The experience of South Africa shows that even strict international isolation does not stop the development of society

What, exactly, would be terrible if the West curtailed most of its economic ties with Russia? Well, members of the government will not have iPads, but will have Samsungs . Well, imports will probably decrease - and to hell with it, local businessmen will have an incentive to engage in import substitution, as after the default of 1998, when Russians simply did not have enough money for Western goods. Do you remember what impetus this gave to the development of the country?

Well, let’s say, international payment systems will stop operating here. And what? Let's create our own. Vladimir Putin now believes that Russia is capable of making an analogue of the Japanese JCB and Chinese UnionPay, which is now operating throughout the world. It is possible to conclude some kind of partnership agreement with the Chinese, and even if Visa and MasterCard leave Russia, Russian UnionPay cards will continue to be accepted at American and European ATMs.

We have enough engineers for many such projects. And to your own operating system instead of Windows and Mac OS, and in general to everything of your own. After all, VKontakte and Yandex are already their own, and nothing worse than imported ones (at the same time, let’s forget to think about the diabolical foreign invention of copyright: in a defending country, stolen films are trophies)!

And in general, if you think about it, what is it that Russia doesn’t have? Cars, planes, ships, any food except exotic fruits, energy resources, any kind of metals, building materials, fertilizers - everything is produced here, and what we don’t do ourselves, we’ll order from the Chinese and Indians; they are definitely not going to impose sanctions. They will make any complex equipment, if necessary, they will copy Western equipment. But we are better off ourselves. What's so complicated about this?

Autarky - that is, relying only on one's own resources - in such a philistine description does not look like a tragedy, but like a new opportunity for development.

Previously, we relied on foreign countries, but now we won’t, we’ll push ourselves harder and show those who are thinking of punishing us, if not Kuzka’s mother, then certainly a big fool.

Indeed, Russia is not North Korea, where Juche - autarky, if translated from Korean - turned into hungry despondency, which is tolerated only out of fear of a super-effective repressive apparatus. Why not, however, compare the Russian Federation with its BRICS neighbor, the Republic of South Africa? In 1985-1993, she also went through a forced period of self-reliance. about how successful this experience was . has written a detailed paper Brahima Coulibaly, chief emerging markets specialist at the US Federal Reserve,

The apartheid introduced in 1948 was tolerated by the world community for a long time. Western countries willingly traded with resource-rich South Africa and invested in its economy. In 1970, foreign liabilities - that is, all foreign investment, direct and portfolio, loans and borrowings - amounted to approximately 53% of South Africa's GDP (for Russia in 2012, the last for which data is available , it was 54.7%). Of these, 45% were direct investments (in Russia - 41%).

Gradually, however, racism increasingly irritated partners from civilized countries. Dealing with the South African regime seemed increasingly risky for investors, and by 1985 foreign direct investment accounted for only 25% of GDP, and almost two-thirds of international liabilities were loans. The still open South African economy needed financial resources, and if investors stopped investing in projects, it had to borrow.

In 1985, the UN and individual countries ran out of patience. Dealing with racists was no longer comme il faut, and hitherto mild sanctions—not much more serious than those now imposed against Russia—turned into a serious trade and financial embargo.

By 1984, there were up to 400 American companies alone operating in the country. By mid-1988, there were 136 of them left. British banks, on which the country had previously always been able to count, stopped lending money to South Africa. The largest British investor in the country, Barclays, has left altogether. The outflow of capital in four years, from 1985 to 1989, amounted to almost $11 billion - at that time a gigantic amount for the South African economy, almost 11% of the 1989 GDP.

This is equivalent to a capital outflow from Russia of $200 billion.

Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukaev predicts that $100 billion will “go away” in this year alone; that is, the order of the numbers is the same, although money is fleeing faster from Russia.

In addition to the departed capital, there were also lost investments - approximately 3% of the total GDP of South Africa for 1985-1990.

The country responded to the sanctions with restrictions on the withdrawal of capital and a moratorium on the payment of the “body” of commercial debts (it continued to pay interest and government debt) - and squeezed everything it could out of internal resources. Investment growth during the embargo years turned negative. Output growth per worker slowed from 2.2% a year to 0.8%, Coulibaly calculated.

But the balance of payments in South Africa became positive during the embargo years. However, this is hardly a matter of pride: after the lifting of sanctions, imports returned, and with it a negative balance.

And what about the pale-faced South African elite - have they become so uncomfortable? No: although there was nothing good about sanctions, investment hunger and slowdown, whites were much more afraid of the African National Congress coming to power.

Economic growth that continued despite sanctions, however, brought new forces to life. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 - together with Nelson Mandela - South African Gorbachev Frederik Willem de Klerk said : “The basis for fundamental reforms in South Africa was laid not by external pressure, but primarily by the social changes generated by economic growth... millions of peace-loving people moved to our cities and became part of our economy.”

To listen to de Klerk, our jingoists are right about something: international economic pressure on South Africa in itself did not lead to either an economic tragedy or a quick regime change. On the other hand, this is precisely why the regime fell: the non-white population began to live better and, naturally, not only demanded equality, but also became a sufficiently important factor in the socio-economic situation to achieve it.

Based on the South African example, Russia will not face a total collapse in the event of further aggression against Ukraine and the introduction of tougher sanctions. Putin's regime will not collapse either. However, relying on one’s own strengths is a double-edged sword: these same forces sooner or later begin to demand political payment for relying on them. Something similar happened in the USSR towards the end of the 1980s.

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