“Moscow is the biggest parasite on the body of Russia” - the Russian Academy of Sciences calculated a scenario for the collapse of the Russian Federation

Today it seems fantastic, but shortly before the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian Academy of Sciences calculated and published a scenario for the collapse of Russia. The most notorious parasite on the body of the Russian Federation is Moscow, noted the RAN. Meanwhile, the Northwestern District led by St. Petersburg turned out to be the most promising region that could relatively quickly join the European Union. The calculations were conducted analogously to the modeling of the collapse of the USSR in the late 1980s - at that time, it was studied what share of current consumption the union republics would lose in the event of a break in economic ties.

A hypothetical scenario for the collapse of Russia into separate federal districts has been calculated by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN). This was reported by the author of the study, Viktor Suslov, Deputy Director for Science at the Institute of Economics of Industrial Production of the Siberian Branch of the RAN, Doctor of Economic Sciences, and Corresponding Member of the RAN, in an interview with the magazine "Ogonyok." The research has been conducted over the past 10 years, and its results, according to Suslov, turned out to be "depressing."

"The most notorious 'parasite' on the 'body' of Russia is the Central Federal District (led by Moscow - ed.). Its 'contributions' to the target indicators of all federal districts turned out to be negative, and the 'result' of its 'interaction' with the Northwestern District is a reduction of the target indicator of the latter by almost one quarter," the Corresponding Member of the RAN said in the interview.

At the same time, the Central Federal District together with Moscow is an innovative-technological, cultural, scientific-educational, transport-logistics, and financial center.

"The current situation is a consequence of disproportionately and unjustly large incomes, primarily earned in Moscow. Financial resources are artificially concentrated in the federal center from all over the country," Suslov concludes.

According to the scientist, the Siberian Federal District looks good (54.2%), while the Ural District is much worse (22.5%). In other federal districts, the gap in external connections nullifies their target indicators.

"The most self-sufficient macro-region of Russia is the Northwestern Federal District. In a state of autarky, it retains 85.4% of the initial level of its target indicator," the economist shared the results of the calculations.

The Volga, North Caucasian, and Southern Federal Districts have a negative balance of interaction, although not as significant as that of Moscow.

"Purely theoretically, one can compare the current state of Russia with the USSR on the eve of its collapse," Suslov states, adding, however, that the slogan "enough feeding Moscow," which is "looming on the horizon," is unlikely to stimulate the political collapse of the country.