Probably, the title of this paper is surprising for many specialists in various fields of economics, politics and other social sciences. Indeed, despite the financial-economic crisis of 1997-98, the newly industrialised countries (NICs) of East Asia (‘East Asia’ herein refers to East and Southeast Asia together) have been symbolised the successful development’s pattern for the non-western regions while neither Russia (and the other CIS countries, formerly republics of the USSR, as well) nor Latin American nations demonstrate fascinating achievements in development over the last fifteen-twenty years, good rates of the economic growth in some periods notwithstanding. By dynamics of the social indicators, such as a life expectancy, infants’ mortality, or human development index, the both regions lose competition to the East Asian countries, too. Therefore, it is seemingly difficult to find real foundations for a comparison of Russia and Latin American countries, on the one hand, and the East Asian NICs, on the other, if such a comparison is not used for banal conclusion about rather negative than positive results of reforms in the first case and acquired success in the second one. However, as Karl Marx once noted, “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.” [Marx K., 1959, p. 797]. In the recent study, a matter of comparison can consist not only in a recognition of predominantly extensive character of the economic growth in the both groups of countries under consideration, as Paul Krugman argued in his famous paper of 1994 [Krugman P., 1994]. Also, it concerns some other invisible similarities hidden beyond the formal statistical indicators. Respectively, the object of this paper is threefold: at first, to find out such similarities; secondly, to propose the proper assessment of the Asian crisis of 1997-98 and the regional post-crisis recovery in light of Russian and Latin American experience over the last decades, and, thirdly, to stimulate discussion aimed at re-thinking widespread approaches to a complement of development studies.
