ABSTRACT
In May 1990 speaker after speaker at the Russian Federation’s Congress of People’s Deputies conference rose to condemn Russia’s disproportionate resource burden and “nonequivalent exchange” with the rest of the Soviet Union (see, e.g., Vlasov, 1990). In what amounted to a national catharsis, Russia’s reply to the popular question “who’s feeding whom?” was unambiguous.
This paper explores the validity of this question and Russia’s answer. With the breakup of the Soviet Union a reasoned reply to “who’s feeding whom?” remains important: The perception that certain republics assumed a disproportionate burden in realizing central resource allocative priorities arguably played a role in the union’s demise. Thus, a reexamination of “who’s feeding whom?” is compelling for historical reasons alone. Furthermore, what can 164Soviet data on republic trade, the principal evidence marshalled to evaluate “who’s feeding whom?”, reveal about variations in the immediate costs of independence in the various former Soviet republics?
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: The first part analyzes data on republic trade balances, key physical interrepublic commodity flows and republic generation and consumption of foreign exchange. The second part interprets the findings and assesses their implications for interrepublic resource transfers in the former Soviet Union.
