Harley Balzer: A Successful Waste of Money by the Russians
[Harley Balzer is associate professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.]
...The waste of money and talent is the norm for much of what Russia does on the global stage, and it is nothing new. Russia consistently squanders large sums chasing prestige, with much of the money ending up in the pockets of corrupt officials.
Back in the U.S.S.R., the space program was a prime example. Parallel to the scientific and military space effort, dominated by Soviet cosmonauts, the U.S.S.R. had a program to launch representatives of fraternal socialist countries into orbit. The program would have been far less expensive if the foreign comrades had been allowed to travel on regularly scheduled scientific flights. Instead, the entire fellow-travelers effort was operated separately, with its own budget. The flights were purely propaganda, squandering both money and the opportunity to engage in serious collaborative efforts. The people who ran the program traveled abroad to recruit participants, and their budget was substantial.
Another example of Soviet waste was in the official cultural-exchange program with the United States. American hard-liners regularly criticized the exchanges for allowing the Soviet Union to send scientists and engineers to learn America’s latest developments, while the Americans sent historians and literature specialists to study arcane topics in the U.S.S.R.
The notion that the Soviets were operating a carefully targeted espionage program was undermined when we Americans learned that officials in the Soviet Ministry of Higher Education, which administered the exchange program on the Soviet side, were selling places on the exchange for cash. This was not evidence of careerist aspirations of would-be participants, but rather reflected the serious income supplement that could be derived from buying V.C.R.’s and blue jeans in the U.S. and selling them at home....
Read entire article at NYT
...The waste of money and talent is the norm for much of what Russia does on the global stage, and it is nothing new. Russia consistently squanders large sums chasing prestige, with much of the money ending up in the pockets of corrupt officials.
Back in the U.S.S.R., the space program was a prime example. Parallel to the scientific and military space effort, dominated by Soviet cosmonauts, the U.S.S.R. had a program to launch representatives of fraternal socialist countries into orbit. The program would have been far less expensive if the foreign comrades had been allowed to travel on regularly scheduled scientific flights. Instead, the entire fellow-travelers effort was operated separately, with its own budget. The flights were purely propaganda, squandering both money and the opportunity to engage in serious collaborative efforts. The people who ran the program traveled abroad to recruit participants, and their budget was substantial.
Another example of Soviet waste was in the official cultural-exchange program with the United States. American hard-liners regularly criticized the exchanges for allowing the Soviet Union to send scientists and engineers to learn America’s latest developments, while the Americans sent historians and literature specialists to study arcane topics in the U.S.S.R.
The notion that the Soviets were operating a carefully targeted espionage program was undermined when we Americans learned that officials in the Soviet Ministry of Higher Education, which administered the exchange program on the Soviet side, were selling places on the exchange for cash. This was not evidence of careerist aspirations of would-be participants, but rather reflected the serious income supplement that could be derived from buying V.C.R.’s and blue jeans in the U.S. and selling them at home....