00:00This week on WUSIS, we revisit some of the most consequential economic transformations of the 20th century
00:06in the second part of a three-part arc.
00:09After Poland, the focus now is Russia.
00:12Here's an excerpt of the conversation between Melissa Idris and Prof. Emeritus Dato' Dr. Wu Wingtai.
00:18In the case of Poland, the West came in with financial aid,
00:24which allowed the government to be able to pay the civil servants to keep it going.
00:33And they got external aid to buy crucial materials.
00:39Like if the factory machine breaks down, all you need is a certain valve.
00:44You need the foreign exchange to buy it.
00:47But the IMF, the World Bank, the US, the Europeans basically took out their wallet and put it on the table
00:57and said, take what you want.
00:58Take what you need.
00:59Because they saw it as temporary.
01:02Because once you can get things back to normal,
01:07Poland will have lots of high ability to repay everything.
01:12And furthermore, it will no longer be an ally of Russia, which was still a communist.
01:17That was the political considerations, yes.
01:20So when the Russians were greatly impressed by what happened in Poland,
01:26because they saw this economic miracle.
01:30And at the same time, the collapse continued under Gorbachev.
01:33Gorbachev tried to make changes, but his changes failed to work, failed to revitalize the economy.
01:45So the establishment, which is the KGB, conducted a coup against Gorbachev.
01:53So Gorbachev was arrested in August 1991.
01:58One, and a new person came in.
02:02At that time, another power center emerged with Yat-Zin.
02:08And the army split.
02:10So there was one group with the KGB, one group with Yat-Zin.
02:15And they fought the most rational of wars.
02:17They sent people to each other side to count how many guns the other side got,
02:23how many planes the other side got.
02:25And they found out Yat-Zin got more guns and more planes.
02:28So the other side said, okay, don't kill us, and we'll go back.
02:32You win.
02:34So yes, that was a very rational war.
02:36We see who would win in the end.
02:38And say, okay, you would win in the end.
02:40Very practical.
02:42Very practical.
02:43Let's not need to fight.
02:44Let's win.
02:45Let's over.
02:45Okay.
02:46He took over.
02:48And his people wanted to do exactly what the polls did on the forefront,
02:53which is the free prices.
02:56Price liberalization.
02:58And stop inflation.
03:00They wanted to stop inflation.
03:05They wanted to have internationalization.
03:08But the domestic industries are so powerful that they prevented the internationalization.
03:15They said, no, you cannot kill us.
03:16We are your strongest supporters.
03:17And so, he was afraid of the factories closing.
03:22He did not internationalize.
03:24Dubai political support, because Yat-Zin now has to have a new election.
03:29Because he, a new election as president of Russia.
03:33So, he privatized the enterprises by basically selling it to people who would donate to his political campaign.
03:45This is the rise of the oligarchs.
03:47The rise of the oligarchs.
03:48Got it.
03:48So, this privatization was basically mass stealing.
03:53Like oil fields of Russia were given to individuals.
03:57These are national assets handed to individuals.
04:00That's why he got Khododovsky, who founded a company called Yukos, which owned most of the Russian oil.
04:08So, you could see it was a very corrupt process.
04:11And why was that done?
04:13Because the Russians were expecting the West to give it the same aid as it gave Poland.
04:20Catch the full conversation of this on all Awani International's social media accounts.
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