“ECONOMIC FREEDOM” OR “DEPENDENT ECONOMY” – A DILEMMA OF THE REGION OF POST-SOVIET STATES.

Abstract

It is shown that the growth of the freedom on the whole and the economic freedom serves as a foundation for a higher level of country’s economic development and for the strengthening of its influence in the frame of the world economy. The author demonstrates convincingly the essential delay of the majority of post-Soviet countries by the indicators of a development of the freedom on the whole and the economic freedom, by proving that namely they are a generalized estimate of the degree of democratic and market transformations in the region of states that are heirs of the Soviet Union.
The author substantiates the close connection of the freedom deficit and the inability to realize a system innovative development of the economy, which causes also the inability to efficiently use the productive, personnel, and technological potentials of the majority of the CIS countries, which were available at the start of transformations.
The article advances successively the idea of that the rejection of the economic progress is immanent to the nature of the economies of post-Soviet countries. This is the objective consequence of the phenomenon of the complete dependence of a business on state’s bureaucracy (and on the dominance of the administratively dependent property). Moreover, it is proved that the formation of a similar economic system is a direct consequence of the realization of the privatization in the region of post-Soviet countries practically by the feudal principle.
The author asserts that the “juridical progress” in post-Soviet countries has not led to the organic increase in the economic freedom for 25 last years. In some countries, the “freedom” manifested itself as the economic anarchy. In this region, “the model of dependent economy” was established. It only imitates main characteristics of the market economy and corresponds only partially to the principles of organization of a market economy. The similar mimicry is dangerous for perspectives of the development of a real market economy on the modern world level.
It is shown that “the model of dependent economy” exists in two forms: administrative and oligarchic ones. The latter is characteristic of Ukraine and Moldova, where the economic dependence is connected only partially (in separate directions and kinds of the business) with the administrative vertical. Of not less meaning is the concentric-circular dependence constructed by the principle of clientele connections on the oligarchic property.
Estimating the perspectives of the development, the author asserts that the ways to overcome “the model of dependent economy” are related to a multifold strengthening of the role of a society, the development of moral-ethic norms (firm rejection of the common acceptance of a corruption and the passiveness to violations of the law, etc.), and the ensuring of the priority of country’s holistic interests, rather than the interests of separate parties or the groups of oligarchs. The author makes a generalizing conclusion about the necessity of the ripening of ideological and political preconditions for cardinal change in the very nature of the economic system of the society of post-Soviet countries.