The former part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Russia has been an independent nation since 1991 after collapse of communistic regime. Russia is the largest country in the world. Her square cover more than one-eighth of the Earth 's inhabited land area. Russia is also the most populous country with nearly 144 million people in November 2014. Russia has borders contiguous with many Asian and European countries. A large area occupied by Russia gives it certain advantages. These include, first of all, the "middle" position of the country, makes it a "civilizational bridge" between Europe and Asia. At the same time Russia is geographically a natural communication corridor Eurasia has not only great strategic, and global
…show more content…
The result of Inflation and economic collapse in the early 1990s and 1998, become unemployment and the loss or reduction of many established social services, such as health care and education. Life has changed and sometimes is not in the better way for vast majority of people. Several problems faced the Russia in its attempt to convert from communism to capitalism. The first major problem facing Russia was the legacy of the Soviet Union 's enormous commitment to the Cold War. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union devoted a quarter of its gross economic output to the defense sector (at the time most Western analysts believed that this figure was 15 percent). At the time, the military-industrial complex employed at least one of every five adults in the Soviet Union. In some regions of Russia, at least half of the workforce was employed in defense plants. (The comparableU.S. figures were roughly one-sixteenth of gross national product and about one of every sixteen in the workforce.) The end of the Cold War and the cutback in military spending hit such plants very hard, and it was often impossible for them to quickly retool equipment, retrain workers, and find new markets to adjust to the new post-Cold War and post-Soviet era. In the process of conversion an enormous body of experience, qualified specialists and know-how has been lost, as the …show more content…
The problem was not that the Soviet population was uneducated. Literacy was nearly universal, and the educational attainment level of the Soviet population was among the highest in the world with respect to science, engineering, and technical specialties. However, the average Soviet worker was not well prepared to work within a market economy. The system struggled (and still struggles) with concepts such as cost-effectiveness, efficiency, creativity and improvements. During communism, the need to create employment led to huge inefficiencies and redundancies in the workforce (a favorite example: you go to the store. You first walk up to the meat counter, tell one person what you want. They give you a ticket with the price. When you’ve ordered everything, you go to the cashier. They ring you up. You pay. They give you a receipt. You take the receipt back to the meat counter. One person takes the receipt, another puts your meat into a bag for you. This process is repeated for other food types that you want to buy, and for packaged things like coffee there are people just standing behind the counter waiting to hand you your items… and this is after the end of communism!). After so many years of working under a system that rewarded obedience over creativity and did not tolerate questions or suggestions for improvement, most workers needed to radically shift their mindset to encompass a competitive market economy. Understandably,
The result of Inflation and economic collapse in the early 1990s and 1998, become unemployment and the loss or reduction of many established social services, such as health care and education. Life has changed and sometimes is not in the better way for vast majority of people. Several problems faced the Russia in its attempt to convert from communism to capitalism. The first major problem facing Russia was the legacy of the Soviet Union 's enormous commitment to the Cold War. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union devoted a quarter of its gross economic output to the defense sector (at the time most Western analysts believed that this figure was 15 percent). At the time, the military-industrial complex employed at least one of every five adults in the Soviet Union. In some regions of Russia, at least half of the workforce was employed in defense plants. (The comparableU.S. figures were roughly one-sixteenth of gross national product and about one of every sixteen in the workforce.) The end of the Cold War and the cutback in military spending hit such plants very hard, and it was often impossible for them to quickly retool equipment, retrain workers, and find new markets to adjust to the new post-Cold War and post-Soviet era. In the process of conversion an enormous body of experience, qualified specialists and know-how has been lost, as the …show more content…
The problem was not that the Soviet population was uneducated. Literacy was nearly universal, and the educational attainment level of the Soviet population was among the highest in the world with respect to science, engineering, and technical specialties. However, the average Soviet worker was not well prepared to work within a market economy. The system struggled (and still struggles) with concepts such as cost-effectiveness, efficiency, creativity and improvements. During communism, the need to create employment led to huge inefficiencies and redundancies in the workforce (a favorite example: you go to the store. You first walk up to the meat counter, tell one person what you want. They give you a ticket with the price. When you’ve ordered everything, you go to the cashier. They ring you up. You pay. They give you a receipt. You take the receipt back to the meat counter. One person takes the receipt, another puts your meat into a bag for you. This process is repeated for other food types that you want to buy, and for packaged things like coffee there are people just standing behind the counter waiting to hand you your items… and this is after the end of communism!). After so many years of working under a system that rewarded obedience over creativity and did not tolerate questions or suggestions for improvement, most workers needed to radically shift their mindset to encompass a competitive market economy. Understandably,