Dwarkesh Patel

Mm-hmm.

So after the Soviet Union collapses—

There was a period when Putin was still winning somewhat free elections.

And so if you look at why Russia's economy recovers and why Putin is so popular in the 2000s, from 2000 to 2008, oil goes from $10 a barrel to $140 a barrel.

And this goes to your point about we give credit or blame to political leaders for often what are just long-run macro trends.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaking of the empire, you know, Russia's economy just has this terrible period after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A lot of the Eastern European satellites seem to recover in this gangbusters way.

Obviously, East Germany, but even Poland today is such a big success story.

What's going wrong with the mainland itself that these other countries are able to recover from communism much better?

Okay, so I should ask, before we get to the period of Russian collapse, let's go back to the end of the Soviet period.

Gorbachev starts instituting these economic reforms along with Glasnost and Perestroika.

But what I find mysterious is those economic reforms not only...

fail to prevent the stagnation that the Soviet Union is experiencing, but they in fact make things worse.

So you would think that reform, even if it's handled badly, would have some sort of positive impact.

And if you do it badly, then it'll have a smaller positive impact.

But here it just like causes this huge hyperinflation, causes all these problems.

So why did reform have this backwards impact?

One theory I heard of that is complementary to your theory is that Gorbachev is instituting forums because he thinks there should be decentralized eastern democratization, but he doesn't fundamentally believe in the market system.