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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (130931)	1/29/2001 12:54:26 PM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1572376

combjelly, The Eastern Bloc and Russia operated for the most part through an elaborate system of barter. Russia's biggest problem was they committed early on to providing the oil and basic minerals in exchange for manufactured goods. Oil became problematic, during the military expansion of the 1970's the oil field equipment was milked and not maintained properly. So it was in bad shape by the '80s and Russia was having difficulty meeting their end of the bargain. So they had a debt only in the sense they were having problems holding up their end of the bargain. Excellent point. There was barter between countries capable of barter, and the countries incapable of even that were propped up by sending goods (and arms) in exchange for loans. For example Czechoslovakia (later Slovakia) ended up with some debt to the west (which has to be serviced) and almost offsetting assets - loans to Mickey Mouse countries such as Cuba, Vietnam Laos, and even Russia, just about all of which were in default. The way they ended up settling part of the debt with Russia by sending a Slovak to space in 1998, to the Mir Space station, which again is a form of a barter. Joe

To: combjelly who wrote (130931)	1/29/2001 4:55:17 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572376

So it was in bad shape by the '80s and Russia was having difficulty meeting their end of the bargain. So they had a debt only in the sense they were having problems holding up their end of the bargain. CJ, I was applying capitalistic terms to the Russian situation in an effort to simplify the explanation. Nonetheless whether they could not make debt service payments or could not maintain their end of the barter system, the end was the same.....an economic breakdown led to the withdrawal of Russia from the eastern bloc. No question that Stalin was a ruthless dictator....and its my belief he would not have gotten away with his most extreme behavior were he to try it today. ted