Depends on your definition of ‘didn’t work’. In some ways locking politicians in the House of Government, cutting the phone lines, and opening fire on the building with tanks can be considered the actions of a very decisive and results-oriented government.Â
SPECTREagent700 on
In grad school I took a class on the Russian economy (from a professor who later literally turned out to be a Russian spy but that’s another story) and I remember he said it wasn’t fair to say Russian anti-corruption efforts had failed because they were never actually intended to reduce corruption to begin with and in many cases actually encouraged more corruption. One example was a requirement that government offices needed to contract for office supplies rather then just going out to buying them directly and the result was you give your buddy a contract for paper clips and then the two of you just pocket the money and no paper clips were actually procured.
Another aspect is that everyone in the government is corrupt from the top to the bottom and so if anyone isn’t corrupt they’ll be viewed with suspicion by the others and forced out.
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It did. Against everyone- including itself.
Why are we picking on the 90s?
Depends on your definition of ‘didn’t work’. In some ways locking politicians in the House of Government, cutting the phone lines, and opening fire on the building with tanks can be considered the actions of a very decisive and results-oriented government.Â
In grad school I took a class on the Russian economy (from a professor who later literally turned out to be a Russian spy but that’s another story) and I remember he said it wasn’t fair to say Russian anti-corruption efforts had failed because they were never actually intended to reduce corruption to begin with and in many cases actually encouraged more corruption. One example was a requirement that government offices needed to contract for office supplies rather then just going out to buying them directly and the result was you give your buddy a contract for paper clips and then the two of you just pocket the money and no paper clips were actually procured.
Another aspect is that everyone in the government is corrupt from the top to the bottom and so if anyone isn’t corrupt they’ll be viewed with suspicion by the others and forced out.
1990s Russia was a chaotic and unstable society
… and the western world was better off for it
Still doesn’t work, nothing changed.