Focusing in historical perspective on the role of the state with regard to public ownership and to welfare in the Western industrialized countries, on the one hand, and in Russia, on the other, I have tried to underline the correspondences that have arisen over time within and between these markedly dissimilar systems. Let me recall briefly the crucial moments and forms of these correspondences and their implications.

With regard to the industrial West, I pointed out that from the very emergence of the national states and the continuous expansion of market relations, the states began to exercise vast control over the types of production, openly protected and subsidized various industrial enterprises, and consolidated their own ownership and direct management over their countries' key industries. Eventually, within the mixed liberal-mercantilist and rapidly industrializing framework of the nineteenth century, the role of government decreased in some respects, but continued in certain Western countries with regard to the promotion of national industries, the subsidization of exports, and the limitation of imports. This direct role of the state expanded further during World War I and the interwar years, as well as during and after World War II. As we noted, the role of welfare also became increasingly significant from the end of the nineteenth century onward and gained in scope and importance during the interwar years and then again particularly after World War II.