Opening the Red Door by John A. Bernbaum

Author:John A. Bernbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history;Christian higher education;Christian college;cccu;Russian-American Christian University;RACU;Christian College Coalition crosscultural education;Russia;university;international relations;Council for Christian Colleges and Universities;Russian history;Russian education;communism;Berlin Wall;Russian higher education;Russian Christian college;postcommunist;post communist;post communism;Vladimir Putin;cold war history;post cold war;international education;faith based university;Soviet Union
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2019-08-22T06:55:39+00:00

RUSSIA’S POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTABILITY

The biggest challenge by year three was not an internal issue but the chaos in Russia’s political and economic life. The Furters arrived in Moscow to take over leadership and had barely moved into their apartment when a major crisis hit Russia. I arrived in Moscow along with the Furters, and together we witnessed another shifting of the ground beneath us. The economy was in crisis, the political factions were at war, and the average Muscovite was desperately trying to survive. The ruble was in a free fall, beginning at six rubles per dollar, then trading on the streets for seven, soon eight and quickly nine rubles per dollar; within a week the exchange rate had plummeted to twenty rubles per dollar.

Rumors of economic collapse began to spread and some banks were mobbed by people trying to withdraw their savings. However, other than occasional mob scenes, the streets were calm and people seemed resigned to weather yet another storm. This particular devaluation of the ruble was only the most recent of numerous defaults experienced by the Russian people, who repeatedly suffered the total loss of their savings. The Russians experienced two depression-scale shocks in the 1990s, comparable to the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. For Americans working in this context, we began to understand why the Russian people no longer trusted anyone in authority and why so many assumed that efforts to build democracy in their country were the cause of these economic disasters. For them, democracy had become a dirty word.7

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