Although Russophobes are more than happy to weigh in with their rhetoric and outspoken opinions, they are rather more cautious when it comes to the business of making specific predictions. This is not surprising, since it risks reputations and besides, their records aren’t exactly stellar.
Russophiles however are (fool?)-hardy folks, and as such, I’m going the full nine yards. Onto the plank. With my neck sticking out and my reputation in my mouth. I am revealing my Russophile Predictions Portfolio. They are specific and falsifiable, and as such offer the strongest possible base for scientific Kremlinology.
I provide specific dates within a 5-year window (up until 31st December 2013) and indicate the source which we’ll use to verify my predictions. The year of reference is 2007; the weighing is given in percentages in bold and add up to 100%.
Russia’s population will start growing again by 2010. 8% Rosstat
Natural population increase will resume by 2013. 5% Rosstat
Total life expectancy will exceed 70 years by 2012. 5% Rosstat
The gap between male and female life expectancy will decrease by 2010, and again by 2013. 2% Rosstat
The infant mortality rate will be lower than 7 / 1000 by 2013. 2% Rosstat
In 2010, the birth rate will be at 12.5 / 1000 and the death rate at 13.8 / 1000 (+/-5%); in 2013, the birth rate will be at 14 / 1000 and the death rate at 13 / 1000 (+/-5%). 8% Rosstat
Russia’s GDP per capita in purchasing power parity terms will overtake Poland, Croatia and Latvia by 2011; Portugal and Hungary by 2013. It will also reach 50%+ of the US level by 2013. 12% World Bank
It’s total PPP GDP will overtake Germany’s by 2013. 3% World Bank
Total vehicle production will reach 3.5mn+ units by 2012. 3% OICA
Total grain production will exceed 110mn+ tons by 2013. 3% Rosstat
Oil prices will continue rising year by year, averaging 100$ in 2008, 130$ in 2009, 160$ in 2010, 200$ in 2011, 250$ in 2012 and 320$ in 2013 (all +/-20%) in inflation-adjusted 2007 prices. 0% (not directly Russia-related) InflationData.com
Russia’s foreign currency reserves will exceed a trillion dollars sometime before year-end 2010, and will become the world’s largest sometime before year-end 2012. 3% CBR
Russia will maintain its twin surpluses throughout the 2008-2013 period. 3% Rosstat
Russia’s nominal GDP will exceed Italy by 2010, the UK by 2012 and Germany by 2013, when it will reach 30%+ of America’s size. 8% IMF
The RTS will exceed 5000 by year-end 2013. 5% RTS
Russia’s Corruption Perceptions Index will be 3.0+ by 2010 and reach 5.0+ by 2013. 2% Transparency International
Russia’s Index of Economic Freedom will reach 60+ by 2013. 4% Heritage Foundation
Freedom House will upgrade Russia to “Partly Free” sometime by 2013. 2% Freedom House
Russia will have 15+ supercomputers in June 2010 and 25+ supercomputers in June 2013 in the world’s top 500. 2% Top 500
Internet penetration will rise to 23.6%+ in 2008, 27.5+ in 2009, 32.2%+ in 2010, 39.3%+ in 2011 and 42.5%+ in 2012. 5% Internet World Stats
Russia will score higher than 500 in each category (reading, math, science) in every PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS (separate for 4th and 8th graders) international student assessment. 6% PISA, TIMSS&PIRLS
Russians will win at least three Nobel and/or Fields Medals. 1% Wikipedia
By 2013 the Ukraine will have joined the Eurasian Economic Community and Collective Security Treaty Organization. Neither Georgia nor the Ukraine will join NATO. 4% Wikipedia
Women will make up 20%+ of Duma deputies in 2013. 2% IPU
Russia will enter the knock-out stages and win the football World Cup in 2010. 2% Wikipedia
Open Letter to the Russophobes of this World
Dear Russophobe,
I appreciate your presence in the media, the blogosphere and public life, and I say this with the utmost sincerity. For you see, us Russophiles can’t survive without you, since we share a symbiotic relationship. You provide the thesis, we provide the antithesis (at least within the Western matrix); by poring over our texts, interested persons have the freedom to form their own synthesis.
The problem is that your arguments are much truthier than ours. Unfortunately, a meaningful dialectic requires both propositions to be founded on rationalism, as opposed to emotional rhetoric; populist antics on your part will do little good for either you or us.
(Of course, you can argue that it is us Russophiles who are blinded by their worship of their KGB masters in the Kremlin. That’s quite acceptable. After all, the whole point of life is to force your perceptions of reality, your texts, onto other consciences. And it’s something we do all the time; claiming objectivity is nothing more than a weapon in these struggles. But pure objectivity is perfection, and as such unattainable in the discrete material world. This absurd worldview is I think the main point on which we differ in a fundamental sense; we know that we all live in the matrix, while you think you are free, whereas you are are in fact as enslaved as everyone else but blissfully unaware of it. All other disagreements between us are trivial).
Sorry for the digression. Where was I? Oh, yes. Although pursuit of absolute truth is a quixotic endevour, some methods approximate to it better than others. For instance, giving a hypothesis and seeing whether it leads to a contradiction. Or in other words, creating a predictions portfolio and looking at the quality of the truth-returns it gives over a reasonable time period (by testing it against the returns given by official organizations in the future).
Hence the set of predictions above across five years. Think of it as a portfolio, with the weighting given to each prediction (out of 100%) given in bold. The more unlikely a prediction is to be fulfilled as per today’s opinion, the greater the reward for getting it right. (I think that’s fair). And since Russophobes think Russia is doomed to permanent failure, and all evidence to the contrary be damned, I hope they at least will agree that, should I get a high percentage of those particular predictions right, I will truly deserve a very big (moral, reputational, etc) reward.
However, I don’t want to go all-in by myself. (Because that way I won’t win or lose anything, and as such nothing will change). As such, I challenge you, dear Russophobe, to create your very own Russophobe Predictions Portfolio based on my format; we Russophiles will no doubt consider it very unlikely to be fulfilled, and if and when it is, will certainly confer upon you a very big (moral, reputational, etc) reward in turn.
One last note. Should you bravely accept our challenge, please make your predictions falsifiable. Don’t say “Tsar Putin will consolidate his fascist Stalinist dictatorship and personally impale thousands of independent journalists on the streets of barbarous Muscovy, before leading that blighted country into economic apocalypse”. Do say, “Putin will be President as of 2012 and Russia will score 7-7 for civil and political rights. Freedom House 5,000 journalist deaths will be recorded as due to their professional work from 2008 to 2012 inclusive. CPJ Russia’s GDP in purchasing power terms for 2013 will be less than North Korea’s. World Bank“.
We eagerly await your acceptance and wish you an excellent day.
Regards,
Da Russophile.
What is to Be Done?
For now, I will proceed to send out challenges to the following famous Russophobes: Kim Zigfeld, Edward Lucas, Robert Amsterdam, and work on down to Paul Goble, Michael McFaul, John Dimbleby, the Street-”wise” Professor, A Step at a Time, Mark MacKinnon, Peteris Cedrins and all the other annoying Baltic/Ukrainian nationaliststs. I won’t leave out neutrals (Vilhelm Konnander, Siberian Light, Sean Guillory) and even fellow Russophiles. We all agree about the need for transparency, accountability, etc, so let’s lead by example.
Please check back every once in a while, I’ll be updating this section. Although one more prediction I can make with a high degree of confidence is that I won’t get many positive replies. 
At year-end 2013 this competition will be closed. Results will be assessed as statistics for the last year are revealed throughout 2014. Eventually an accuracy rating for our Russophile Predictions Portfolio will be compiled (probably just in time for the Sochi Olympics). I think you will agree that a figure of more than 75% would be most impressive, right?
NOTE1: When I say “by 2012″, I mean any of the years prior to 2012 and 2012 inclusive. Also, where I give +/- ranges, a better than predicted result will be counted as an accurate prediction, while only a worse than predicted result will be discounted.
NOTE2: This is following in the footsteps of winthrop360, who jumped the gun. Speaking of which, while I admire his bright, optimistic outlook, even I have to dismiss most of his predictions as unrealistic or too vague. That said, I think his #10 is almost certain, while #7 and #6 are both likely.
Some Justifications
See Demography III – Faces of the Future for all demography and health-related predictions.
Total car production was 1.7mn units as of 2007, with another 1.6mn in planned new capacity on the part of foreign car firms by 2012. No doubt we will more expansion plans on the part of both foreign and Russian firms in the future, which makes 3.5mn units by 2012 a safe bet. Doubling car production over five years is not unheard of – from 2002 to 2007, Poland (x2.5), China (x2.7), Turkey (x3.2), and a few other major countries pulled it off. All else remaining equal I’d even be confident in predicting 4mn or even 4.5mn, but I suspect sky-rocketing oil prices will have a negative effect. Car production is also not a bad proxy for overall manufacturing, especially in countries where the auto markets are far from saturated.
Total grain production was 82mn tons in 2007 and there are hopes of boosting it by 50% within 5 to 7 years.
As covered in this blog a key policy theme of the Medevedev administration seems to be fighting corruption, government computerization and cutting down on bureaucracy. Perhaps there will finally be a tipping point in corruption perceptions. Similarly Russia’s scores on economic freedom are greatly undermined by the clunkiness of its bureaucracy and regulatory climate, and negative corruption perceptions – as such, improvements in it are tied to the former.
While I consider Freedom House to be little more than a CIA front (what with the characters who direct it, the sheer scale of its inconsistencies, its opaque methodology, etc), I nonetheless believe even it will find it increasingly hard to maintain the fiction that Russia is an authoritarian state in the next five years. As such, it will be upgraded to “Partly Free”. I wouldn’t bet too much on it however.
5Five years ago, Russia only ever had one or two, if any, supercomputers in the world’s Top 500. Since then, it has been rising and currently it has nine. In this sense it parallels Spain (a country which has only reached fully developed-country status in the recent past). State interest in developing hi-tech industries married with ever higher receipts from oil and gas exports will probably see the number of top supercomputers in Russia approach the likes of the France or Japan within the next decade.
As of March 2007, Internet penetration was at 19.5% in Russia. We take historic figures for Moscow from POF Database and, matching 2008 with Moscow winter 2002-2003, project them forwards in time.
Oil prices have been rising exponentially since 2002. This is not surprising, given burgeoning demand and stagnant supplies, especially since 2005 when oil production plateaued. (These predictions are predicated on the theory of peak oil and that we are either close to, or have already, reached it, and we are on the verge of precipitous decline – especially after 2010, when all major planned megaprojects will have come onstream. Accept this or not as you will; I won’t be arguing it here). Anyhow, I derived future oil prices by playing around with a few exponential projections of this sort.
(NB: to remain within those bounds, in the next 6 months the oil price should drop to around 100$. This agrees with forecasts (the World Bank thinks it will be closer to 75%), and is intuitively appealing (end of summer driving season; looming US recession and slow-down in China; even the partial success of the Surge in Iraq). But it should start rising again come winter. I am becoming convinced it would be a good idea financially to just buy into oil come January, and roll in the bucks as heating needs increase and the US (perhaps) gradually crawls out of recession, plus the underlying peak oil dynamic. Agree??)
I derived Russia’s future foreign currency reserves by a simple exponential projection using data from the past 5 years or so. Although a crude method (lol), it makes sense since foreign currency earning accumulate, in Russia’s case, almost entirely due to (exponentially increasing) prices for the goods it exports (the vast majority of which are hydrocarbons). I predict they will overtake both Japan’s and China’s in absolute size since both the latter get theirs from the surpluses generated by manufacturing exports; with very expensive oil, however, they too will move into the red; the only countries with (huge) surpluses will be those with big hydrocarbons exports.
Maintaining the twin surpluses will not be a huge challenge when oil prices are setting new records year after year.
According to the IMF by 2013 Russia will reach the size of France or the UK in nominal GDP. However, the threefold increase in the oil price that we project means that Russia’s nominal GDP will increase by much more, as in nominal terms the oil sector accounts for around a third of its GDP – thus bringing it to Germany’s level. Meanwhile I believe the gains will be even more dramatic relative to that of the US, since the dollar is expected to continue weakening.
Due to its educational profile, Russia is capable of rapid convergence to developed country standards anyhow. Booming prices on hydrocarbons, a coherent industrial/hi-tech policy and recent moves to intensify the fight against bureaucracy and corruption further reinforce that. And there are plenty of other Russian bulls, e.g. here and here. Even the IMF’s conservative analysis sees Russia basically catching up on Germany in absolute economic size by 2013.
NATO will hesitate to embrace Georgia (a semi-authoritarian country wracked by separatism) while Ukraine will be hintered by popular opposition and the Party of Regions’ pandering to it as they remain in opposition. If things go too far Russia has a wide variaty of tools at its disposal to destabilize them – political unrest, energy manipulation and possibly military intervention. Ukraine in particular may well rejoin the Russian sphere of influence (EEC, CSTO) due to disillusionment with an EU suffering from enlargent fatigue and its eastern neighbors’ economic success.
Russia has more than enough money to re-embark upon military modernization (including naval retrenchement) and related areas like space technologies. While all these activities will become more visible, especially given the vastly greater oil windfall to come, I am not willing to predict specific figures on military affairs. This is because in Russia’s case official statistics under-report real military spending (as with the USSR), a substantial part of it is non-commercial and/or classified, and foreign assessments vary widely, being nothing more than educated guesses.
A few more Russia-related predictions. I think, despite Medvedev’s calls for raising pensions relative to wages, support for rural areas, and other economically progressive measures, I believe the Gini index will rise nonetheless, or remain stable at around 45. I also think Putin will come back as President in 2012 and serve in that capacity until 2020; similarly, United Russia will remain the party of power throughout the period. Moscow property prices will continue booming. We will see huge industrial and services growth at around 7-8% per annum through to 2020, by which time Russia will be in most respects a developed country. Living standards will have fully converged with developed country standards by the 2020′s.
EDIT 11/27/08: So far the current financial and economic crisis have been wrecking havoc with many of these predictions, although its still early days and the year hasn’t even finished yet. On the other hand, one prediction – ‘Total grain production will exceed 110mn+ tons by 2013′ – has already been achieved, 5 years early! I plan to write an article analysing the accuracy of 2008 results sometime in early 2009, when most of the relevant stats for the previous year would have been compiled.
Related posts:
Looks like some of my predictions are already getting fulfilled.
Today Georgia’s treacherous aggression against South Ossetia (immediately following a ceasefire) and by attacking Russian peacekeepers, act of war against Russia and the CSTO, have scuppered their chances of joining NATO for the foreseeable future. The likes of Germany will veto it, and that’s assuming the current government manages to survive.
Talking of their government, Saakashvili truly is more stupid than I ever imagined. He is has failed in the info-war (the world’s media speak of Georgian offensives), he will fail in the real war too. The US will not dare intervene now.
On a side note, Russia’s foreign currency reserves are now close to 600bn $.
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Hey AK – did you get any responses to those “challenges” you sent out?
Also, this post is over 2 years old. Maybe it’s time for a midterm update?