A Baker’s Double Dozen of Other Notable Stories from Russia This Week

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Below are 26 more stories from Russia this week that deserve to be noted because they shed significant light on Russia, its government and its people, but that I was unable to write up as full-scale Windows:  

 

1.      Putin Says US-Russian Relations Hostage to Domestic American Politics. Speaking to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin says that Russia and the US do not have “any disagreements” with the US but that tensions between the two countries reflect US domestic politics and the desire to “restrain our development.” In other comments, he said he did not consider the economic situation in Russia, including rising unemployment, a catastrophe (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/85861).

2.      Putin Says His Mother Worked Nights to Take Care of Him During the Day. Also in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin leader spoke about his family, something he rarely does. He said his mother worked nights when he was growing up so that she could be home to take care of him, the only child in the family after two siblings died in the war (ura.news/news/1052487720).

3.      Russian Supreme Court Working to Reduce Number of Cases Heard by Juries. In order to prevent juries from finding Russians charged with crimes not guilty, a lawyer says that the Supreme Court is doing everything  it can to reduce the number of cases heard by juries and is encouraging appeals of not guilty verdicts in order to ensure that far fewer than one percent of all those charged are convicted (newizv.ru/news/society/28-05-2021/advokat-predsedatelyu-verhovnogo-suda-pravosudie-v-rossii-stalo-pridatkom-vlasti).

4.      Moscow Patriarchate Says It is Too Soon to Stop Blessing Nuclear Weapons. After a  priest called for an end to the practice of having the church bless Russia’s nuclear weapons, Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Synod’s department for church-society relations, said it was too soon for the Russian church to take such a step (newsru.com/russia/28may2021/archimandrite.html and  https://credo.press/237436/).

5.      Russian Women in Moscow Choosing Tajiks to be Their Husbands. Research shows that Russian women are increasingly inclined to marry ethnic Tajiks, something that may help integrate the latter into Russian society but that is certain to anger many Russian nationalists (stanradar.com/news/full/44962-issledovanie-chasche-vsego-sredi-inostrantsev-moskvichki-vybirajut-v-muzhja-tadzhikov.html).

6.      Fewer than One Russian in Four Thinks Economy in Their Country will Soon Improve. Only 22 percent tell Romir pollsters that they believe the Russian economy will improve in the near future. Forty-three percent say they expect it to remain much as it is now, with the remainder, just under a quarter, either expecting a further deterioration or refusing to give an opinion (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/85751). Another study reports that 19 percent of Russians now drawing a pension are still working (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/85772).

7.      Even in Kolyma, Sizeable Majority of Russians Face Using Prisoners in Place of Immigrants. Seventy-one percent of Russians across the country favor plans to use prisoners to perform work now being carried out by immigrants. Their numbers include residents of Kolyma, for many still a symbol of Stalin’s GULAG (rbc.ru/society/01/06/2021/60b50e699a79475c86b13219 and https://govoritmagadan.ru/na-kolyme-zainteresovalis-ideej-zamenit-migrantov-zakljuchjonnymi/). Among those opposed, however, are prisoners themselves (nakanune.ru/news/2021/6/2/22603659/).

8.      Lukoil Lies About Oil Spill. Environmental activists have found that a river in the Komi Republic that Lukoil said had not been damaged by an oil spill from the company in fact is contaminated at a level 500 times the rate the government considers safe and acceptable (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/06/01/ochen-griaznaia-lozh).

9.      Kremlin Says It is Not Paying Any Attention to Competition to Identify Worst Bathrooms in Russian Schools. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says that the Kremlin isn’t paying any attention to the competition and believes that the state of such facilities is the responsibility of each local government (meduza.io/feature/2021/06/01/schitayut-li-v-kremle-konkurs-na-zvanie-hudshego-shkolnogo-tualeta-popytkoy-zapada-diskreditirovat-rossiyu-otvechaet-dmitriy-peskov).

10.  Russian Sparkling Wine Production Projected to Collapse. Because of a shortage of domestic grapes and existing sanctions, Russia will produce as much as 40 percent less sparkling wine this year than last, industry officials say (znak.com/2021-06-02/v_rossii_ozhidayut_padeniya_proizvodstva_igristyh_vin_na_40_iz_za_deficita_syrya).

11.  Moscow Reimposes Soviet-Style Travel Limits on US Diplomats. In response to the US decision to leave the Open Skies treaty, Moscow has announced that it  will now require US diplomats travelling outside of Moscow any distance to get advance permission just as was the case in Soviet times (russtrat.ru/news/3-iyunya-2021-1230-4505).

12.  Russian Sex Workers Say Government Failing to Protect Them. The Russian Forum of Sex Workers says that the authorities in their country are failing to prosecute those who rape or harm its members, thus opening the way to still more abuse (sibreal.org/a/pochemu-seks-rabotniki-v-rossii-lisheny-prav/31284827.html). Meanwhile, Russian men who work as escorts say that their business has been seriously harmed by the pandemic and fears of the spread of the coronavirus (dailystorm.ru/obschestvo/razmer-imeet-znachenie-kak-v-rossii-rabotayut-muzhchiny-po-vyzovu).

13.  The Poorer the Non-Russian Republic, the Wealthier Its Boss. Chechnya is one of the poorest republics in Russia but its head, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been identified as the richest regional head. A similar pattern holds across the non-Russian portions of the country (caucasustimes.com/ru/chem-bednee-region-tem-bogache-ego-glava/).

14.  Russia Gets Its Own George Floyd Case. Moscow media have had a field day about the horrific killing of George Floyd by police officers, but they have given much less attention to a situation within Russia in which Novosibirsk police have killed an Azerbaijani, a case that some are calling Russia’s very own George Floyd case (apn-spb.ru/opinions/article33526.htm).

15.  95 Percent of Russian Youth Upset about Social Inequality in Their Country. A survey conducted by sociologists at Moscow State University finds that 19 out of 20 young people are upset by the amount of income inequality in Russia. Most believe the richest decile should earn no more than four to six times what the lowest decile does. In Russia today, the ratio if 15 to 16 times, one of the highest in the world (newizv.ru/article/general/04-06-2021/tsifra-dnya-pochti-95-molodyh-lyudey-zhaluyutsya-na-sotsialnoe-neravenstvo-v-strane).

16.   Khabarovsk Residents Again Demonstrate on Behalf of Ousted Governor. Once again, the residents of the city in the Russian Far East have gone into the streets in support of their former governor Sergey Furgal, this time because many believe his treatment in jail may lead to his death (sibreal.org/a/miting-v-podderzhku-furgala/31291834.html). At least for the moment, the authorities have not cracked down, perhaps not wanting to embarrass Vladimir Putin who has just claimed to an international audience that the opposition in Russia can and does work “openly” (tass.ru/politika/11575227).

17.  Two Thirds of Russians Feel They’re Free; One Third Don’t. A new Levada Center poll finds that 64 percent of Russians feel they are free people, down only slightly from a sampling in 2014 when 69 percent did, while 35 percent don’t feel free, up from 22 percent seven years ago (levada.ru/2021/06/04/prava-i-svobody/).

18.  Volgograd Residents Launch Petition to Be in New Time Zone; Irkutsk Residents against a New Orthodox Church. Petitions are an increasingly popular way for residents of cities outside of Moscow to protest. Residents of Volgograd have collected more than 40,000 signatures on a petition to shift the time zone the city is located it, while Irkutsk residents have gathered more than 1200 in opposition of plans to build a new Orthodox church in the center of town (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/364625/ and credo.press/237528/).

19.  VTimes Forced to Close for Economic Reasons Brought on by Political Situation. In shuttering operations after its journalists had tried to maintain their independence after the powers that be took over Vedomosti where most had worked, a move that led the Kremlin to declare their new project “a foreign agent,” the VTimes staff said they had been forced to close because they could no longer finance their operations but added that they could no longer do so because of the political situation znak.com/2021-06-03/izdanie_vtimes_obyavilo_o_zakrytii_posle_vklyucheniya_v_reestr_smi_inoagentov. News.Ru was similar forced to shut down for the same reasons (newsru.com/russia/31may2021/newsrucomoutoforder2.html).

20.  Russian Post Now Using Drones to Deliver Mail in Parts of Chukotka. Because residents live in such widely dispersed areas connected by few roads, the Russian postal service is now using drones to deliver mail there (nazaccent.ru/content/35861-v-otdalennye-naselennye-punkty-chukotki-pochtu.html).

21.  Russians Would Like to Have Two Children But Can’t See Any Chance to Have More. A new survey finds that Russians would like to have two children but can’t see any chance to have more given their incomes, small apartments, and the loss in many cases of partners (regnum.ru/news/society/3283120.html).

22.  Moscow Announces Plan to Extend Street Cameras Across Russia. The Russian government has installed street cameras in major cities to fight crime, according to officials, but to control the population, according to many opposition figures. But now Moscow has decided to extent the street camera system to almost all municipalities in the country (svobodaradio.livejournal.com/5444113.html).

23.  Moscow Set to Require International IT Companies to Maintain Offices in Russia. The Duma has passed on first reading a measure that it is likely to pass. It will require all IT companies regardless of where their home bases are to open offices in the Russian Federation, an arrangement that will give the Kremlin added leverage on them (rusmonitor.com/gosduma-odobrila-zakonoproekt-o-rusifikaczii-zarubezhnyh-it-gigantov.html).

24.  NKVD Theater in Vorkuta in 1943 Celebrated as “Promoter of Cultural Progress.” Russian journalists are praising many things from Stalin’s time. Perhaps the most remarkable is an article in a St. Petersburg portal saying that the establishment of a prison theater in Vorkuta in 1943 represented an important stimulus for cultural progress by providing activities for actors and other theater people confined in the GULAG (gorod-812.ru/krepostnoj-teatr-hh-veka-nkvd-kak-dvigatel-kulturnogo-progressa/).

25.  St. Petersburg Forum a Success, Some Say, Because No One There has been Arrested. It is a measure of how low the standards of success have fallen in Russia that one attendee at the St. Petersburg International Business Forum said it must be counted a success because no one at the meeting had yet been arrested (business-gazeta.ru/article/511753).

26.  Melor Sturua Dies. Melor Sturua, a prominent Soviet journalist and then émigré scholar who was also rumored to have changed his name in 1956 so that it would be an acronym for Marx, Engels, and the October Revolution but not for Stalin as well, has died (iz.ru/1172398/izvestiia/chestnoe-slovo-kakim-zapomnitsia-legendarnyi-spetckor-izvestii-melor-sturua).

Russia Ranks 82nd among World’s Countries in Terms of Share of Population Vaccinated

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Even though Russia was the first to develop a vaccine, it now ranks 82^nd among the countries of the world in terms of the percentage of the population which has been vaccinated. Only ab out 11 percent of Russians have received the shots, and 62 percent say they do not intend to get them (gogov.ru/articles/covid-v-stats).

            Officials are still promoting the shots and even suggesting that the share of the population which must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity is not 60-70 percent as they have said in the past but 80-90 percent, a number that Moscow will find difficult to reach as long as opposition remains so strong and vaccination voluntary (regnum.ru/news/3288477.html and rtvi.com/news/minzdrav-plan-massovoy-vaktsinatsii-v-rossii-vypolnen-bolee-chem-na-25/).

            Consumer affairs chief Anna Popova says that a major battlefront now has emerged between government experts who unanimously recommend the vaccine and ill-informed anti-vaxxers and skeptics who oppose the shots. The latter must be actively opposed and isolated, she says (regnum.ru/news/3288508.html).

            One of the greatest challenges is the diversity in the situation in various parts of the country. Some regions are close to defeating the pandemic, Moscow says; while officials in other regions say they face a third wave (regnum.ru/news/society/3287593.html, znak.com/2021-06-05/murashko_zayavil_chto_neskolko_regionov_v_rossii_pochti_pobedili_covid_19  and  regnum.ru/news/3288333.html).

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 8947 new cases of infection and 377 new deaths from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours. They also said that Russia in April suffered the second lowest number of excess deaths as compared to 2019 since the pandemic began (t.me/COVID2019_official/3014 and rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/lN8GgJ5B/edn04-2021.htm).

            Speaking to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin was upbeat about the situation in Russia, noting that there had not been a single death related to the inoculation of the population (regnum.ru/news/3288645.html). His aides reported he will now resume face-to-face operations (regnum.ru/news/3288482.html).

            And Russian officials said they expect the World Health Organization to give final approval to the Sputnik-5 vaccine in the next two months (regnum.ru/news/3288378.html). At least some Russians have been reluctant to get the shots because that approval has not yet been forthcoming.

Shoygu More Concerned about Military Parades than about National Defense, Golts Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – At a time when Vladimir Putin is saying that ever more foreign powers threaten the Russian Federation, Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu sent a very different message when he focused more attention on planning for upcoming military parades than on developing a response to foreign challenges, Aleksandr Golts says.

            The independent Russian security analyst says that at the most recent meeting of the defense ministry’s collegium, Shoygu led with a discussion of plans for a series of military parades in the coming months rather than focusing on improving the country’s defenses (ej.ru/?a=note&id=36179).

            After talking about parades, the defense minister did provide the now-standard litany of Western threats; but he neither prioritized them nor put them in context by discussing the way in which the actions of the Western powers have been a response to prior Russian actions such as the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine and the Anschluss of Crimea.

            Shoygu did say that he was creating 20 new units in the west in order to counter NATO. But he did not add the two most important facts about this: On the one hand, the imbalance of forces there is nothing new; and on the other, creating new units in almost every case reduces rather than increases Russia’s defense capabilities.

            The reason for that bitter conclusion, Golts says, is that an increasing number of Russian units are hollow. They have a more or less full complement of officers but only handfuls of soldiers. The idea is that the places of the latter will be filled by a general mobilization in the event of a crisis.

            But that is unlikely to happen and creating these units simply provides more career opportunities for officers without improving defense and by spreading spending across more units, such a policy may lead to a decline in the military preparedness and readiness of the units involved.

            And things aren’t set to change if the current policy is maintained, the commentator says. “From year to year, the number of draftees is declining – you can’t ignore demography and the number of 18-year-olds is getting ever smaller.” Moreover, the professional soldiers the Kremlin has talked so much about haven’t increased to fill their places. They remain at about 380,000.

            The number of officers has increased as has the number of new “’paper divisions’ consisting only of commanders.” Failure to address those real threats means that Russia won’t be in a position to counter any that may come from outside the country sometime in the future and whose appearance will become more likely if Moscow continues its aggressive course.

 

Poor in Russia Too Numerous, Shadow Economy Too Large, and Centralization Too Great for Targeted Aid to End Poverty, Gontmakher Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – Officials in the Kremlin are now talking about using targeted government assistance to cut poverty by half by 2030 as Vladimir Putin has promised, but the share of poor in Russia is too great, the shadow economy too large, and government centralization too great for such an approach to work, Yevgeny Gontmakher says.

            Moscow officials prefer to use the minimum living wage as the measure of poverty, the economist says; but a better measure is the minimum consumer budget which is set at twice that. If the latter is used that nearly a third – 33,4 percent in 2019 and 31.8 percent in 2020 – are poor (mk.ru/economics/2021/06/03/recept-ot-bednosti-kak-reshit-problemu-maloimushhikh-rossiyan.html).

            That is, in Russia today, “almost a third of the population consists of poor people who are struggling to survive.” Those are Russian government figures. If one uses World Bank data, the number of Russian families who are on the brink of survival may be as much as 70 percent. Given those numbers, talking about targeted assistance is absurd. Who would give to whom?

            But that is hardly the only problem. Another is that many Russians survive by relying on the black or gray markets, but it is all but impossible to measure real total incomes at the all-Russian level. Such measurements are possible only if they are carried out by local officials who can take into account local conditions.

            And that brings Gontmakher to focus on the third problem. The hyper-centralized Russian government doesn’t leave enough money in the hands of local officials to distribute it fairly and equitably among the poorest Russians. To change that would require changing the entire Russian political system which is why it isn’t happening.

            The best and most effective way to address poverty, the economist says, is not to offer targeted assistance to individuals in particular category but rather to promote economic development so that the wages and incomes of all Russians rise. But that too is a goal that the Russian government at best gives only lip service to.

            But at the very least, Gontmakher says, Russians both in the population and in the government need to recognize that all talk about overcoming poverty by targeted assistance will not lead to real progress and that if Russia wants to address the problems of the poor effectively, it must consider broader and more radical change.

Gap in Achievement between Russian and Non-Russian Schools Now ‘an Insurmountable Abyss,’ Federal Assessment Agency Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – The Federal Institute for the Assessment of Educational Quality says that the gaps in achievement levels between schools in Russian regions and those in non-Russian republics and between those in Moscow and those in other predominantly ethnic Russian regions have become “an insurmountable abyss.”

            The schools in the republics and in Russian regions beyond the ring road are now so far behind that there is little chance their graduates will ever be able to catch up or have anything comparable in life trajectories (forpost-sz.ru/a/2021-06-03/universitety-i-razoblachitelnyj-rejting-rosobrnadzora discussed at thinktanks.by/publication/2021/06/03/issledovanie-shkolnoe-obrazovanie-v-rf-prodolzhaet-uhudshatsya.html).

            Schools in Moscow are far ahead of those elsewhere with only educational institutions in St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad being anywhere close. Those in non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus and elsewhere are far behind as are the schools in most predominantly ethnic Russian regions of the country. 

            The lag among non-Russians is partially explained by the fact that many children there do not speak Russian well and the tests on which these ratings are made are exclusively in Russian. But that does not explain why schools in so many Russian regions are performing their jobs so poorly. Instead, a lack of funds and attention appears to be behind the figures.

            The rating agency also found something else which will intensify divisions in the Russian Federation. In some federal subjects, there were in the capital cities a few good schools who performed as well as those in Moscow while those outside those cities performed significantly worse than either.

            That not only means that rural areas will continue to lose ground but that the situation in the regions is even worse than the collective figures suggest because the few good schools in some regions help to boost the ranking of these regions relative to others which do not have such “good” schools.

 

Moscow Continues to Lie about World War II Losses and Make Exposure of Its Duplicity More Difficult, Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – Lev Lopukhovsky, a retired Russian officer and the co-author of a new book, June 1941. A Planned Defeat (in Russian; Moscow: ROSPEN, 2021), says that Russian officials now constantly lie about the country’s losses during World War II and that the Kremlin is now restricting access to the archives in order to prevent the exposure of these lies.

            According to Lopukhovsky, “the Red Army was not prepared for war” and “unfortunately, there was no alternative to a defeat.” And even when Stalin was finally convinced that the war had begun, he refused to order all forces to increase their readiness to fight (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/06/03/malenkie-liudi-bolshoi-bedy).

            The order Moscow later repeatedly cited was not sent to the forces and so was effectively not given, the officer-historian says. Thus, it is completely incorrect to say that Stalin brought the USSR’s forces to full military readiness. That didn’t happen, and lies about it both obscure the losses at the start of the war, a duplicitous failure that was extended throughout the conflict.

            “My opinion” about Stalin is as follows, he continues. “His crimes vastly exceeded all the achievements ascribed to him. In the latest variant of the history of the Fatherland War, it is said of repressions that their harm has not yet been shown. But why hasn’t it? Were too few shot” to explain what happened?

            Between 1941 and 1945, Lopukhovsky says, two and a half times fewer general-rank officers in the Soviet military died than during the two years of repressions that preceded them. In 1934, there were 85 members of the military council of the Soviet defense ministry. “At the start of the war there remained only nine.”

            How much could these officers have done in the war if they had remained alive and in place in 1941? What could they have suggested? the officer-historian asks rhetorically.

            Marshal Zhukov confessed in an interview that “one must honestly recognize the achievements of the German army and the Germany general staff. They worked better than we did, but we learned to fight. And we learned and we won, but at what cost?”

            Moscow constantly lies about the losses that the Soviet army and the Soviet people suffered. That is obvious to anyone who has ever worked in the archives as Lopukhovsky himself did a decade ago. But now those archives are being closed and so the possibility of exposing the state’s lies on this and other things is reduced or even completely eliminated.

            The dead and those who suffered deserve better.

In Meeting Biden, Putin wants a Yalta but Will Get a Malta, Piontkovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – In his meeting with US President Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin wants a new Yalta with the US speaking for the West acknowledging his right to dominate Ukraine and the rest of the post-Soviet space; but he will get a new Malta, in which the terms of Moscow’s retreat from such demands will be specified, Andrey Piontkovsky says.

            Ukraine will be the key question at the Putin-Biden meeting now scheduled for June 16, the Russian commentator says, just as Poland was Yalta meetings between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill 75 years ago. Western actions then meant that “Yalta” has entered the language as a synonym for unjustified concessions (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=60B90144B5376).

            Putin wants to achieve a repetition of this outcome, but he is making a mistake in assuming that any Western leader can give him what the peoples of the former Soviet republics have clearly rejected. By his aggression toward them, he has lost all of them; and the West isn’t willing or able to help him reverse this situation.

            The Kremlin leader apparently believes that he is half way toward his goal because the American president who earlier called him “a murderer” has greed to meet with him as the leader of another great power, Piontkovsky says. “But Biden is coming to the meeting as the leader of the West/Free World which includes Ukraine within it.”

            Moreover, as Biden “loves to repeat,” he and the West have adopted “an unwavering position on Ukraine” and its defense against continuing Russian aggression. Consequently, what Biden plans to use the meeting for is to indicate to Putin what an enormous price – “political, economic and military” – he will pay if he continues to act as he is now.

            “In the best chekist and bandit traditions,” of course, the Russian commentator continues, “Putin will deny that he has such intentions and at the same time will demand payment for giving them up.” As a result, “Geneva will be not a Yalta-2 but a Malta-2,” a place where Moscow’s capitulation to reality will be outlined and insisted upon.