Russian Fears Shifting from Pandemic to Economic Hardships, New Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 7 – In the first quarter of this year, Russian concern about the coronavirus pandemic outweighed all other fears; but in the second, according to a new poll conducted by the KROS communications agency, the focus of their worries shifted to the loss of work and income (rbc.ru/society/07/07/2020/5e2fe9459a79479d102bada6).

            Officials and commentators continued to talk about both with some of their remarks intended to calm the situation while others appear likely to exacerbate fears about both. Today, the Russian government reported 6368 new cases of infection, bringing the cumulative total to 694,230 and 198 deaths upping that total to 9551 (t.me/COVID2019_official/978).

            While the pandemic eased in some parts of the Russian Federation, it returned or became more intense in others and continued to hit particular groups, such as medical personnel, especially hard (rbc.ru/society/07/07/2020/5e2fe9459a79479d102bada6 and interfax.ru/russia/716184).

            That variegated pattern was reflected in today’s news about openings and closings. Vladimir Putin told Aeroflot that it is not yet clear when flights to Europe will resume (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/putin-dal-signal-aeroflotu-ne-zhdat-bystrogo-vozobnovleniya-poletov-v-evropu-1029368567). In part this is because Russians are blocked from visiting or need visas to enter more countries than before the pandemic (newsru.com/russia/07jul2020/pass_down.html). 

            In some places, officials cancelled cultural events, and in others, they openly expressed the hope that their regions would do better in the course of a second round of the pandemic than they have in the first (nazaccent.ru/content/33554-komi-izhemskij-prazdnik-lud-otmenili-v-2020.html  and baikal24.ru/text/07-07-2020/010/).

            Duma deputy and medical expert Gennady Onishchenko sought to put the best face on things as far as the pandemic is concerned. He says that 40 to 60 percent of Russians have been infected and so the population has herd immunity, something that means it will suffer fewer infections in a second round (kp.ru/daily/27153.3/4248943/  and  lenta.ru/news/2020/07/07/onsh/).

            He added that if a second round does occur, the government will not have the power to impose a lockdown of the kind it did during the first. As a result, people’s lives and the economy will be far less disrupted than was the case earlier (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=87756).

            The economic news today was if anything worse than in recent weeks. Arkady Dvorkovich of the Skolovo Foundation says that Russia is “only beginning the most difficult period” of the economic crisis and that things are certain to get worse before they get better (lenta.ru/news/2020/07/07/tyajeluy/).

            Russian officials felt compelled to deny reports that incomes have fallen as a result of the coronavirus. Instead, the economic development ministry put out a statement that incomes had risen in both nominal and real terms during the first quarter. It did not speak about the second (economy.gov.ru/material/news/v_minekonomrazvitiya_oprovergli_dannye_smi_o_rezkom_padenii_dohodov_naseleniya.html).

            But figures about falling incomes and increasing poverty continued to come in, with Novosti reported that the share of Russians now living in poverty has risen to more than 12 percent overall, ranging from 5.6 percent in petroleum rich Yamalo-Nenets to 35 percent in Tyva (ria.ru/20200706/1573926441.html).

            Independent economists were nearly unanimous in insisting that the business climate in Russia is getting worse (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/77952), and one survey reported that 20 percent of all Russian businesses will not reopen after the pandemic (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/kazhdy-pyaty-biznes-v-rossii-zakrylsya-navsegda-1029371353).

            Just how bad the situation really is was reflected in a decision by the Central Bank to first put up and then take down a statement that Moscow has confiscated depositors’ accounts during wartime, implying that it could do so again (agoniya.eu/archives/6632 and facebook.com/cbr.ru/posts/3008468345904000).

            But curiously, one analyst suggested that the economic “collapse” may have a silver lining: if the economy is more or less dead, there will be less human interaction, and as a result, there will be less likelihood of new spikes in infections or a second wave of the pandemic (svpressa.ru/politic/article/270253/).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related news from Russia,

·         Experts at Moscow’s Sechenov University say that initial tests of possible coronavirus vaccines have produced few side effects (capost.media/news/obshchestvo/volunteers-after-vaccination-from-covid-19-feel-good/).

·         Educators are struggling with distance learning even more than students are given that few of them have been trained  in how to organize it or given directions now that they have no choice but to conduct school sessions in this way (newvz.ru/info/188587.html).

·         Some Russians are complaining that the coronavirus pandemic has already had an extremely serious impact on the Russian language both lexically and syntactically (forum-msk.org/material/news/16559654.html).