L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

tion in the global division of labor which is very similar to that of
Africa.
Since approximately the beginning of the 2000s, Moscow has
been desperately trying to change this situation, but encounters
strong resistance from old rivals (now main buyers of its export
commodities), new competitors (which develop more dynamically
and are more adroit and agile in occupying new opening market
niches) and indigenous oligarchs, whose fortunes depend on the raw
material specialization of their country. In may be a coincidence, but
the general “disappointment” of the West with the end results of
democratization processes in Russia coincided with the shift in the
Russia’s attitude of its subordinate role in the international division
of labor.
Though on the whole Russia’s metamorphosis at the end of the
20th century was disappointing, that cloud had some silver lining
too. In the 21st century, the global economy began to experience a
more pronounced relative shortage of various kinds of natural resources.
That means that international market prices are due to increase,
thus broadening the opportunities for mobilizing the savings
for development.
But with that came the first signs of the so called Dutch disease,
though in our view it was a very specific type of the illness.
In accordance with the classical economic theory, in simple
trade models, a country ought to specialize in industries that it has a
comparative advantage in. So, theoretically, Russia, as a country
rich in natural resources, would be better off specializing in the extraction
of natural resources. But it is not. The reliance on natural
resources under a free reign market economy is slowly killing the
national manufacturing industries by making any investment alternative
to mining less attractive. This challenge was manageable under
the Soviet planned economy, since then it were the non-market factors,
that determined the areas, types and levels of investment. At
that time Gosplan’s decision making was based on the priority of the
macroeconomic efficiency of the Soviet economy as a whole. For
that it was prepared to sacrifice the level of profitability of individual
projects and even whole branches. The balanced development of
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