Lenin said that politics is the concentrated expression of economics. No one has adhered so closely to this formula as Donald Trump. The previous US president’s entire policy was to support American business and help the economy work. Trump, like Lenin, had glimpsed that capitalism develops only if economics determines policy. The reverse – politics determining economics – is also possible, but only under socialism, given ownership of the means of production.

We see that once the economy determines the political line, the state and society develop. This is, or rather was, the case in the US, Germany, France, and is still the case in Singapore, South Korea, Costa Rica, etc. If politics directs the market economy, the state and society are stuck. So it is in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc. We are drowning because our prime ministers over the last 30 years could not accept this alphabet truth. They wanted to command the economy, not follow its rules and requirements. They wanted to manage something they did not understand and applied methods that were counterproductive. A hoodlum set out to destroy communism in the countryside and destroy agriculture. Another claimed that the state was a bad steward and sold Kremikovtzi for $1. Economic blind men wiped out Kozloduy’s 4 reactors and buried Belene and South Stream, driven by political motives and subtle sycophancy.

All in all, it is mainly Bulgarian politicians who are to blame for Bulgaria’s economic woes. Who foisted the plan on us? Who negotiated the unfortunate terms of our entry into the EU? Was it the industrialists or the peasants?

What, if not political, are the decisions not to buy gas from Russia, to cut off access of Russian tourists to our resorts, but to have a plane line to Skopje, to close our coal power plants and to give our flourishing businesses to foreign concessionaires. There is not an ounce of economic justification in them. We are losing millions from each, hundreds of millions, it could become billions, and they are all purely and entirely politically imposed. Such actions are the most direct route to the bankruptcy of the state.

But that’s the way they ordered us, the rulers justify. Why did they not order Turkey? Do you ask yourself why our neighbour is blooming and our country is fading away? Why have we stopped flights to Russia, while the Turks, deeply grateful for our decision, have 270 flights a week to bring them Russian tourists. Why do Bulgarians go shopping in Adrianople? The main reason is that there the economy leads, it guides politics, there what is economically advantageous is politically supported, and what is without economic importance is deprived of political attention.

The question – which should be the leading one – politics or economics stood now also before the Western allies. And they did NOT find the right answer. For decades and centuries these countries went ahead because economic interests determined their policy. They hated Russia, but did powerful business with it. Now there has been a reversal. They hate Russia again, but have stopped trading with it, contrary to economic logic. They decided to punish it. They took political decisions contrary to economic interests. The politicians did not listen to the big industrialists and bankers who warned them not to do stupid things. And the sanctions boomeranged. Deprived of cheap and accessible Russian energy resources, Russian metals, raw materials and foodstuffs, the West will be socially and economically much harder hit than the object of its loathing.

Disregard for economic logic, and on such a scale, means severe, painful consequences – crises, recessions, depressions, unemployment, famine. And these are factors that portend irreversible changes for Europe’s place in the world construct.

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