GoranZ wrote:For a thousand years Russian masters have treated the Ukraine as a farm where cheap slaves are bred, to be conscripted into wars when required and sent home without a pension when not. Or a farm where cheap whores can be bred, to be handed out as party favours to ugly apparatchiks. Or a farm where cheap wheat is grown to feed hungry Russians. Or a farm where Russian iron ore is turned into high-quality steel at bargain-basement prices, by hungry Ukrainian slavesworkers who are happy to make a quarter of what the workers make in the same steel mill on the Russian side of the border.
Ukrainian GDP per capita in 1992(1 year after independence*) was $5150, while Russian was $7859. 22 years later Ukrainian is $7500 while Russian is $18000. Seems to me that "unexploited" Ukraine didn't do a lot when it comes to economic growth... I wonder what it would have been if they were exploited![/quote]
When were they not exploited? I'm sorry, I must have blinked and missed that moment.
I hope you're not trying to say that political independence meant the end of the game, because it certainly didn't. Ukrainian economy is still controlled from Moscow. When Moscow wants to buy an election, it says to the Russian defense contractors, "buy some steel from Ukraine." Ukrainian steel mills crank up production, workers rush off to work, banks get all happy and start printing money, everybody has a big hard-on in the morning. Six months later, election is over, and there is danger that Ukraine might have some economic growth, so Moscow says to the defence contractors, "cancel Ukrainian contracts." The contracts are cancelled, the steel mills shut down, the workers go hungry, the loans go unpaid, everything goes to shit. Guys at the Politburo or whatever they call it nowadays split their guts laughing. This is what is known in Moscow as good fun.
The game hasn't changed in hundreds of years, except that it used to be played with wheat, then later oil, and now it's played with steel. Of course the steel mills aren't the only business, but they're crucial enough that the spinoffs from them makes or breaks the rest of the country. And Russian defense contractors aren't the only customers, but they're crucial enough that they make or break the steel mills.
In one way or another, Russia plays this little game of cat-and-mouse with every country around, with the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Azeris, with everybody, for hundreds of years. A thousand in some cases. The only way a country can save itself is to cut off all contact with Russia, go cold turkey 100%, develop new (but further and more difficult to enter) markets, but that is of course a painful solution with considerable temporary dislocation, and difficult to sell to the voters.
