At the end of the first capitalist four-year period, a small but pleasant present arrived from Washington to Moscow. Most likely, it was addressed to the economic adviser to President Putin, Andrei Illarionov. In the "Rating of Economic Freedom - 2004", the Heritage Foundation, close to the right-wing Republicans, raised the quotations of our country. In the list of 150 countries, Russia moved up from 135th place by 21 steps. And although in the race for freedom "Putin's team" is falling further and further behind Rwanda (103rd), in the last race it caught up and overtook brotherly Ukraine (115th) by a step and broke away from Vietnam (141st). The Democratic Republic of Congo, which was only one step behind Russia in last year's rating, did not make it into the rating at all this time due to the fact that the state in this republic ceased to exist.

The secret of the economic miracle is disconcertingly simple. Leafing through last year's newspaper files, the experts at "Heritage" discovered two very curious facts about Russia. It turns out that in 2002, government spending in Russia fell by 0.3% of GDP. The libertarians at the foundation welcome the reduction in government spending in itself. Another thing is that in 2001, Russia reduced government spending by as much as 2.8% of GDP. The representatives of the free world decided to show Moscow that it was improper to slow down the pace of budget liberalization, and lowered Russia's score for the "state fiscal burden" indicator. But in terms of trade policy, the "heirs" saw tangible progress in Russia. Compared to 1997, the average weighted import tariff fell in 2001 by almost 3 percentage points to 8.4%. Together, these two pieces of news allowed Heritage to raise Russia's overall score from 3.54 to 3.46, leaving it in the "mostly unfree" category.

"Why pay attention to them," an enlightened patriot of the Russian fatherland will say. "Their judgments are drawn from forgotten newspapers from the times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea." And he will not be entirely right.

Russia's "upgrade" fits into the global reassessment of values. Especially since "Heritage" previously recommended "dumping" its shares. In 2001, Russia was 127th in the freedom rating, in 2002 - 131st, and in 2003 it slid even lower.

Last fall, analysts at Goldman Sachs laid a weighty "brick" in the foundation of the 21st century global economy by inventing the acronym BRIC. This is how they designated the four new leaders of the global economy in 2050 - Brazil, Russia, India and China. The idea has begun to take hold of the masses. "Brazil, Russia, India and China are the markets on which we place the greatest hopes," Mike Kirkham, CEO of the TNS group of companies specializing in market research, said in an interview with Vedomosti today. TNS is one of those pilot fish whose appearance indicates that the waters of a particular national economy have been chosen by the sharks of transnational business.

And when their fins appear on the surface, Heritage experts will have to think deeply about the meaning of the words "economic freedom."

Vladimir Fedorin

NUMBER OF THE WEEK: 114. Smells like money