“Weren’t the oligarchs formed around the Yeltsin/Putin era tho, or does their po

—“Weren’t the oligarchs formed around the Yeltsin/Putin era tho, or does their power predate it?”—Arby Hyde

—“Their power predates them. Bulk of them were “young communists” from Nomenclatura pool, i.e. the young offspring of the same people. Anyone outside that pool was simply given an opportunity to purchase the privatized assets. To make sure, the monetary reform was conducted prior to privatization, so all the private savings outside Nomenclatura were made worthless. … There are very few notable exceptions, and all them come from the underworld of Russia, i.e. highly organised criminal network directly controlled by KGB.”— Igor Rogov

The USSR didn’t collapse because of the west. It collapsed because it could no longer compete with consumer capitalism, and when they tried to integrate markets again, they had no plan, those who were corrupt were threatened, and seized power, but they seized power by breaking up the empire rather than retaining it.

This was totally unnecessary as china has made progress that russia could have made if her leadership was THE BEST administrators rather than the best POLITICIANS. In other words, soviet russia like fascist germany failed because of government to enforce ideology rather than ideology to reinforce good government. The USA however provide competitive pressure so that russia’s malinvestment in military was not possible to sustain. Productivity in russia declined rapidly by the 1960s, and was in free-fall in the 1970’s. This put russia in a position where she could no longer remain competitive. Consumer capitalism was necessary.

One thing Igor has not mentioned is that Ibn Khaldun’s theory applies to all human organizations, families, business, economic sectors, economies, intellectual disciplines arts and sciences, and not just political sectors.And it’s interesting (and telling) that westerners discovered the former and muslims discovered the latter. The value of the monarchies is that they constitute a MARKET for rotation, which is what occurred throughout european history.