23.11.2021, Moscow.
Recent efforts to promote vaccination in Russia are reminiscent of similar actions by “free market enthusiasts” in the USSR during perestroika, said philosopher, political scientist, the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan on November 14 in his analytical program The Meaning of the Game.
“I remember the late 80’s, when I had to resist certain trends, which are strikingly similar in their typology and psychological intensity to what I see now. At that time, it was called a struggle between free-market enthusiasts and anti-free-market enthusiasts, now it is called a struggle between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers,” said the political scientist.
The expert recalled that numerous supporters of free-market reforms refused to examine the economic issues and only repeated “mantras“. At the same time, competent people who understood the situation believed that the opportunity to resist the free-marketeers was missed.
“There was a herd of very energetic people who had mastered their abracadabra, who turned primitive books on market economics into ‘holy scriptures’, took excerpts from them, made them into mantras, and kept screaming about these mantras and crushing everything in their way,” explained Sergey Kurginyan.
The works of major economists such as John Keynes (1883-1946) and Joseph Stiglitz (b. 1943) confirm the need for a serious state participation in the economy, recalled the expert.
“It was impossible to convince these free-marketeers that in reality they didn’t understand a thing. They could have read, say, five or ten books, they could have looked a little to the right, little to the left, but not like this, not right into these blinders, the world is set up differently. Capitalism works differently – in the US, and all over the world. They didn’t want to hear any of it,” added the philosopher.
On November 15, 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) signed a package of ten decrees and government resolutions on Russia’s transition to a market economy. The initiative was prepared by Yegor Gaidar’s team. Before that, Yeltsin formed a new government under his leadership. The liberalization of prices took place at the beginning of January 1992, after which they immediately increased by 3.5 times.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
