Since Russia's halting turn toward capitalism in the 1990s, the G7 the forum of the world's major industrialized economies grudgingly embraced Russia and became the G8. But our Eastern Europe editor Alexei Bayer says the debate over Russia is overblown if only because, these days, Russia is looking a lot like the G8's biggest member, the United States. For starters, Russia and France are the only two countries in the Group of Eight against whom the United States never actually fought a real war. And, to a surprising degree, considering all the underlying hostility, whenever Americans and Russians met either on the Elbe River in 1945 or in outer space in the 1970s they actually got along exceptionally well. For the most part, the G-8 countries are, part and parcel, an egalitarian bunch.
Japan has one of the world's narrowest gaps between the rich and the poor.
But the concept of social equality also prevails in Germany, France, Italy, Canada and even Britain. The lone exceptions to the rule are the United States, the G8's biggest economy, and Russia, by far the smallest. First among equals The concentration of income and assets at the top of the social pyramid has, of course, always been a characteristic of the United States. During the past two decades, the trend has exacerbated. In Russia, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its enforced egalitarianism, inequality has become dramatic.