Home topics small-business-resources general General General Building BRICs Guest Author July 1, 2005 Russia’s on the rise and the rouble is getting its second wind – As Matthew Brooks discovers, this renewed economic vigour is reshaping Russia’s place in the world and driving an insatiable appetite for all things Australian. Great news for our exporters! The New World Order, in terms of emerging trading nations, has been labelled the BRICs, an acronym for the expanding economic impact of Brazil, Russia, India and China. After an extremely rapid and often violent and traumatic transition from communist superpower to capitalist country, Russia is back on track. With gross domestic product growth now averaging 6 percent, Russia’s economy is not only stable but growing at a pace that brings it into the benchmark arena of countries such as China. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Europe embraced a new age of freedom. Two years later the former Soviet Socialist Republic seemed destined to step straight back into its bloody history as hardliners attempted to restore a communist regime in the Kremlin. The coup failed but the aftermath was no less ugly as a succession of ill-conceived, swift privatisations of former state-owned utilities replaced one demagogic regime with another, and as mafia-style oligarchs quickly moved into the space formerly held, vice like, by the all-powerful state regime. The situation was untenable and in 1998 a series of serious financial shocks, including the collapse of the rouble, sent Russia into a social and economic