Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 26 – The criminalization
of the Russian state under Vladimir Putin is infecting Russian society more
broadly, with ever more Russians saying that they support and even participate
in the shadow economy and indeed declaring that they believe the only way to
get ahead in Russia is to violate its laws.
A new survey by the Russian Academy
of Economics and State Service finds the share of Russians who support the
operation of the illegal economy has risen from 17.9 percent at the state of
Vladimir Putin’s reign to 29.3 percent now, while the share opposed to it has
fallen from 42.2 percent to 16.4 percent (rbc.ru/economics/25/10/2016/580f55949a7947af189b451b).
Commenting on this survey in today’s
“Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Mikhail Sergeyev, the paper’s economics editor, says
that “hopes for the rapid triumph of legality which were characteristic of the
first years of Putin’s time have been replaced today with disappointment and
depression” (ng.ru/economics/2016-10-26/1_6844_shadow.html).
Over the last 16
years, ever more Russians approve avoiding taxes by whatever means possible,
engaging in various kinds of activity without official registration, and being
paid on the side rather than in ways that allow the government to collect taxes
of various kinds, he says, citing the words of Andrey Pokida, a sociologist at
the Russian Academy.
Russians “are broadly included in
the shadow economy both as its active participants as workers, employers and
consumers of off-the-books work and services,” the report shows, with higher
rates of involvement in the black market found among those with lower incomes
but not absent among those with higher ones.
According to Sergeyev, “a trend
toward the growth of positive attitudes toward the unofficial economy has been
observed beginning in 2001.” The situation has not become markedly worse in the
last three years, but it has not improved either.
A major reason that citizens support
the shadow economy, the Russian Academy experts say, is “distrust in the
possibility of legal earnings … about 30 percent of respondents are certain
that they will not have the chance to increase their incomes and standard of
living without violating the laws.”
Sociologist Pokida who oversaw this
research suggests that this is worrisome because with the fall of real incomes
among Russians increasing, ever more of them are prepared to take part in the
shadow economy, depriving the government of income and predisposing them to
other illegal actions as well.
The “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” journalist says that the existence of this trend throughout the last 16
years reflects the fact that Russians have experienced so many crises and thus
have little confidence that they can make their way forward without taking
advantage of various off-the-books strategies.
He
quotes Moscow analyst Aleksey Markarkin on this point. The first vice president
of the Center for Political Technologies says that “in the early 2000s, there
was the sense among citizens that the country was escaping from the 1990s when
for many the only possibility of survival was the shadow economy.”
There
was a new president, economic growth took off thanks to the oil boom, and the
government carried out a successful tax reform. “But,” he continues, “the
crisis of 2008-2009 generated disappointment. It continued and with the start
of the current crisis when we have fallen from recession into stagnation and
from stagnation into recession.”
As
a result, Makarkin says, Russians have shifted the paradigm within which they
operate from one of development to one of survival; and they are prepared to do
what they have to in order to hold on.
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