What Makes Russian Capitalism: A Response to Ruslan Dzarasov

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Notes

Note

1. Thanks to the editors of Debatte for arranging this written debate.

2. The tax revenue from the oil and gas sector was $33.9 billion in 2003 and $56.5 billion in 2004. See VEDI (http://vedi.ru); and Petrov. For discussion, see Pirani (75–81).

3. Central Bank of Russia website; Fitch Ratings; and Deutsche Bank. For discussion, see Pirani (29–31, 78 and 97–9).

4. The totals for the 4 years, 2005–2008, show an even greater proportion of investment from the EU (58.4%), a lower proportion from Cyprus and the BVI (19.31%) and a similar proportion from Switzerland and the USA (6.38%). Rosstat only gives separate figures for the 10 large sources of investment, so the picture is not complete. The total from offshore locations is probably more than a quarter, and for the EU could be as high as two-thirds. Furthermore, the considerable flows from Luxemburg (6.81% in 2008), whose lax corporate laws make it a stopping-off point for capital from elsewhere, are probably largely Russian and/or American (Rosstat, 151; i.e. the same source cited by Dzarasov).

5. In 2009, 24.35% of Gazprom's shareholders were holders of internationally listed American Depositary Receipts (ADRs); this proportion rose to 27.57% in 2010. The vast majority of these ADRs are held by foreign financial institutions. And there are certainly many foreign owners – including Ruhrgas (now EON.Ruhrgas) – in the category “other entities”, which accounted for 25.65% of shares in 2009 and 22.43% in 2010. (Gazprom 40; Gazprom (7; both downloadable from Gazprom web site). Rosneft's shareholder structure, and proportion of GDRs, is reported at http://www.rosneft.com/Investors/structure/share_capital/. The GDRs are presumably included in the item “Sberbank (nominal shareholder)” in the share register, i.e. Sberbank is the legally appointed nominal shareholder on behalf of foreign investors. The lifting in December 2005 of the “ring fence” that distinguished Gazprom's Russian-listed shares from the internationally listed ones, and the initial public offering of Rosneft shares in May 2006 attracted tens of billions of dollars via European stock exchanges into these two companies.

6. Dzarasov sees the fact that “it was mainly thermal power plants fast approaching their replacement dates that became private property” as a sign that the privatization was contrived for insiders’ benefit. But Russia is not the only country to keep the strategic, problematic and investment-needy nuclear sector nationalized; France does the same. As for tariff increases, international investors are pressing for them as much as the “insiders” are.

7. Clarke. Also at: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/Globalisationandlabour.pdf. For other discussions of class relations in post-Soviet Russia from socialists, see, e.g., Mandel (73–90).