Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 24 – The eight
developments Russians identified as of their greatest fears are all coming
true, and that pattern regardless of what else happens undermines the stability
of Russian society and the Russian state, according to Moscow economist and
commentator Yevgeny Gontmakher.
In August, Russians were asked by
Levada Center pollsters to identify which problems in Russian life were of
greatest concern to them. Seventy-one percent said price increases, 40 percent
said poverty, 30 percent said increasing income differentiation, 28 percent
said a crisis in the economy, 26 percent said an increase in unemployment, 26
percent said corruption and bribery, 24 percent said immigration, and 23
percent said lack of access to necessary medicines.
In a commentary posted on MK.ru
yesterday, Gontmakher says that all of these problems have become worse in
recent months and that both singly and especially in combination they call into
question the basis of stability in Russian society and thus Russian political
life (mk.ru/politics/2014/09/23/proshhay-stabilnost.html).
Inflation will exceed eight percent
this year, he points out, poverty is increasing, social stratification is
getting worse, the economy is in recession, unemployment and underemployment
are growing, corruption is spreading, tensions with immigrants are rising, and
access to medicines has declined because of sanctions and counter-sanctions.
What makes these concerns and these
problems so potentially dangerous, Gontmakher says, is that they come after
nearly a decade of rapidly increasing social well-being that was fueled by
increasing income from the sale of oil and gas abroad and that in turn allowed
the Putin regime to proclaim “stability” as its highest value.
But those economic improvements and
that stability came with a cost to the regime: the appearance at the end of
2011 and the beginning of 2012 of people whose level of life had improved to
the point that they were willing to do something that earlier generations had
not: protest that things were not better.
For
the Putin regime, the economist says, these were the first signs that “something
was threatening the stability” they craved and proclaimed. But the regime made the wrong diagnosis: the
problem was not so much the protesters who went into the Moscow streets but
rather that there are at bottom two kinds of stability.
There is stability “connected with
evolutionary development” and there is, “on the contrary, stability connected with
slow rot.” The first kind is something
that any regime can live with but must work hard to produce; the second is the
kind that Moscow now faces – and it can quickly disappear “like the snow in
April.”
The Russian government must
recognize the nature of these risks. While they may not lead to open conflicts,
they lead people to begin to “feel” that something isn’t right, that things are
going in the wrong direction, and as a result that something needs to be done,
even if they cannot say just what that should entail.
And “the second characteristic of
these risks,” Gontmakher says, is that they can lead to explosions in
unexpected places and as a result of what seem to be superficial developments.
Moreover, as the dangers multiply as now, the regime is faced with more tasks
than it can cope with and at some point will be threatened with collapse.
If the economy were doing better,
the regime would have more time, but the economy isn’t and the Kremlin doesn’t
have it. Consequently, just as bread shortages in Petrograd in February 1917
led to the downfall of the Romanovs, so too banking problems, a devaluation of the
ruble, or the shortage of medicines like insulin could have the same effect
now.
The regime will of course try to buy
time for itself by propaganda suggesting that all of these problems are the
work of foreign governments or a domestic “fifth column,” and that may work for
a time, Gontmakher says. But unless it addresses these underlying problems,
such propaganda ultimately will not be enough.
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