To: Geoff Nunn who wrote (31926 ) 8/31/1998 6:19:00 AM From: rupert1 Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Geoff: A corollary effect of much the Russian economy being "off the books" , as you rightly state, is that the populace is not so dependent on the "official" economy as some American media observors seem to think. Russians have survived much worse "crisis" than the current one. The idea that they depend on imported food and thus will become revoluntionary with the hyperinflated costs of imports is a bit silly. There is a great deal of home grown food, most families have home grown sources of the staples or access to black markets or barter markets. Inflation of imported food costs would hit the US media analysts and other foreign diplomats who live in Moscow, or the innumerable Russian bureaucrats, rather more than it would hit the Russian masses.
