Russia

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The Rise of Russian Anti-Imperialism

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many observers have wondered how post Cold War Russia would react. Years of Soviet ineptitude in economics and gross overspending in the military have put Russia in a fiscal quagmire. While some clamor for a more dominant Russia, there are greater internal forces that think Russia needs to build economic stability and then the natural order of things should take care of itself.
In the article “The Rise of Russian Anti-Imperialism,” Henry Hale describes a Russia on the brink of financial ruin in 1998. They had suffered an economic collapse that year and he argues that invariably changed Russia’s domestic and foreign policy as well. Little did he know that a strong leader was waiting in the wings to take over for Yeltsin and bring stability to the government and slow down economic reform.
Russia has been beset internally with graft and corruption. The failure of the Russian government in the past to reign in these forces has hampered its integration into the world economy. Recently, however, President Putin has begun to consolidate his power and arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky for fraud and tax evasion. He is trying to send a signal to the rest of the profiteers that the Russian government will not stand by and watch others take advantage of her baby steps towards free markets.
There have been attempts to reintegrate the old Soviet Union into a cohesive economic zone. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former republics agreed to form a Commonwealth of Independent States, however that quickly dissolved. In early 1993, there was an attempt at regaining control of many of the former Soviet Republics that still wanted to use the Russian Ruble as their currency. This tactic was called the Ruble Zone. However, those efforts collapsed because the other republics were trying to use this Zone as a hidden subsidy and Russian economists in the governmen...