MEL:invention of profit-oriented capitalistic world? :)
Just in case anyone would care to know: in Russia, we have no MEL/MMEL procedure for Soviet-made aircraft. We do have something similar, the List of allowable failures and malfunctions, which is attached at the end of FCOM but its crucial difference from MEL is that you can only depart with these failures/malfunctions from final destination or stopover airport to return to the base but not from the base one.
The "you cannot fly a plane with anything u/s on it" notion that was characteristic for the stringent and orderly Soviet-era is however giving way to a more "liberal" and slack-ish Russia where planes (like Tu-204) are operated with inop equipment even though there is no formal document to let operators do so.