By snuffing out start-ups, Russia lost the remarkable device by which Poland drained workers out of worthless factories into units that could produce the goods that people wanted to buy. It tolerates businesses that cannot pay taxes or wages. They survive because of systems of barter and mutual forbearance of loans and taxes. Suppliers engage in round-robin lending by which everyone owes money to someone and no one ever pays up. That too throws a lifeline to insolvent firms.
Russian factories continue to churn out steel and other products that no one needs.
One measure of the deformity is that Russia is littered with factories employing 10,000 or more workers. In the United States, such factories are a rarity. Ordinary folk call it economic suicide. Russia, of course, was not like Poland before or after communism. Russia's officials had no such confidence about absorbing the workers from its numerous, gigantic state-owned factories.