Comment Re:Russia can't win (Score 1) 127
"As it happens, I do know some people directly involved in it, and it's not actually the main problems. The main problems are the lack of a qualified labor force. The collectivist mentality is still quite alive and well in the countryside, and so a farmer who does well has to deal with rampant theft and even vandalism of his property, often from the very same people he has hired."
I read about the same problems in the Russian countryside in the 1990s. But if you're correct, what comes as surprise is that the collectivist mentality is still apparently alive and strong. I have read recently that the mentality and habits of people almost certainly have influenced the paths of different post-Soviet states. For example, I recall someone arguing that Poland did better than the countries to the east of it because in Poland in 1990s there were still many people alive who recalled how market based economy should operate. After all, Poland was a free country until the Fall of 1939.
In USSR, on the other hand, there was a crackdown on the small private business at least a decade earlier. Not only the last entrepreneurs of USSR had to live longer lives to see the 1990s, but they also had to survive a massive amount of purges, natural and unnatural famines, as well as the WWII. And you can be sure that people who operated a small business in USSR were the ones who were most likely to perish in the purges. Ask any middle-class Russian about this question, and then will probably recall that they had some relative who was a small business owner who ended up being sent into gulags solely because of his entrepreneurial activity (or that of his parents).