Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 7 – Pro-Kremlin
writers have argued that the deteriorating economic situation will lead
Russians to willingly tighten their belts, and opposition ones have suggested
that economic problems will lead to political protests and even regime change.
But both are wrong, Yevgeny Gontmakher says.
In a commentary today, the Moscow
economic analyst points out that there have been protests but they haven’t
spread and that that pattern continues even with all the attention that has
been given to the truckers’ strike and is likely to continue well into the
future (echo.msk.ru/blog/gontmaher/1672410-echo/).
Nonetheless, Gontmakher argues,
there are several interesting aspects to the truckers’ action: they have
attracted some support from allies groups like port workers, and they have been
able to organize themselves for a mass action across the country and not just
in isolated locations.
But perhaps most intriguingly, he
continues, the long-haul truckers “up to now are proud of the fact that they
support the state in the person of the current president … and they hate ‘the
fifth column’ which they at last have seen on television.” Despite that, however, they have acted in
their drive on Moscow more collectively than have other groups.
“What has occurred?” Gontmakher asks
rhetorically.
First of all, he says, the crisis
for the truckers has been growing for some time. As the economic situation has
worsened, demand for their services has fallen and so too have their
earnings. Second, in contrast to other
groups, the state has imposed a new fee on them, something it hasn’t done to
any other group.
That of course has led the truckers
to ask why us and why not others – and especially why does the state want our
fees to go to a private oligarch? If the
state had asked them to sacrifice to state needs and to pay to it, Gontmakher
says, “all the protests would have instantly disappeared.”
And there has been a third factor at
work as well: the truckers used to being independent operators and proud of
that have not restrained themselves about those who want to take their money
and they have seen this replayed again and again on the Internet. They hoped
Vladimir Putin would hear their plea and respond in his presidential address,
but that didn’t happen.
Many are seeking to explain what is
going on by pointing to the willingness of Russians to sacrifice for their country
to again be a great power. Others argue that the refrigerator is finally
defeating the television, and still others say that spiritual values are
trumping material existence once again.
The truckers’ strike shows that “not
one of these scenarios is being realized in Russia,” Gontmakher says. But at
the same time, “judging from everything, their protest will not lead to the chain
reaction of events like the All-Union miners’ strike in 1989” or lead to the
birth of something like Poland’s Solidarnost movement.
The first was possible because the
Soviet state was already weak, and the second because of the power of the
Catholic Church. But in Russia now, the state is not so weak that it can’t move
against any protesters and people know that; and the Russian Orthodox Church is
not on the side of the workers as the Catholic Church was.
That suggests, he continues, that
after a time, the truck drivers will go home, some to sell off their trucks,
others to continue to work as best they can, and still others to “go into the traditional
Russian depression” and consumer enormous amount of low quality alcohol.
Perhaps a tiny minority will even try to withdraw from society and go into a
monastery.
“But this will not compensate for
the growing social negative of millions of drivers and those who are linked to
them in life,” Gontmakher says. “Any talk about a ‘special’ Russian path, about
our outstanding ‘spirituality,’ and about the dawning Russian leadership in
innovation will lead them to respond with traditional unprintable Russian
words.”
And in responding in that way, the
Moscow analyst says, “they will be right.”
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