Vice Premier, former General and Ph.D in engineering, who today oversees Russian military-industrial complex, Yuri Borisov dropped an astonishing number which gives a little insight into the Russian machine-building complex and the general trend of Russian economy. At the all-Russian conference of the young scientists and specialists "The Future of Russian Machine Building", which was organized by famed (especially among Western intelligence services) Bauman's MGTU he stated this:
Translation: A number of employees needed at the enterprises of Russian military-industrial complex is around half-a-million. This is a whole army, around 50 new professions are in demand. We are working on changing the trend of the cadres. We are concerned about the quality of this people, who will be capable to provide for the breakthroughs Vladimir Putin spoke about in his March address.
Think about it: half-a-million just for the military-industrial complex. Boy, I wonder what all those lawyers, journalists, managers and other philosophy majors in Russia feel. I am being facetious, of course--I know exactly what they feel, some of them may even understand what is going on. After return of Crimea home, in 2014, on the wave of incredible patriotism and enthusiasm, in the anticipation of the Western sanctions, there was understanding among people who actually know Russia, which, in different forms, was worded like this: Russia doesn't need office plankton, she needs engineers, designers, CNC operators and programmers. I may add here: Russia needs tool and die makers, operators of complex computers-driven machinery, she needs composite materials and structures specialists and the list goes on, and on, and on. In all, Russia needs modern, cutting edge productive forces. And this is just Russian MIC. To illustrate: just today news of Egypt signing $1.3 billion contract with Transmashholding for hundreds of modern rail cars have made it to media (in Russian). It is 5 years worth of work for thousands upon thousands of highly qualified and well-paid labor.
You may have already guessed, that this purely civilian contract will require primarily electricians, mechanics, CNC operators, systems integrators--you name it. It will not require political "scientists", "economists" (especially with "degrees" from something like VShE), I know, my daughter got her BA in economics from UW and European (Milan) School of Economics. Let's put it this way--for what she does for living she needs only paper on her degree, the rest... well, I'll abstain. Transmashholding is a massive company and it is a civilian one. Russian MIC's contracts are on the order of magnitude larger. So, here is the deal--a generation, in fact-two, of Russians of 1990s and immediately after that, who I call the children of chaos and many of whom are either entering adult life or already are in the age category of 30-35, suddenly face a dilemma: what to do with their lives, especially if many of them went for so called "humanities" education or abstract economic degrees. I have news for them--virtually nobody is hiring them in Russia. As Russian joke goes: why one needs an economic degree? To shout in English, "this cash register is available" in McDonald's or Burger King.
These people are victims (many innocent, others--not so much) of one of the most pervasive and malignant myths excreted by Western economic "science"--an idea of post-industrial economy. A utopian future in which well-paid and well-dressed office plankton, populating all those comfortable offices in skyscrapers strategizes, conceptionalizes, rationalizes, what have you, with the help of computers and robots, in their relentless effort to "improve" the world and get filthy rich while doing so. This si precisely a category of public which worships Elon Musk and forms lines at the Apple stores on the eve of a new model of their godly gadget released for the consumption of mindless hipsters. Obviously very few of them have any clue on what modern manufacturing, yes, robots and computers included, is. Well, we all know what happened with US economy, don't we? I am not going to get deeper into this issue, but Russia almost ended the same way, that is until so called "liberal" (more like libertarian) ideas sustained huge metaphysical defeat and economic sanity started to slowly filter back, with Russian industries not only recovering but prospering in the process, even with non stop (it is the 60th since 2011) avalanche of Western economic sanctions.
And here is the main point. Putin reads from the Soviet book of industrialization. Those who have weak nerves or too impressionable, or studied Russian history from Solzhenitsyn or Anne Applebaum (or R. Conquest) should stop reading now and go to some other website or blog. Now I continue. Let me quote myself from the draft of who knows what (wink, wink):
New Deal pre-WWII America was still a nation which had
to deal with a 1937-1938 recession which dropped industrial production
catastrophically by 32%, GDP Contacted 10% and unemployment remained
prohibitively high at 20%. The United Sates were
simply in a very bad shape. It was WWII, in the end, which resolved the issue
of much needed real recovery from the Great Depression. The recovery was
spectacular: by 1942 the output grew by 49% fueled by the steady inflow of gold
from Europe, including from the Soviet Union, and by military buildup. Full employment was achieved.
You may verify my data here, after all it is by none other than Federal Reserve very own history specialists. Let us recall now, what was happening in the Soviet Union at that time. Easy--unprecedented economic growth, which made country ready for the war. All that growth was achieved in a real industrial and agricultural sectors, not in breeding philosophy professors, managers of expensive boutiques and shopping consultants. So, I am kinda wondering, before I go, why Maxim Oreshkin, himself a product of utterly liberal VShE suddenly goes very public on record with being dissatisfied with the (slower than planned) speed of Russia's dedollarization. Of course, parallels with Stalin's Industrialization are very tentative--modern Russia is a different country but real Re-Industrialization is what Russian people were calling for since Vladimir Putin emerged from his incognito status as Russia's statesman whom Russian people started to believe.
To Be Continued...
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