The Port of Leningrad: From Late Communism to Crony Putinism
LeAnn
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 16:12
Looking at Russia in 2023, it is now clear that much has remained unchanged from Soviet times. The biggest change is the elimination of communist central planning, which made Russia’s regime stronger despite the initial turmoil of the 1990s. This paper offers a clue as to why the communist economic management system had to go, and why the KGB’s foreign intelligence and trade cadres, many of them based in Leningrad, came out on top of the refurbished new-old system, and did so with a vengeance.
Tomasz’s latest paper explores the roots of the Soviet collapse as it unfolded in the port economy of Leningrad, and the critical lessons that a group of local KGB officers drew from that process. These lessons helped them to recover from the setbacks of 1991 and to eventually take the helm of the Russian Federation in the 2000s. It was the KGB-covered smuggling schemes of late communism that provided the model for the Putin regime to spread its crony ways domestically and corrupt Western institutions abroad. Washington Post reporter Kathryn Belton wrote that “What had begun as corruption within the …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution