On Saturday morning, after acupuncture treatment for Roman's parents at Roman's home, he and Roman's family had tea and chatted in the living room. Roman turned on the TV, just to broadcast the news, at the end of the news broadcast every day, will broadcast the exchange rate of the dollar to the ruble of the day, I noticed that the exchange rate of the day is one dollar to huàn 4,700 rubles, I remember that when I first arrived, the exchange rate was still 4,600, and the exchange rate of the ruble against the dollar fell by more than 2 percent in just over a week. Roman turned off the TV and sighed and said, "The ruble has fallen again, almost every day, and I have to exchange the money collected by the restaurant for dollars today." Roman's father, Tamaz, looked at Roman and said: "This is the liberalization of the market-oriented economy, from the powerful Soviet Union to the worthless Russia, the hateful Western forces and the moths of those countries, they should all be shot." ”

Tamaz suddenly turned his head to look at me and asked, "Peng, do you know how many rubles were exchanged for a dollar during the Soviet era?" I don't think you can imagine it. I asked with great interest: "Uncle Tamaz, tell me how many rubles were exchanged for a dollar in the Soviet Union." Tamaz sighed heavily and said, "At that time, the ruble was worth more than the dollar, and one dollar was exchanged for 0.65 rubles." I was immediately amazed, 0.65 rubles and 4700 rubles, the ruble has depreciated seven thousand times in less than ten years, it is simply unimaginable. Although I have read books about the situation in Russia before, they do not talk about the exchange rate of the ruble, and the book only briefly describes the collapse of the Soviet Union and the privatization process in Russia. Although our company is engaged in border trade with Russia, it is settled in US dollars, so we don't pay too much attention to the exchange rate of the ruble. A country's currency represents the economic power of a country, from 0.65 to 4700 which really turned from diamond to glass, and Tamaz was right, from the mighty USSR to the worthless Russia. Think of the war in Afghanistan and the last heroic rock of the Soviet Union, Viktor. Cui, I suddenly became very interested in the events that took place in this country during the historical period of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I thought that a detailed understanding of Russia's history, politics, culture and economy would be of great help to me in international trade.

So I said to Tamaz: "Uncle Tamaz, I only know a little bit about the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I would like to know more about this history, and I would like to know why the ruble has depreciated so much, can you tell me about it?" Tamaz said, "Today is the weekend, I want the old woman to cook Georgian food, Peng, you stay at our house for lunch, and I will tell you about this history." Tamaz said to Roman again: "Roman, if you have something to do, you can go and get busy, and I will drive Peng back in the afternoon." Roman smiled at me and said, "Peng, I'm going to the restaurant to be busy, then I'll miss it, you just happened to accompany my father, he likes to talk about these things the most, usually can't find anyone to listen, it's rare that you want to listen." Roman shook hands with me and hurried away.

After pouring me a cup of tea, Tamaz said, "Peng, have you noticed the old people selling canned food and bread on the streets and next to the subway station in the cold wind? I replied, "I often see that when I came to the train station, I saw a lot of old ladies selling these things." "Many of these people were decent teachers, engineers, and doctors before retirement, and in the Soviet era they had enough pensions to live comfortably and to go to the Black Sea once a year for a retreat or a vacation abroad, but now they can only earn a small amount of money like begging on the streets to make ends meet," Tamaz said. They lost a fortune overnight, and the money in the bank went from being able to buy a house and a car to only being able to buy a box of canned food, and these poor retirees could not receive their pensions on time, and the first thing they did when they received their pensions was to buy some canned food and store it at home to preserve its value, and when they needed money, they went to the street to sell some canned food for money. In the past, Dacha (suburban villa) was a place for us to relax on weekends, but now it has become the main source of vegetables for an ordinary family, and the whole family goes out to Dacha to farm on weekends, and after the autumn harvest, they make all kinds of canned vegetables for the winter. This is what the free market economy and privatization have brought to ordinary people. Now Russia is not a market economy, but a self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy. ”

After taking a sip of tea, Tamaz continued: "Peng, my son Roman always said that I was very conservative and rigid, that I could not keep up with the pace of the times. I'm not like that, I read the news and newspapers every day to study the current situation, I'm not against perestroika, but I really don't want the collapse of the powerful Soviet Union. Your China's reform and development has been very successful, Deng is a great man of the times, and it would have been good if the Soviet Union had carried out reform and opening up according to your Chinese model at that time. Before I retired, I also hoped that our country would be able to reform, reform the system of government that was rigid and centralized, very bureaucratic, reform the planned economy that one-sidedly attached importance to heavy industry, and also hope that the society would be more democratic and the government would be more honest. But due to the erroneous decision of the Soviet leadership, reform and opening up came too quickly and too suddenly, a powerful socialist country disappeared overnight, and the Soviet regime collapsed. The leaders of the CPSU also wanted to turn the tide, but at the critical moment of life and death, the CPSU failed to win the support of the Soviet people and more than 15 million party members, and even the army refused to carry out the order. Later, the party organizations were seized and their property confiscated, but no workers, functionaries, or members of the CPSU automatically gathered to defend the past district committee, city party committee, and state party committee, and there were not even demonstrations and protests. Of course, the infiltration of Western forces, the long-term arms race with the United States, the national question, and the erroneous war in Afghanistan drained the national strength of the Soviet Union, which were also important reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. ”

After a pause, Tamaz continued: "Peng, let me tell you how the ruble depreciated rapidly, I just said that due to the wrong decision of the Soviet leadership, the process of reform and opening up was too fast, at that time the leaders and people of the Soviet Union believed that free markets, financial openness, free elections, and the abolition of government regulation were the cornerstones of the prosperity of the Soviet Union, so the Soviet leaders began to abandon unified leadership, opened the country, and took the initiative to dissolve the Soviet Union. The first reform in Russia was the privatization of state-owned enterprises, which were divided into state-owned enterprises through a joint-stock system, and each person received about 10,000 rubles of state-owned shares. According to the exchange rate at that time, it was almost 15,000 to 20,000 US dollars, which is not a small amount, and it can be said that the whole Russian people are reveling. At the same time, Russia's financial sector has gradually opened up, a large number of foreign banks have entered Russia, and these modern private banks have sprung up in every Russian city without waiting in line, smiling and independent accounting. Their free coffee smile service gives ordinary people a feeling that these foreign banks are much better than those state-owned banks! Against this backdrop, these foreign banks and financial institutions have absorbed a large amount of ruble savings from private and corporate sectors through various gray means at relatively high interest rates and a free cup of coffee. The people's deposits moved from the national bank to the foreign bank. In addition, foreign banks have also used bribery and other means to extract ruble money from the Central Bank of Russia, state-owned banks and state-owned financial institutions. After the abundance of ruble deposits in foreign banks, a move began to weaken stocks in the market. Those state-owned enterprise stocks are stocks that have no ability to pay dividends, and it is better to throw them out for cash than to keep them useless! The Russian people believed these nonsense and began to sell their stocks, which plummeted. At the same time, foreign banks in the market began to secretly buy these shares at low prices. ”

Tamaz's face was full of sad expressions: "Peng, how shocking, just like this, the entire Russian state-owned enterprises were sold cheaply by the Russian people. You must know that in the process of secretly buying stocks, foreign banks and financial institutions owe astronomical rubles, even with a huge amount of annual interest, which is enough to drag these foreign banks down and bankrupt them. But what the West is best at is playing conspiracy, and that's when a group of Western financial experts came up with a friendly proposal: further deregulation of the free exchange of the ruble and the dollar to combat black market transactions. At that time, Russia was democratizing, and Western financial experts and the bribed traitorous media repeatedly ridiculed the means of administrative and financial supervision, describing the normal central bank's financial supervision as a centralized bureaucratic behavior, and people were very excited about the newly acquired political democracy, and under this friendly construction, financial regulation was liberalized, but the government did not think of the consequences of this. After the opening of the financial sector, there was a queue outside private banks to exchange huàn dollars. Why is there such a rush to exchange rubles for dollars? Because of the planned economy in the Soviet period, the government only developed heavy industry and military industry, resulting in a shortage of materials in the market, and the supply of daily necessities was insufficient. In this case, exchanging the ruble for dollars was a good way to preserve its value, and as you can imagine, the ruble quickly depreciated and became what it is like today. Without a single soldier, the West eliminated a powerful Soviet Union, and the West and a handful of oligarchs bought nearly $30 trillion worth of Russian state assets for a few hundred million dollars. The oligarchs sold their state-owned assets abroad and kept their money abroad, domestic industry was dealt a fatal blow, 90 percent of Russia's factories were shut down, and these oligarchs became rich overnight, second only to the Western tycoons in terms of money, while most ordinary people struggled to make ends meet. What kind of society is it now? The wealth and the poor are strictly uneven, government officials and police officers are full of crimes, and the whole country is controlled by the mafia. The values of society are distorted, people have no shame for money, a few days ago I watched a TV interview, the reporter asked a little girl what she wanted to do when she grew up, and the little girl replied that she wanted to be a stripper, so that she could make a lot of money. ”

After listening to Tamaz's heart-wrenching story, my heart also became heavy, but after thinking about it, as a Chinese, I am still very lucky, the same socialist country, our country's reform and opening up is still very successful compared to the Soviet Union.