new Russian neighborhood perspectives [1of3]

Abstract

This document is a consideration of multinational and global marketing strategies as we look at the evolution of what has become again Russia. Such consideration necessarily includes rationales, conversation of trade blocs and associations and to some extent an acknowledgment of economic and sociopolitical boundaries.

The author confesses being a casual student of this country's culture since 1978, visited Moscow the week Yeltsin resigned and will be hosting a young doctoral student of rocket engineering in March 2011.



Socio-Political / Economic Boundaries

For whatever anyone may ever say among the functions of government that one would have to concede the use to control one's population. Imagine under any form of government trying to do this across a behemoth of a country, the largest in the world, which literally stretches across nearly half the planet. Indeed, prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain (at the very beginning of the 1990s), it stretched beyond that. As recently as 2007, Russia had 11 time zones (which, for economic reasons, they then massaged down to seven, and may yet settle at five, though the land mass is unchanged)(Kidport, -2011, Perry-Castañeda Map Collection - University of Texas at Austin Library Online, last updated: 2007, Solovyov, 2010).

Not only has whatever has made up Russia been unwieldy in size, but the geography (despite a wealth of natural resources) itself has not been kind, either. About half its present borders reach water, however most of that hugs the arctic (primarily tundra and forest, historic for its use of exiling, Siberia & Solzhenitsyn's Archipelago, making up more than 70% of Russia's landmass). Beyond this, a significant amount of land is the Ural and Caucasus mountains (although to the west of the Urals lies a fertile European plain). In the south Russia has desert.

For even when Russia could catch a break, its former Soviet guardians (of close to a century), and those making such an effort to transition to a democracy, they have severely mismanaged many of its natural resources. The largest and deepest freshwater lake, Baikal (representing a full fifth of the Earth's unfrozen fresh water), continues to be polluted to this day. In the past 25 years an entire sea, the Aral (which had been one of the four largest lakes in the world at 26,300 sq mi, now in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), has virtually disappeared! (Anonymous, 2008).

The Soviets reigned from 1917 to 1989/91. In a handful of meaningful expressions its good intentions did contribute (industrializing, Sputnik, etc.), and it is generally acknowledged that the horrors outweighed the good. Along the way, the Eastern bloc/Warsaw Pact extended the sociopolitical and economic boundaries of the country. By now, the drift of corruption, metaphorically along the lines of a bad multilevel marketing scheme, had become increasingly bloated, now sucking sustenance from its new acquisitions. Looking back, such a construct seems unsustainable on its face. This writer witnessed firsthand the empty shelves and the ringing up of purchases using an abacus (instead of a register) as recently as 1999 in Moscow (Davis, 2010).

Of course, like the people of any country, the people themselves were (and are) wonderful, and have a lot to offer. Highly literate, the Russians have millennia of sophisticated culture to offer (and so too, the cultures of many that fell within its grasp). A quick review of the countries that used to be part of Russia at some point across the previous century should easily indicate the complexity of culture and politics, as well as literal economic boundaries. Naturally, no one thought a transition to democracy would be like a light switch. Now, just past the two-decade mark, we see the impatience of the uninitiated both inside and outside Russia itself. The good news seems inevitable that Russia will continue through its growing pains, eventually finding its own democratic expression (even as we witness new oligarchs and corruption). Having inserted, and then extracted itself from so many cultures, and played with so many boundaries, depending on which city one lives in (70 to 80% of Russians live in or around an urban area, mostly in the west), that Russian is probably already multicultural.