Автор: Пользователь скрыл имя, 25 Ноября 2012 в 12:05, реферат
There is a big number of people, who can name each other- patriots. I can surely say, that I’m patriot. I love my country, I love its history, its views and I want it to be better. That’s why I’ve chosen the most interesting theme for me :”Russia in morden comunity”. I think it’s interesting for every Russian to compare their own view on our country with views of other people famous or not. I want to show you that our country isn’t bad like most people of my age think. Yes, we had a hard times but, I hope, they have gone and our future will be better. I am sure that the present government will be able to overcome corruption, misunderstanding and would not let the country fall apart, as did Gorbachev to the USSR.. Despite the devastation ,theft and the enormous social inequality, I still love my homeland, and I hope that everything will turn out in the best way and our task is to do everything to ensure that such is the case.
Introduction.
There is a big number of people, who can name each other- patriots. I can surely say, that I’m patriot. I love my country, I love its history, its views and I want it to be better. That’s why I’ve chosen the most interesting theme for me :”Russia in morden comunity”. I think it’s interesting for every Russian to compare their own view on our country with views of other people famous or not. I want to show you that our country isn’t bad like most people of my age think. Yes, we had a hard times but, I hope, they have gone and our future will be better. I am sure that the present government will be able to overcome corruption, misunderstanding and would not let the country fall apart, as did Gorbachev to the USSR.. Despite the devastation ,theft and the enormous social inequality, I still love my homeland, and I hope that everything will turn out in the best way and our task is to do everything to ensure that such is the case.
In my research I tried to be utterly objective. There hundred opinions on Russia in internet, I’ve found some articles about our cities where people said that they really saw bears! Some articles were really scaring where authors wrote about the decline of the Russian village. And some were really nice and exiting when the reporter wrote about our future that we will be ahead of the whole planet. So, it was really interesting to learn about such different points of view. If you look to political situation today, you will understand that the world needs strong Russia if we don’t nobody protects it.
Chapter 1.
What Is Russia Today?
This question is the most interesting and hard to find out the truth. Russian history is so deep, extensive and rich so that you can really lost in it and never get the answer.
But I think I did it. I searched hundreds of web-sites and I found the most truthful one.
The article is taken from the ‘The telegraph’
So, analytics say that Russia is a big and powerful country that is now visible more than ever but this power is in many ways abused and Russian interest is put before the interest of many other nations in the region or further...What we see today in this Eastern country is far from democracy. The opponents of the regime are removed from the political scene, the freedom of expression is in many aspects suppressed but still in comparison to the state this country was in before these seem to be the golden ages. And again we see the same question before us :Does the power of Russia leave its neighbors powerless?Russia maintains democractic values in that there are elections, however this is limited as they are not 'free and fair'. Electoral fraud is rife in elections within the past 10 years, a practice which can't be eliminated internally as the executive branch of government maintains control of the courts.
The author stresses that our president Vladimir Putin is one of the most influential politicians on the planet. Both in Russia and abroad the president is gradually turning into a brand, a concept or a political product that means different things to different people.
But Putin’s presence and personality is strong enough for him to be seen separately from the country he rules. And this is not thanks to anything he’s done or hasn’t done; it is simply that Putin has come to be a reflection of the general situation in the world, a symbol – positive for some, for others negative – of the gloomy transitive state which the whole international system is now in, along with all of the states that comprise it.
Putin came to power promising stability for Russia. This happened at a time when the world, which had just started celebrating the end of the Cold War (a victory for the West and of western ways), stood on the brink of economic meltdown. Uncertainty grew as institutional structures that everybody had taken for granted collapsed before our very eyes.
Further the author reports that the West’s feverish attempts to prop up the global system, built according to western models, only led it to breaking point. And, as it was united and globalised like never before, the consequences of one person’s (or company’s) mistakes were felt everywhere. And so the stabilisation process that was going on inside Russia was out of keeping with the situation in the outside world. In other words, Putin stood for the polar opposite of the general trend.
Many people see Putin as the archetypal enemy of progress, a symbol of outmoded ideas and old-fashioned approaches. Putin’s articles and public speeches are often based on the premise that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, and that the actions of the world’s most powerful countries only exacerbate these threats. Time after time, the medium- and long-term consequences of wars, invasions, interventions and reforms have come back to bite the people who initiated them. The past 10 years yields numerous examples of this – from the invasion of Iraq to the conflict in Libya.
Putin is not alone in his refusal to accept this state of affairs, but he is the one heading the vanguard of resistance. This is primarily because Russia, despite its decline after the collapse of the USSR, remains one of the most dynamic countries, and one that does not attempt to hide its ambitions. Second, Russia’s nuclear and raw-material potential means that her opinion cannot be ignored. And finally, in terms of the president’s specific character, Putin simply stands out from the other politicians for his honesty and straight talking.
Many political observers are convinced that Putin is a wily strategist who is guided by a “big plan”: expansion, reinstating the empire, strengthening the so-called power vertical, and heading back to the USSR.
The president of Russia is a reactionary in the sense that he likes to react. His favourite political“tactic” is to respond to a stimulus; that way he knows the source and character of the challenge and can act quickly, effectively and without error.
The ever more turbulent situation outside Russia worries Putin mainly because it resonates with the internal manifestations of instability, turning them into louder and more insistent threats. Like many Russian conservatives before him, Putin is always saying that the country needs time to secure stable, sustainable, managed development, and that it is still too soon to give in to the demands of those who are fighting for liberal democracy.
Putin understands that the protests which erupted on his return to power were based on more than just provocation from the West, although, of course, he also believes there was a strong element of this. He appreciates that these protests signified changes happening within a new, more enlightened Russian society. But he is still convinced that the protesters are wrong, no matter how much they believe in what they are doing.
His view is that the time is just not yet right for these changes – instead, let’s take a bit more time, and for now we’ll carry on slowly constructing and polishing…
Time and time again the history of Russia has shown that the conservatives never find the extra time they so badly need. Something has always happened, and their efforts, even if they are correct and constructive, turn to dust under the insistent march of time and change. Changes are certainly not always for the best, but when they are happening no one is thinking about this.
Having returned to his position as head of state, Putin has not delivered magic solutions to the problems that have arisen; but he did come with his own characteristic sense of what is dangerous, of the fragility of everything around him. It is hard to accuse Putin of having no strategy – these days no one seems to have one, and in our unpredictable world there doesn’t seem to be any point in having a strategy.
The situation in Europe shows that constructions that appear well thought out and stable can crumble like a house of cards. As a conservative and a realist, Putin is soberly evaluating what has happened, but he cannot find ready answers to the mounting problems we face.
Chapter 2.
The other interesting question for me- what do people think about our economics?
Many authors have different opinions on the topic”so I’ll tell you the main things that different people think about Russian economic condition.
The first article I’ve found in Forbes magazine and was written by Kenneth Rapoza
The author starts by telling the reader about that For the last two years, Russian government officials have been lamenting the heavy cost of oil to their budgets. In the heyday of Russian oil discoveries and rising energy demand, Russia would rake in quite a profit, filling its government coffers with cold hard cash from its energy windfall. Today, its budget is funded by oil and gas to the tune of 35 percent. Without that income, Russia would have a deficit of close to 10 percent, according to Anton Siluanov, Russia’s Minister of Finance.
Oil exports are in decline, as are gas exports to Europe. Oil production at traditional fields is in decline. Same with gas. New fields won’t make up for it with their average one to two percent growth rate, said Maxim Oreshkin, chief Russian economist at VTB Capital in Moscow.
“We clearly see that in the government,” said Andrey Belousov, Minister of Economic Development. ”There is a deteriorating situation in Europe and that impacts natural gas sales for us. In the not so distant future, we see natural gas playing a tiny role in Russia, and maybe even a negative one because of Europe.”
Moreover, the U.S. doesn’t need Russian natural gas anymore. We have our own. As the world also looks for sources of renewable energy and transport, such as electric cars, demand will stabilize. Russia needs to figure out what to do with itself before time runs out.
Go into detail last year, oil production in Russia reached 511.3 million tons, or 10.26 million barrels per day. It was the highest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the highest in the world together with Saudi Arabia. Russia’s declared goal in its oil policy is to maintain annual output at around 505 million tons over the next few years and increase it to 535 million tons by 2030.
However, despite the fact that proven Russian oil reserves are still vast, and that Russia probably has very large undiscovered deposits, it will be practically impossible to achieve this goal because of structural deficiencies in the market structure (taxation on revenue instead of profit).
A significant fall of Russian oil production is inevitable. The degree of the decline will depend on the actions the government takes in its fiscal policy and the investment climate in general.
Russia also faces new challenges now that it’s a member of the World Trade Organization. It must lower tariffs from an average of around 9 percent to five percent or so, a big challenge for companies that might not be able to compete with imports. This will also impact the economy, bringing in, possibly, less revenue not only for Russian firms, but for the tax collectors in the federal government. Less taxes means less social services and less investment in roads, space exploration, and innovation. Russia’s economy is not yet ready for life after oil.
“We still need to improve our investment climate for Russians and foreigners,” said Belousov. “We need better property protections, construction regulations. Look, we have road maps for getting this done from the president’s office and we expect action in these areas soon. We have tried to get it through the Duma (Russian Parliament), but nothing has become of it so we took matters into our own hands with presidential decrees that should go into affect next year,” he said.
Russia also needs to build up its labor productivity. The country is three times behind the advanced economies. Russia needs to modernize its factories to some degree, and retool.
“Oil and gas powers the federal government in Russia and that has not changed. It has to change,” said Anton Siluanov, Minster of Finance.
The government is hoping that a number of initiatives will make it easier to invest in Russia. It is creating a central clearing house for foreign investors to directly access the Russian securities market without having to have a local broker. And it is working on fixing its tax laws so foreigners can access that market without paying through the nose for it. That central depository is supposed to be operational next month.
.As for me, I'm sure that the government is also funding high tech start ups at its Skolkovo initiative in the outskirts of Moscow. People there like to call it Russia’s Silicon Valley. They have the tech know-how. They have successful major tech brands, like Kaspersky Lab, the third largest security software firm by retail sales. It can be done. But Russia needs more Kaspersky Lab companies.
It’s financial sector is also growing. Moscow is a top 10 derivatives market and a top 20 equities trading market. It wants to compete with Frankfurt and the city is working on creating the environment and preparing the infrastructure to make Moscow’s international financial center a reality.
“The business climate is difficult and Russia still has a negative image and poor status. A big chunk of that problem rests with the federal government,” Andrei Sharonov, deputy mayor of Moscow, told Forbes on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Russia Calling! conference.
“We have the financial infrastructure and are still solving the problems with creating a central depository. We are working to improve the quality of life in Moscow so it is a place where financial services firms want to come to be near their clients. It’s not always just about having the skyscrapers,” Sharonov said. A block away from where we sit, a dozen new skyscrapers are in the process of being built or were recently built across a two block stretch of real estate along the Moscow River. “Our responsibility is to make Moscow a livable city that people want to work in,” he said.
“We used to think that global problems could be solved quickly,” Putin said. ”Now we know we need a lot of time. No use clinging to old recipes. We need to find new modern sources of growth and so we are proceeding with an ecological renewal of the Russian economy.”
The main thing in the article, I think, are the words of Putin who said that in order to keep investors interested, the government will approve amendments on corporate governance that only focused on state companies rather than private ones. “I’m aware of the problems. We want Russia to be a comfortable environment for portfolio investors, too.”
Russia already has some global players to invest in. It’s not just oil; but it is mostly oil. VTB Capital is one of the global non-oil names out there. People in the investment community from São Paulo to Hong Kong know VTB. Kaspersky is another. But that’s only two in a country that was once an empire. Russia needs a lot more than that.
The other view to economics of our country was written by Mark Adomanis, who’s article is named Russia's Economy is Still Growing Faster than Every EU Country.
The article is also from Forbes.
The start of article isn’t so nice as it can be but it’s real truth ,so the author starts by telling the reader that he has been pretty persistent in arguing that Russia’s government, corrupt and authoritarian as it may be, is going to last for awhile. This is not because it is a shining example of efficiency and democratic accountability, but because its overall economic and fiscal outlook is, at the moment, surprisingly robust. It’s aso because the top-level elite are, at least for the moment, united in their desire to stay in power.
Midway through 2012, the Russian economy is growing at a reasonable pace, foreign debt is almost non-existent, the budget is, for the moment, roughly in balance, and the opposition is still fragmented and leaderless. This would seem to be a uniquely poor recipe for a successful revolutionary upheaval. Basically, everything hinges on the trajectory of the Russian economy, and it really doesn’t seem to be doing poorly at the moment. This is particularly true when you compare Russia’s decent performance with the consistently awful performance of the EU and the Eurozone, both of which appear to be in outright recession.
I understand that Russia is vulnerable to a collapse in oil prices. Really, I do. But while I’ve seen many predictions that the price of oil will collapse at some point in the future, I’ve also seen quite a few stories like this one from Reuters:
“Oil steadied near three-month highs on Thursday, supported by worries over possible disruptions to supply from the Middle East and a steep fall in U.S. oil inventories.
Global crude oil benchmark Brent has risen more than a third in less than two months on escalating worries about a conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme and as investors hope for more stimulus measures from central banks that would boost commodities.”
The people predicting immediate upheaval in Russia, people like David Satter, whose latest article I reviewed a little more than a week ago, also spent quite a lot of time talking about Russia’s supposedly weak economic performance. In this understanding, Russia is an economic basket case that has never performed particularly well and which is ill-suited for today’s modern and competitive world. While the precise details differ, the essence of the argument is that the demonstration effect of rapid growth in other countries will make the Kremlin appear weak and incapable in the eyes of the Russian populace, roughly what happened during the 1980′s at the tail end of a long period of economic stagnation.
This is a very plausible argument, but to what extent is it actually true? Well as I noted back in May, Russia was actually on pace to outgrow every EU country in 2012. When we look at new data from Eurostat and from Russia, we find that this is absolutely still the case:
As you can easily see, Russia is a positive outlier: its economy is growing more quickly than all of the new EU members. There might have been a time that you could argue that Russia was a laggard, that its dismal economic performance was a testament to its corrupt and inefficient institutions and that, if it only followed the example of countries further to its West, that it would be able to unlock the secret of sustained capitalist growth.
However, in 2012, Russia is performing better than its much more democratic and liberal brethren in the EU. This reflects the near-total failure of the European Central Bank and other European institutions far more than it does any particularly excellent decisions on the part of the Russians, but the EU and its attendant institutional and legal baggage were supposed to help countries achieve economic growth, not bind them in a straightjacket of austerity and recession. Looking at the above figures, why would anyone expect there to be a sustained wave of pro-Western enthusiasm, so that Russia can be more like Hungary and the Czech Republic? Indeed, under the pressure of prolonged economic misery and desperation, democracy is arguably eroding within the EU itself.
All of the above would suggest to me that Russia’s current political system won’t run out of gas anytime soon and that it will be able to broadly maintain the status quo through selective repression and co-optation. It won’t be pretty, there will almost certainly be additional distasteful farces like the Pussy Riot trial as the Kremlin continues its age-old hunt for useful enemies, but in the short term the Kremlin’s position looks quite secure.
Chapter 3.
One of the most interesting and exciting political themes today for me and many people is relationships between two old competitors on the world political arena. I mean relationships between Russia and USA. I found the article of American woman Dana Hughes who wanted to find the answer for the question : ‘Who is Russia for USA: friend, foe or complicated?’
The athtor starts with trying to understand what made Mitt Romney,who wanted to be a president of USA say tha Russia is the “number one geo-political foe” of America after that he got strong responses from Capitol Hill to the Kremlin, where ex t President Dmitry Medvedev said Romney’s comments smell of “Hollywood” and are not based on reality.
But one thing all sides can agree on is the reality of what happens during a U.S. presidential campaign. And one Russian expert says that’s translating to politics over policy.
“Russia bashing plays well to a certain part of the American electorate,” Steven Pifer, the director of the arms control initiative at the Brookings Institute, told ABC News. “I find it hard to believe that the Romney foreign policy team really does see Russia as foe number one.”
Pifer cites North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, the threat from radical Islam and the rise of China’s global influence as more important to America’s geopolitical position. He also says that for every issue Russia has not cooperated on, for example Syria and America’s development of a missile defense system, there have been several in which Russia has remained a key ally.
“Russia has been very helpful in helping American supplies going to Afghanistan, for example, so that we’re no longer as dependent on Pakistan,” says Pifer.
Pifer isn’t the only Russian expert to find fault in Romney’s statement. Cliff Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Eurasia group, calls Romney’s statement that Russia is foe number one “ridiculous.” Kupchan cited Iran’s nuclear potential nuclear threat, and instability in Afghanistan and Iraq as bigger geopolitical issues than Russia.
“He took advantage of [Obama's] open mic incident and went way way too far with it,” says Kupchan. “I hope that he just made a gaffe, because if he didn’t, I find it very worrisome.”
Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at UCLA and author of “After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia,” says that Romney may have been playing to a Republican base, which often views Russia with suspicion. It’s a ploy Putin often uses as well during elections, making America out to be the heavy-handed evil empire.
The problem with this type of rhetoric, says Treisman, is that if Romney were to be elected it could make it harder for him to go back to the Russians and negotiate without risking being seen as a politician who flip-flops.
“It will be pretty hard for him not to take a harder line on Russia,” says Treisman. “He’s kind of painted himself into a corner.”