) and criminal circles.

By the end of the 90s. in the Russian economy there have been certain positive changes. Basically, the consumer market was saturated, the degree of computerization increased significantly, the service sector was developed, and some elements of the market infrastructure emerged. Opportunities for the manifestation of economic initiative and entrepreneurial activity have expanded. However, these positive developments were devalued by the progressive destruction of the industrial, scientific and technical and, in general, civilizational potential of the country.

During the period of "reforms" there was more than a two-fold (according to official data) drop in production volumes, and in high-tech knowledge-intensive industries that are competitive on the world market, it decreased by 6-8 times. Along with the decrease in volume indicators, the efficiency of the economy has sharply decreased: energy, capital and material productivity of production has fallen by one and a half to two times, with a one and a half times decrease in labor productivity. The absolute decline in the population continued (despite the influx of a significant number of refugees), decreased average duration life. At the beginning of 2000, the incomes of more than 50% of the population did not reach the level living wage; this level was more than 10 times the minimum wage.
For the period 1991-2000. number of personnel in the field scientific research and development decreased by 45%; the number of patent applications has more than halved. According to UN experts, only Russia's direct annual losses due to the "brain drain" can be estimated at $ 3 billion, and taking into account lost profits - at $ 50-60 billion. At the same time, the United States due to the "import" of scientists and specialists received annually up to 100 billion dollars of additional growth in the gross product; half of the increase in the number of American specialists in the field software carried out at the expense of emigrants from the former USSR. Over the past decade, the total costs of scientific and technical development have decreased by 20 times. The reduction in funding for education and health care has given rise to a trend of degradation of these areas; their commercialization has led to an increase in social tension. The needs of the education sector for resources were provided by less than 50%; state budget expenditures for health care in Russia amounted to $ 50 per person per year, while in the USA - 3 thousand; in Western Europe - 1.5 thousand dollars. in year.

Agriculture was destroyed and the food security of the country was lost; the share of imports in food products exceeded 60%. In the first half of the 1990s alone, deliveries of trucks to agricultural enterprises decreased 36 times; grain harvesters - 1000 times. Within a decade, large agricultural enterprises were liquidated almost everywhere and more than 44 thousand farmers went bankrupt; the remaining farmers, owning 5.2% of land, produced only 1.9% of marketable products Agriculture. From 1991 to 2000, grain production decreased by 1.8 times, milk - by 1.7, sugar beet - by 2.3 times; per capita milk consumption decreased from 382 to 226 liters per year, meat - from 75 to 48 kg, fish - from 20 to 9 kg. The Russian food market has become a place for the sale of low-quality foreign products; 36% of imported whole-milk products, 54% of meat products, and 72% of canned food did not meet the quality standards in force in Russia.

acute social problem was the socio-economic differentiation of the population. Decile coefficient, i.e. the ratio of the incomes of 10% of the wealthiest population to the incomes of 10% of the least well-off part of it fluctuated in the 90s, according to official estimates, in the range from 14:1 to 16:1. Even these figures, clearly underestimated in the opinion of many experts, indicate that the degree of socio-economic differentiation in Russia significantly exceeded foreign indicators (in the United States, the decile gap was, according to various estimates, 8-10: 1; in Western Europe - 5-6: 1; in Sweden and China - 3-4: 1; exceeding the level of 10: 1 by this coefficient is considered socially dangerous). Differences in wages for workers and administration reached at least 20-30 times, sectoral differences - 10 times, regional - 11 times; the dependence of income on the real labor contribution was largely lost. The size of the army of officials increased, reaching 1340 thousand people by the beginning of 2000, which is more than twice the corresponding figure throughout Soviet Union(in the mid-80s - about 640 thousand people). From 1995 to 2001 alone, expenditures on the maintenance of the state apparatus increased almost tenfold (from 4.4 to 40.7 billion rubles).

According to the integral index of human development, Russia by the end of the 90s. was in the sixth ten countries of the world. Demographic crisis began to acquire the features of a demographic catastrophe. The population of Russia was annually reduced by 800 thousand people; the average life expectancy has significantly decreased, which is primarily due to socio-economic factors. The need for a cardinal adjustment of the course of economic reforms became obvious.

The West is dominated by cyclical crises. In our country, apparently, an irregular crisis is taking place (there are no signs of cyclicality; there have been no similar phenomena over the past many decades).

The main peculiarity of the crisis in Russia is that in the industrial developed country there is not an overproduction of goods and services, but a huge shortage of them. What explains this?

The first reason is that in the USSR the state completely monopolized the economy and based it on constant deficit means of production for civilian sectors of the economy and consumer goods.

Another cause of the crisis was a profound deformation of the structure of the national economy. We know that such a deformation is a consequence of the predominant growth of divisions I and III, the weak development of division II and the service sector.

The focus on predominantly extensive development of the national economy played a negative role. The prerequisites for the crisis of underproduction arose as early as the 1970s, when the extensive path of expanded reproduction began to exhaust its possibilities, which affected the decrease in the rate of increase in national income. If the average annual growth rate of national income in our country in 1966-1970. amounted to 7.8%, then in 1971-1975. - 5.7, in 1976-1980. - 4.3, in 1981-1985. - 3.2 and in 1986-1990. - 1.3 percent.

The decline in production in the fuel and raw materials industries was especially significant. Here and in a number of other sectors of the extractive and processing industries, limited natural resources, the increasing difficulties of their extraction, as well as the severe environmental consequences of the irrational use of natural resources. As a result, the decrease in the level of extraction and processing of the initial means of production in the first division was reflected in economic growth generally.

The crisis of underproduction is largely due to the stagnant state of agriculture, whose products serve as the initial basis for more than 2/3 of the current consumption fund in the national income. During the 1970s and 1980s, the production of grain, raw cotton, sugar beets, potatoes and vegetables was at about the level of simple reproduction. According to experts, the unsatisfied demand of the population for foodstuffs has reached 1/3 of the volume of their production.

The third reason for the crisis of underproduction was a deeply erroneous economic policy, which was carried out in the 2nd half. 80s and early. 90s.

This policy was aimed at strengthening material incentives for employees and expanding social payments population. It completely contradicted the real state of the economy, since the production of goods for the population was falling rapidly. In 1986-1990. the growth of the money supply in society was 6 times faster than the increase in GNP. This resulted in a serious violation of the law monetary circulation. A kind of "scissors" began to move, the blades of which - production and consumer demand - were increasingly moving away from each other. Only in 1990, when the volume of national income decreased by 4%, cash income citizens, on the contrary, increased by 17%. As a result, there was an aggravation of the crisis of underproduction, which was intertwined with a deep structural crisis. (Boria 348-350)

N. Shmelev in his article "Crisis within the crisis" writes that he is convinced that the causes of our troubles do not lie in the economy. "They lie primarily in morality, psychology, the general outlook on the life of our political and business elite." Answering the question of what actually brought today's Russia to the brink of disaster, he writes that it all started with the unjustified and completely optional confiscation of savings in 1992, which undermined once and for all the confidence of both the population and enterprises in the newly emerged Russian state and reform government. Of course, everyone remembers the "money overhang" that completely destroyed the Russian consumer market by the end of 1991. Under no circumstances should such a "shock" be allowed, which instantly turned the majority Russian population from supporters to opponents of reforms, which was clearly proved by the parliamentary elections of 1993 and 1995.

But this was not enough. All subsequent actions of the government of the reformers only deepened the gap between the people and the new government.

- "voucher scam" and actually free distribution during the privatization of huge state property between "their own" - the nomenklatura and several successful upstarts.

- The "export quota" regime, which allowed our "soon-to-the rich", using the colossal difference between domestic and world prices, to turn into dollar millionaires in the blink of an eye and, moreover, leave the bulk of their "production" abroad;

- Customs incentives for various kinds of "veteran", "sports" and "church" organizations, especially for alcohol, tobacco, many types of food, cars;

- "scrolling" huge and actually free budget money through authorized banks, supplemented later by the sale of short-term government bonds to them at an unprecedented interest rate in the world.

- The blackest, unpunished crime like financial "pyramids", underground production and smuggling of alcohol, embezzlement and sale of military property, corruption, racketeering, drug trafficking, and so on.

At the same time, contrary to all theoretical and practical reasons, a policy of excessive narrowing of the money supply was pursued, creating an artificial money "hunger", which deprived the vast majority of enterprises of all means of subsistence, both current and investment. At any healthy economy the amount of money in circulation is now about 70-100% of GDP, in Russia - only 12-15%. As a result, having made a full circle after 1991, we have actually returned to the state of a moneyless, natural economy so familiar to us: only about 30% of the economic circulation today is served by normal money, 70% is barter and various kinds of money surrogates. Hence the general non-payments: for years the budget does not pay enterprises for the fulfillment of state orders, does not pay pensions, salaries to public sector employees. Enterprises do not pay taxes to the budget, each other, banks, their employees, do not make contributions to Pension Fund etc. A "vicious circle" has formed, and the culprit of it is the budget, because, as you know, a ruble not paid on time from the state treasury gives rise to up to 6 rubles of non-payments along the entire chain of economic relations.

Non-payments of the state on its obligations throughout the world are considered either bankruptcy or a crime, in our country - "anti-inflationary policy".

But this is not enough. In their “anti-inflationary” zeal, our government and the Central Bank, instead of regulated emission, decided to use the principle of a financial “pyramid”, providing for issues of various kinds of short-term government valuable papers(loans) a fantastic level of profit to the Central Bank, Sberbank and other participants in this speculative market- from 50 sometimes up to 200 and more percent per annum. Result - all free money is gone from real economy to the GKO market, because who will work from the normal 5-10% of the annual profit.

At the same time, the short-sighted primitive-fiscal tax policy reform governments. She not only completed the collapse of a huge part of the real Russian economy, but pushed more than 40% of it into the shadow, i.e. completely non-tax area.

Russia is a unique country: the population today has about $40-60 billion stuffed into their pockets and under their mattresses, according to various estimates, and organized banking system on currency deposits it has invested at most 2-3 billion dollars. There is only one reason: the complete, absolute distrust of people both in the state and in banks, although some of them are in last years paid exceptionally high interest rates on private deposits.

There is one more serious, essentially tragic problem - the continuing flight of domestic capital from the country. According to various estimates, about 300-400 billion dollars emigrated from Russia in the 1990s, which is more than 1.5-2 times higher than our debt to the outside world, and taking into account the many foreign debts that have not yet been paid, in 3 times. It is not the world that finances our country today, but the weakened, deep crisis Russia continues to finance the world. Who is to blame for this chronic bleeding is a long discussion, but, in any case, not the United States, not Germany, not the IMF, and not even George Soros. We ourselves are to blame, and above all, the reformist government is to blame, which failed (and perhaps did not want to) put a real barrier against such a leak, both through illegal and official channels.

Another grave strategic mistake was the launch of the dollar into the country and the establishment from the very beginning of an unrealistic, unjustifiably high exchange rate of the ruble against it. Of course, every economy needs some kind of stable "anchor". But instead of using our own own experience 20s and issue a parallel, stable and fully convertible national currency with a firm course(“chervonets”), we invited someone else's currency, which is not under our control, to play this role, thus turning the dollar into the true master of the Russian economy.

At the same time, China, India and most other countries, which are now making a massive breakthrough on world markets, for many years deliberately keep the exchange rate of their national currency 4-5 times lower than its actual value. purchasing power to only help their exporters.

Undoubtedly, in all sad events there was a certain element of bad luck: firstly, the general instability financial markets developing countries, which gave rise to a general panic among portfolio foreign investors, and secondly, a large drop in world oil prices, which at once reduced Russia's total export earnings by about 10-15%. Still, to explain today's plight by this would be an unforgivable simplification.