Modernisation through state control?
Russia’s hi-tech industry at a dead end
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russia’s leadership wants to modernise the country’s economy through centralisation. Entire industrial sectors have been merged into state corporations. The civil aviation sector is a good example of the failure of this project. In the UAC, the United Aircraft Corporation, no functional division of labour through the specialisation of individual works has developed. The integration of the entire corporation into the far larger state holding company Rostec, with hundreds of companies from a wide range of different sectors, only exacerbates the problem. Ideas for modernisation “from below” are smothered, while at the same time there is no technological innovation and no increase in added value. In the holding company, which is controlled by Sergei Chemezov, state modernisation programs are being systematically undermined. Chemezov, who is a close associate of President Putin, has positioned men from his network in key state posts. They siphon off the profits from state orders for fighter jets while the importance of Russia’s civil aviation industry continues to decline on the global market.
(Osteuropa 1-2/2020, pp. 85–120)