Thread by @SmartEconomy

Remembering the late Dr. Bohdan Hawrylyshyn, a truly unique individual .

The only Ukrainian member of the Club of Rome, as far as I know, & cofounder of the European Management Forum at Davos.”Bohdan Hawrylyshyn was a Canadian, Swiss & Ukrainian economist,strategic thinker,1/

benefactor and advisor to governments and large companies worldwide. (Wikipedia). Bohdan was one of my early mentors. After reading his book “Roadmaps to the Future” in 1980, I got interest in Futures Studies & Strategic Foresight, which I later taught at OCAD university 2/

MA program in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. I was honoured to be his friend. His prediction for the collapse of the Russian Federation for 2024-2026 may still hold true. ( at the latest 2030 when Russia run out of viable oil/ gas exports & goes broke, like the USSR 3/

did previously)
His comments to my posts from Sept 2014.

SWOT / W
A 2nd weakness of the RF we should focus on is the economic collapse of the RF just like the USSR.

Here is part of my email exchange with Dr. Bohdan Hawrylyshyn in Geneva on this point.4/

Dear Walter,

It was a great idea to raise the topic. I have some ideas on one of the ways to try to outfox Putin. I have been predicting for the last year, but not in a published form, that Russian federation will disintegrate in 10/12 years, like the Soviet Union did in 1991.5/

I have predicted the event in my book “Road Maps to the Future: Towards More Effective Societies” in 1980, which was subsequently published in 8 other languages. The 2nd English edition of 2009 is called “Towards More Effective Societies. Road Maps to the Future”.6/

It includes a Chapter “Ukraine: The Last 20 Years and the Next 20”. My prediction is based on analysis rather than on wishful thinking. Here are some of the elements of the analysis: 7/

- GDP per capita in 🇷🇺 Federation is much higher than in 🇺🇦. This hides however the fact that it is indeed way higher in the “islands of wealth”in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tatarstan, possibly Novosibirsk and in the far east Zeleny Mlyn (with 🇺🇦 as a big part of population).8/

- In the rest of the RF people are very poor. One just has to go 40 km out of Moscow to see that poverty, I’ve seen it several times.
- Enormous corruption, starting with Putin and various special services, fully subserving to him. 9/

- 🇷🇺’s infrastructure(roads,railroads,planes etc.) is in very poor condition,with some exceptions e.g. Railroad St Petersburg –Moscow. Very little investment in upholding, modernizing expanding the infrastructure because the available money went into pockets of those in power.11/

- The bulk of the income from the export comes from gas, oil, aluminum, nickel, uranium & weapons, i.e. mostly from natural resources, in some cases with some transformation.
- Very narrow industrial base.11/

Production of military hardware with many components from Ukraine, some petrochemicals, steel, some type of machinery.
- Scientifical forces in the “islands of wealth”, autonomous republics.
- The number of global consumers of 🇷🇺 propaganda is shrinking with great rapidity.12/

- RF is almost fully isolated from the West, from which it was buying or steeling technology and importing so many consumer goods, now banned by sanctions imposed by US and EU.
I think it would be worth to publish some such publications about the imminent collapse of the RF 13/

& that Putin and company react. This might tilt this balance of Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora, merely reacting to enormous lies of Putin an co°.

Keep up your good work.

With my best regards to you and friends in Toronto,

Bohdan Hawrylyshyn 14

Sadly, Dr Hawrylyshyn passed away in 2016
N.B. I did publish a blog post 3 years earlier in 2011 about the collapse of Putin & Yanukowych regimes. Well, I was 1/2 right. Borys Nemtsov, translated my blog into Russian & subsequently in appeared in dozen of 🇷🇺 media 15/

My blog 2011 post, updated in 2015 smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/… got me into a lot of trouble with the Kremlin, 16/