Ko je Branko Milanović pred dvema tednoma pisal o štirih teorijah glede ukrajinske vojne, me je nekoliko presenetila njegova navedba, da je Ukrajina med nekdanjimi sovjetskimi republikami najslabši performer glede rasti BDP (no, tudi glede korupcije je med prvimi tremi). Ukrajina je vendarle evropska država, z določeno kulturno in gospodarsko tradicijo ter naravnimi viri. Vendar podatki Svetovne banke o rasti BDP to potrjujejo (kot izhodišče sem vzel leto 1995, ker so podatki za baltske države dosegljivi šele od tega leta naprej).

Ukrajinski institucionalni sistem ni slučajno v razsulu, pač je bil namerno dizajniran kot ruševina, da omogoča participacijo ozke politične elite pri hranjenju z mrvicami, ki padajo z miz mafijskih šefov in oligarhov

Spodnja slika kaže, da ima Ukrajina med nekdanjimi sovjetskimi republikami res najnižjo dinamiko gospodarske rasti. Po letu 1995 se je njen BDP povečal le za nekaj več kot 30%. Za primerjavo, BDP Rusije se je v istem obdobju povečal za dobrih 100%, v EU državah pa v povprečju za 50%. V baltskih državah se je povečal za 150% do 180%, medtem ko so nekatere ex-sovjetske države dosegale precej divje stopnje rasti (v Tadžikistanu, Uzbekistanu, Turkmenistanu in Azerbejdžanu se je v tem obdobju BDP povečal za 350% do 550%; seveda iz zelo nizke osnove).

Slika je še nekoliko bolj dramatična, če kot izhodišče vzamemo leto 1990, kot prvo leto tranzicije iz socialističnega v kapitalistično gospodarstvo. V sliki spodaj lahko vidite dolgo in bolečo depresijo tako v Rusiji kot Ukrajini skozi celotno desetletje tranzicije v 1990-tih letih, ko se je ruski BDP kumulativno skrčil za 40%, ukrajinski pa za 60%. Toda po prihodu Putina na oblast (2000) je rusko gospodarstvo začelo hitro okrevati (pri tem mu je močno pomagala rast cen nafte) in je leta 2008 preseglo raven BDP iz leta 1990 ter to raven v letu 2021 preseglo za 20%. V nasprotju s tem pa, kot lahko vidite spodaj, je ukrajinsko gospodarstvo okrevalo bistveno počasneje in je na vrhuncu okrevanja leta 2009 doseglo le 70% ravni BDP iz leta 1990. Nato je trajektorija šla le še navzdol. Ukrajino so prizadeli trije šoki: finančna kriza v 2009, majdanski puč leta 2014 ter korona v 2021. Lani (2021) je bil ukrajinski BDP za več kot 40% nižji kot leta 1990!

Prišlo je do, na zahodu za večino ljudi, presenetljivega paradoksa, da so Ukrajinci množično odhajali na delo v Rusijo (3 do 5 milijonov delovnih migrantov), kjer so bile plače dvakrat višje kot v Ukrajini. V 30 letih samostojnosti, do začetka vojne lani, se je iz Ukrajine zaradi ekonomske katastrofe izselilo 10 milijonov ljudi.

Torej zakaj je Ukrajina najbolj “failed” država nekdanje Sovjetske zveze?

(Mimogrede, če malce poguglate, lahko vidite, da so jo kot takšno imenovali daleč pred rusko agresijo (pred februarjem 2022). Danes so zahodni mediji do Ukrajine bistveno bolj prizanesljivi, absolutno simpatetični in povsem pozabljajo na tri desetletja kritičnih zapisov o spodletelih ekonomskih politikah, socialni mizeriji, mafijski državi in vsesplošni korupciji v Ukrajini pred rusko agresijo)

Če berete akademske zapise in ekonomske bloge na to temo, pridete do dveh glavnih razlogov. Prvi razlog so povsem ponesrečena in napačno dizajnirana gospodarska tranzicija, ki je po ruskem vzoru ključne naravne vire alocirala (prihvatizirala) nekaj oligarhom, ki so z izčrpavanjem naravnih virov astronomsko obogateli sebe, medtem ko te rasti niso delili s preostalimi 99.999% prebivalcev. Namesto, da bi privabljale tuje investicije v industrijo in da bi – po vzoru sosednje Poljske in Slovaške – Ukrajina postala pomemben del evropskih ponudbenih verig v avtomobilski in elektro industriji, so se politične elite fokusirale predvsem na to, kako se obdržati blizu iste mize z oligarhi, da jim pade kakšna mrvica od njihove pojedine.

Drugi razlog za propad Ukrajine pa je v (namerno) razpadlem institucionalnem sistemu in vsesplošno razširjeni korupciji. Na lestvicah Transparency International je Ukrajina tradicionalno razvrščena kot najbolj koruptivna evropska država (družbo ji dela Rusija). Korupcija je šla do te mere, da so vojaški veljaki nekoč ogromno armado s (za tiste čase) sodobno oborožitvijo spravili povsem na kolena – vojaško opremo razprodali, število vojakov pa iz 600 tisoč spravili pod 100 tisoč. Hkrati je Ukrajina postala mafijska država, kjer so lokalni mafijski šefi po vzoru najbolj korumpiranih afriških držav izsiljevali podjetnike, da jim plačujejo lokalni “harač”. Denimo tretji najpremožnejši Ukrajinec in glavni sponzor sedanjega predsednika Ukrajine Volodimirja Zelenskega, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, ki je Zelenskemu financiral TV serijo “Služabnik ljudstva” in kasneje predsedniško kampanjo (še pred tem pa Leonidu Kučmi), je znan po tovrstnem mafijskem izsiljevanju in izčrpavanju celotnega (neskončnega) spiska podjetij, ki jih je prevzel na osnovi dvomljivih ali mafijskih metod. Kolomoyskega so ZDA po preiskavi FBI zaradi korupcije in Ponzijevih shem tudi v ZDA uvrstile na črno listo (Zelenskijeva vlada je novembra 2022 po pritisku ZDA Kolomoyskemu formalno odvzela ukrajinsko državljanstvo in mu zaplenila nekaj premoženja).

Komentar Sergeya Aleksashenka, nekdanjega namestnika ruskega finančnega ministra, ki piše blog “Behind the Iron Curtain“:

V glavnem, če ponovim, namesto na razvoj so se ukrajinske politične elite fokusirale predvsem na to, kako se obdržati blizu iste mize z oligarhi, da jim pade kakšna mrvica od njihove pojedine. Ukrajinski institucionalni sistem ni slučajno v razsulu, pač je bil namerno dizajniran kot ruševina, da omogoča participacijo ozke politične elite pri hranjenju z mrvicami, ki padajo z miz mafijskih šefov in oligarhov. In ukrajinske težave se niso začele z rusko agresijo (februarja 2022), niti z majdanskim pučem (2014), pač pa so vgrajene v ukrajinsko samostojno državo od prvega dneva samostojnosti naprej.

Spodaj je nekaj odlomkov iz analize “Why is Ukraine such an economic failure” izpod prstov znanega ekonomista in blogerja Noaha Smitha, ki je od februarja lani velik pristaš Ukrajine (na tviterju ima na profilu celo dodano ukrajinsko zastavo). To analizo je objavil januarja 2022, natanko en mesec pred rusko agresijo na Ukrajino. Nekaj odlomkov:

Two articles have been very helpful for me in understanding Russia’s current threat to invade Ukraine. One is this post by Rob Lee explaining what Russia might hope to gain from various types of military actions. And another is this backgrounder by Adam Tooze on the events leading up to the conflict. Tooze, as usual, does a great job of incorporating the economic aspect of the situation. And while I don’t agree with him that “sovereignty consists in determining a development vector”, I do think he’s right to identify Ukraine’s economic failure as an important factor in the ongoing crisis.

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So why did this happen? Why has Ukraine failed economically? One obvious culprit is the war itself, which since 2014 has chilled foreign investment and forced the government to divert resources toward the military. In my overview of the post-Soviet countries, I concluded that Rule #1 for economic development was not to piss off Vladimir Putin. But looking at the graphs above, it’s very clear that that can’t be the whole story, because Ukraine’s problems began well before 2014.

So let’s break those problems down by time period. Essentially, we need to ask why Ukraine’s GDP fell by so much in the 90s, and why it failed to climb faster between 2000 and 2014.

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Why isn’t Ukraine a manufacturing platform for Europe?

In my series of posts about economic development, I’ve tried to analyze each country through the lens of what I call the Chang-Studwell model of industrial policy. This model was laid out by the economist Ha-Joon Chang and the author Joe Studwell in the 2000s and 2010s, though they weren’t the first to think of most of the ideas therein. One core idea is that exporting manufactured goods is the best way to boost a country out of poverty. Countries that specialize in resource extraction or agriculture, or which fail to make their products competitive in global markets, tend to fall behind in the development race. This is especially true for a country like Ukraine, which lacks Russia’s rich endowments of oil, gas, and other natural resources.

So when I think about a country’s development, the first thing I do is go to the Observatory of Economic Complexity and look at what a country exports.

Do this exercise for Poland, Romania, or Turkey — three countries that have enjoyed rapid growth and are now on the cusp of developed-country status — and you’ll see that they all export a lot of cars car parts and some electronics, with Germany and the other rich countries of Europe as their biggest markets. I’ll write a post about these countries later, but basically it looks like they’ve become a sort of Tennessee/Kentucky for Europe — a cheap zone for high-value manufacturing.

But look at Ukraine, and we see that it mostly exports very basic, simple, low-value stuff — food, metals, and minerals.

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Manufacturing itself comprises a lower percent of GDP in Ukraine (10%) than in Poland, Romania, and Turkey (16-19%).

It’s clear that Ukraine missed a key opportunity here. From 2000 to 2014, having weathered the worst of the post-Soviet crisis, Ukraine might have been able to hop on the same growth train that Poland, Romania, and Turkey were on. This could have resulted in faster growth during those years, and it might also have made Europe more willing to defend Ukraine from Russian attack (in order to protect its investments). So I think it’s worth asking why this didn’t happen.

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But it’s still worth asking why Ukraine wasn’t as attractive of a manufacturing platform as the other countries. Being part of the EU would have helped, certainly, but Turkey didn’t join the EU, so that can’t be the whole story. Basically, there are two main categories of explanations here:

1. Macroeconomic mistakes and bad luck
2. Corruption and institutional failure

Mistakes and bad luck

Before writing this post I read a bunch of narrative reviews of Ukraine’s economy since 1991; the best one I found was this 2012 article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. One factor it emphasizes is that in the 2000s, Ukrainian policy tended to reserve manufacturing industries for domestic oligarchs — most of whom had gotten rich by owning Ukraine’s old inefficient Soviet-era manufacturing industries. It thus tried to discourage foreign investment in the manufacturing sector — a huge, tragic mistake. The oligarchs didn’t do much with Ukraine’s manufacturing sector; they just kept collecting their checks and allowed the sector to slowly decline. Meanwhile, the country’s leaders encouraged foreign investment in sectors like finance and real estate. That’s very visible on the graph in the previous section.

Unfortunately, this probably killed Ukraine’s chances to use the Chang-Studwell model of development in the 2000s. It created a huge, bloated financial sector — a development no-no. And it also set Ukraine up for a huge disaster, because finance and real estate were the industries that got clobbered in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Take a look at the growth graph at the beginning of this post, and you’ll see that after 2008, Ukrainian growth flatlines utterly while Russian, Belarusian, Romanian and Polish growth quickly resumes (or in Poland’s case, doesn’t even pause!).

But Ukraine also hit another big shock right around this same time: The end of cheap Russian gas. In Soviet times Russia had piped cheap gas to Ukraine to subsidize the area’s inefficient heavy industry, and this policy basically continued after 1991. But from 2007 through 2009, Russia mostly ended this sweetheart deal, raising the prices Ukraine would have to pay for gas. This dealt a blow to Ukraine’s inefficient, oligarch-controlled manufacturing sector. In 2010 the cheap gas subsidy was partly restored when Ukraine elected a pro-Russian president (Yanukovych) who negotiated a new discount. But of course that ended in 2014 when Yanukovych was ousted and the war began.

So Ukraine made a big mistake in its FDI policy, which left it vulnerable to the twin shocks of the global financial crisis and the end of cheap Russian gas.

Corruption and institutions

The other factor that everyone mentions when it comes to Ukraine’s poor performance is corruption. This is hard to measure (it mostly relies on subjective impressions), but everyone seems to agree it’s a problem. Ukraine’s economy, like Russia’s, is particularly dominated by rich oligarchs:

This creates several problems. First, as the Carnegie article points out, it makes it hard to raise tax revenue, which forces tax rates to be higher, which forces much of the economy off the books. In 2014, Ukraine’s shadow economy was estimated to comprise a whopping 50% of the total. That in turn encourages a pervasive culture of bribe-taking and extralegal means of property protection and contract enforcement (i.e. organized crime), which exacts its own toll on the economy in myriad ways.

Oligarchs’ political power can also prevent good industrial policy, as we saw with the case of FDI policy during the 2000s. What’s good for enriching the country is not always the same as what’s good for enriching oligarchs.

Official corruption also inhibits good governance. The Yanukovych administration is thought to have been especially corrupt, with tens of billions vanishing from government coffers during his rule. Those kinds of “rents” reduce the leadership’s incentive to invest in public goods; why build roads and schools and export industries to make your country rich, when you can just raid its treasury to enrich your own family and depend on Russia for protection?

Now, of course, Russia is no longer providing protection — quite the opposite — and Ukraine’s government, pressed by the urgency of national unity in the face of external threat, is making some attempts to rein in the entitled barons. But it’s going to be slow going.

What can Ukraine do?

Unfortunately, with Russian missiles about to rain down on Ukrainian heads, the answer in the short term may be “Nothing; it’s too late.” But if this isn’t the end of the Ukrainian nation — and Rob Lee’s article gives me good reason to think Russia won’t try to conquer Ukraine outright — then there’s still a chance for better economic policy going forward.

Obviously, continuing to rein in the oligarchs is a big priority. Doing that will help pass pro-development policies in other areas. Tax administration needs to be improved as well, especially by broadening the base and giving the shadow economy incentives to bring their operations onto the books. Switching from outdated energy subsidies to a cash-based welfare system would help wean the economy off its lingering addiction to cheap energy. And a general anti-corruption drive couldn’t hurt; a surge of patriotic sentiment in response to the Russian threat might actually make this easier.

After that, Ukraine needs to implement vigorous development policy. FDI is part of this; Germany and the other countries of Europe will probably be willing to invest in Ukrainian light industry. Ukraine can make the case to the EU and (especially) the U.S. that investing in Ukrainian factories will make Ukraine a more robust bulwark against Russia in the future. Every Ukrainian leader needs to read How Asia Works, and think about how to apply export discipline to make the country a manufacturing export powerhouse once again.

Ukraine has one huge advantage: It has a very important reason to grow. Becoming a rich country like Poland is Ukraine’s best chance for standing up to a domineering neighbor three times its size. External military threat has been a catalyst for development for countries throughout the ages, most notably Japan and South Korea. Hopefully it will do the same for Ukraine now.

Vir: Noah Smith