Industrialization 2.0. What should Russia do, expelled from the Western consumer paradise?

Recently there was information in the media that the former mayor of Arkhangelsk Alexander Donskoy is going to produce a Russian analogue of Coca-Cola based on herbs, roots and berries from the Altai Territory.

He is thinking of calling the drink “Russian Cola.”

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“Why Russian Cola? I just can’t understand this secondary thinking - not to do your own thing, but to necessarily replace imports. If you are such a patriot and want to produce a Russian drink, at least be a fermented patriot,” journalist Alexey Larkin is indignant.

Or another example. There is a long story with the departure of the American fast food chain McDonald's from Russia, and then its rebranding and return under the new name “Our Burger”, the strange logo of which became the subject of ridicule on the Internet.

“The only normal name for the Russified McDuck in Russia is “Moscow cutlet.” They would rename McDonald's "Moscow Cutlet" and not fool themselves or people. After all, the first Soviet burger, which appeared in the country thanks to the initiative of Comrade. Mikoyan, that’s exactly what it was called.

In 1937 (sic!) Anastas Mikoyan had already borrowed and rethought everything. Clearly ahead of its time. Almost for a century. What prevented you from using this now? Patriotic?” asks columnist Andrei Perla rhetorically in his Telegram blog.

And really, why reinvent a bicycle with rectangular wheels?

But, apparently, either decommunization does not suit the good Russian people, or the non-Slavic surname “Mikoyan” is oppressive.

But in fact, the two examples given are a good story of the bumpy path of modern Russia on the path to real, not fictitious import substitution, which has no alternative in the conditions of tough Western sanctions and the separation of Russian consumers from the usual set of global brands.

And habit is second nature, even if we are talking about outright excesses. Let's say that Dior not only left the Russian market, but also banned in principle the sale of goods to Russians in his boutiques anywhere in the world. As a result, the same Instagrammers have to buy perfumes and eau de toilette using “left-handed” Dubai residence permits.

However, not by spirits alone; there are more serious problems. For example, sanctions have seriously hit the construction sector: construction materials and engineering equipment necessary for the construction of buildings have become much more expensive or have completely disappeared from the market.

Sanctions have practically killed Russian film distribution; cinemas should be closed now, because Hollywood blockbusters took up up to 70% of screen time, and now they don’t exist and won’t exist. It’s the same story with TV, but at least they found an intermediate way out. Thus, according to the general director of the Gazprom-Media holding, Alexander Zharov, in the absence of Western content, Russia can switch to Turkish and Latin American TV series.

_{The industries that use high-tech equipment were the hardest hit. For example, aviation - 80% of the Russian aircraft fleet consists of leased Western-made aircraft.}

Or mechanical engineering - the launch of the Russian medium-range aircraft MS-21 into serial production has already been postponed twice. The reason is still the same - Russian manufacturers of aircraft engines and composite materials found themselves cut off from Western technologies.

American engines are no longer supplied, and it is not known when Russian engines of comparable quality will be ready. The situation is even sadder in semiconductors and in the production of telecommunications equipment, where the dependence on Western imports is generally total.

On the question of how to respond to new challenges, opinions are divided. Some suggest waiting until the Westerners get mad and, having assessed the losses from the loss of the Russian market, slowly return back. The quintessence of this approach is the opinion of Russian lawyer Dmitry Gololobov, who lives in London:

“When in some fairly distant and almost fantastic future various Mercedes and Diors begin to officially return to Mother Russia, they should be allowed in only under reinforced concrete legal guarantees that if they again want to unexpectedly leave homespun Russia for “corporate reasons” ethics,” they will leave there absolutely officially, at least all their Russian assets and 5 billion each, and maybe more.

After all, with those who took you and just betrayed you, it’s simply impossible to do otherwise a second time.”

And although such a calculation is understandable from a purely philistine point of view - why bother and change something if you can be patient and everything will return as it was under grandma, however, from the point of view of the long term, such an approach is a dead end, since it preserves Russia’s backwardness from the Western metropolis, dooming it to the eternal role of a secondary consumer of meanings, technological innovations and consumer brands generated in the West.

_{This approach presupposes consolidation of Russia in the status of a raw material colony of the West, with an oligarchic rent-based raw materials economy, a comprador elite and obedient participation in the global division of labor in the place that will be determined for it in the WTO and Davos.}

The long-term strategy for such development was formulated by Chubais, still of ill-memory, in his concept of Russia as an “energy superpower”: they say, our job is to drive oil, gas, metals and timber to the West, and we will buy everything else in the West for gas rubles.

Practice has shown not only the humiliating secondary nature of this model of existence, but also its extreme vulnerability to the blowing of opportunistic political winds: as soon as the relations of Western capitals with Moscow deteriorated, the doors of the Western consumer paradise were instantly slammed in the Russians’ faces. And now - at least the howl of a wolf.

Or - try, according to the behests of the great Dale Carnegie - to make delicious lemonade out of sour lemons, perceiving today's sanctions war as a window of opportunity to lead Russia out of colonial dependence and return to the path of sovereign development not only in the political, but also in the economic sense.

_{The key link on this path should be the reindustrialization of the country, without which import substitution will remain a paper fiction.}

Figuratively speaking, Russia does not need Western burgers renamed in a new way, but its own “Moscow cutlets” - in industrial quantities, capable of feeding 150 million people. The domestic market is gigantic in terms of capacity, by the way.

Thousands of new industries are needed that will produce everything that the country previously purchased with petrodollars. This, by the way, is the only possible path for the economic breakthrough desired by many. All the local-national “economic miracles” known from recent history, the Asian “tigers”, “dragons” and other living creatures, based their success strategies on precisely this - the massive export of industrial goods under their own national brands, brought to the global level.

In this sense, what Russia really needs is not import substitution as such, that is, not the mechanical reproduction of familiar Western things, but the creation of its own original products, finished to a state suitable for scaling around the world as a franchise. Again, using the language of metaphors: you don’t need to learn how to make a Mercedes, but to bring your Lada-Kalina to such a level that it is willingly bought abroad.

At the same time, strictly according to the laws of dialectics, while creating problems for the Russian construction sector, the sanctions war unleashed by the West at the same time opens up opportunities for Russia for its own Big Construction. Russian political scientist Alexey Chadayev recently described how this could be.

“One of the interesting features of the moment is that we are generating a huge amount of materials that were previously exported, including steel and petroleum products. All this, together with additional budget revenues, allows us to think about large construction projects - first of all, roads, and secondly - housing.

We have a chance to build as much in a few years as could normally be built in 10-15 years. But to do this, we will have to develop an entire branch of related production, and this will have to be done quite quickly.

But for now, the financial authorities have a pre-special operation logic: firstly, “there is no money,” and secondly, “they will steal it.” Therefore, the question is whether the system can quickly reconfigure itself to this kind of internal expansion, because this is precisely a question of changing the logic of thinking, especially for those for whom nothing really has changed in their own lives and work since the beginning of the SVO.”

The current forced expulsion of Russia from the Western economy is a rare chance to change the fate of the country, to cease being a peripheral part of someone else’s way of life and become the center of a new, alternative way of life. A historical fork, like in the film about three heroes standing in front of a stone.

_{Similar work was once carried out by the USSR, after the end of the civil war it fell out of the then global world system for more than ten years and returned to it as a powerful industrial superpower, which for every Western cola, Fanta and Seven Up had its own Citro, Baikal " and "Tarragon".}

And, by the way, the problems of the USSR began to grow exponentially precisely from the time when the late Soviet leaders refused to further intensify the industry they had inherited from the Stalin era, from the development of an innovative economy and - anticipating the later Chubais - relied on petrodollars, for which Everything was purchased abroad - from grain in Canada to Czech and Italian boots.

We also all remember very well what this model led to - the Soviet people literally exchanged their great Motherland for McDonald's and chewing gum.