Russia and Globalization

The future of Russia as a modern nation directly depends on its involvement in the globalization process. The greatest difficulty for Russia is in the information and communication aspect of globalization as its large territory makes the process of effective dissemination of information, including official orders from the center to the regions, a serious challenge. Consequently, most information becomes simply outdated by the time it reaches its addressees. Today, a country’s competitiveness depends on its capability to provide its citizens, especially the intellectual and political classes, with comprehensive local and international information.

In conditions of complete globalization, no single country can form or create all the external conditions that are favorable for it. On the contrary, it should be able to realistically assess its long-term needs, problems, prospects and search for development opportunities within the existing external circumstances. Russia occupies a very specific place in the global economy, participates along with the most advanced nations in an outer space exploration.

Russian culture continues to make a valuable contribution to the development of civilization; the huge potential and capability of its sciences are powerful forces of economic development. But at the same time, Russia is lopsidedly dependent on its natural resources and raw-commodity exports, lacks competitiveness in its domestic production, and has low living standards that exacerbate the country’s already catastrophic demographic trends in general and the quality of such parameter as human capital in particular.

Russia faces a series of extremely difficult dilemmas. Russia, by historical traditions and geography, but mainly because of its powerful nuclear potential, belongs to the class of superpower nations. The external attributes of this status is its membership of the UN Security Council, G8, G20, the Russia-EU summits, etc.

However, in terms of participation in the information revolution and internalization of production processes and capital, Russia lags far behind the leaders.

The pros and cons of globalization for Russia:

It is also necessary to adopt more steps at the micro-level as a basis for boosting globalization of processes. This is because globalization of international trade, especially if a country’s goods and services are very competitive, is, certainly, a positive trend. On the contrary, if such country does not produce competitive goods, then globalization of foreign trade activities becomes a threat not only to its economy, but also to its sovereignty as a whole. This problem is a vital one for today's Russia, especially in connection with its possible admission into the WTO.

Globalization is connected with transfer of new economic and technological processes across national borders as interdependence of different countries’ economies and expansion of national economies into multinational integrated structures become a daily routine. One of the greatest advantages of globalization is that it eliminates the barriers that hinder the free movement of capital, technologies, information, qualified labor forces and intellectual properties across national borders, while one of its biggest is that the growing interdependence also increases the vulnerability of global economy to local and regional instability.

Full integration into the system of global market economy is possible only in the event that a country’s economy satisfies certain conditions. First of all, it should be able to produce an amount of additional products that exceeds a certain minimum level.

Globalization was initiated and put into practice by some transnational business circles in Northern America, Europe and Japan and it, first and foremost, specifically meets the economic needs of these countries. The most effective application of globalization is being done by the United States that is actively tapping people, information, capital and other resources from across the globe for its economic prosperity. Russia’s goal is not to oppose the United States and other leading Western countries in their attempts to use globalization to maximally secure their national interests. Quite the contrary, Russia should focus on seeking a niche in the globalization processes that can help foster its long-term, stable development as a nation.

Vocabulary list

1. dissemination of information – распространение информации

2. comprehensive – всесторонний, исчерпывающий, комплексный

3. to make a contribution (to) – вноситьвклад

4. to lag behind – отставать

5. toboost – резко усиливать(ся), увеличивать(ся)

6. to initiate – инициировать, начинать

7. to put into practice – осуществлять

8. to foster – поощрять, способствовать развитию

Notes

1. externalconditions – внешние условия

2. to assess – оценивать

3. within the exiting external circumstances – зд. учитываявнешниефакторы

4. firstandforemost – на первом месте, в первую очередь

5. applicationofglobalization – зд. использование преимуществ глобализации

Ex 1. Suggest the Russian equivalents:

involvement in the globalization process; a serious challenge; to provide citizens with comprehensive local and international information; to assess long-term needs; the huge potential and capability; to be dependent on nature resources; raw-commodity exports; to lack competitiveness in domestic production; to face a series of dilemmas; to faster long-term stable development.