Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 19 – Russia will
be able to limit immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus over the long
term only by increasing the productivity of Russian workers and thus reducing
the current demand for large numbers of low-skilled and low-paid workers, but
that is something that may be contrary to the immediate interests of the
current Russian elite.
That argument was offered by
Vladislav Inozemtsev, director of the Moscow Center for the Study of
Post-Industrial Society and a frequent commentator on social and economic
issues in Russia, in a broad-ranging interview conducted by Leonid Smirnov and
featured today on the portal of the Rosbalt news agency (www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2013/02/19/1096111.html).
Asked
by Smirnov for his assessment of Moscow’s migration policy, Inozemtsev said that
Russia “does not have a migration policy,” but that it is far from alone in
that. Most more or less successful
countries don’t, and consequently, residents of less successful countries will
always try to move to where they can make more money.
The
greater the gap in well-being, he continued, the more pressure there will be
from those wanting to leave their homelands for other countries, and “restrictions
in the form of repression will not help.”
Instead, countries who do not want to be overwhelmed by immigrants need
to change their own economic behavior.
Their
workers need to become more productive, Inozemtsev said, because then they will
need fewer immigrants for relatively low-skilled and low-paid work, but Russian
elites benefit from the current situation – they make more profits at least in
the short term – and thus have little motivation to improve the capacities of
their own workers.
Indeed, the attitudes of the powers that be
seem to be that if any Russians are dissatisfied, they should leave and allow
immigrants to come in and contribute to the wealth of the very top. And the elite promotes that course even
though it sets Russia “on course to the primitivization of society.”
Moreover, whatever Putin and his
colleagues say, the economist said, the Kremlin sees the influx of immigrants
as having a geopolitical plus. “The more
people from poor republics of Central Asia are in Russia, the more the
population of Central Asia will be interested in integration with Russia and
the easier it will be to convince” their governments to go along.
Russians should be convinced from
this, Inozemtsev suggested, that “Putin is not a Russian nationalist, God
forbid. Putin is an imperial politician
who sincerely wants to lead Russia via a system of unions and alliances” to a
new position of prominence in the world, one even greater than the Soviet Union
represented.
When Russians do complain about
immigration – and they increasingly they do, Inozemtsev pointed out – they are
told by the regime that immigrants help Russia cope with its low
birthrates. Such arguments could be
taken seriously if productivity were high, but Russians have a rate that is
five to eight times lower than that of the Europeans
Consequently, the commentator
argued, Russia’s “most immediate task is to raise the effectiveness of our
entire economy,” something that is very difficult when there is an excess of
labor, if productivity were higher, and when entrepreneurs have “a very low
motivation” to introduce labor-saving and productivity-increasing technologies.
With the introduction of such
technologies, Russia could easily reduce the numbers of workers required
through a rise in productivity, Inozemtsev said, and the country’s migration
problem would be solved “for a minimum of 15 years ahead.” And he dismissed the notion that the
country’s low density of population in areas like Siberia is a problem.
Siberia has always had few people
per square kilometer, but Alaska has even fewer. Because of technology there,
Alaskans enjoy an income six times greater than Russians do. So much for the argument that Russia needs to
import labor in order to boost the standard of living of its people, Inozemtsev
continued.
His interviewer raised another
issue: the flight of young people from the villages. They are leaving not just to go to Moscow,
Inozemtsev said, but rather to Europe and America. At present, they “look at Moscow as a
transfer point on the way to the West,” all the more so because the young
people who occupy jobs in the Russian capital aren’t going to give them up to
such newcomers.
Introducing a visa regime for
Central Asians and people from the South Caucasus would not be something
“terrible,” the economist said. All countries with “a normal economic policy”
have visa regimes for countries with a lower level of development and eliminate
it for those with a higher level. But
Russia does just the reverse, thereby adding to its own suffering.
Inozemtsev said that he “expects the
further worsening of human capital and possible social conflicts” because of
that in Russia. And he said that the
slowdown in Russia since 2010 has less to do with the world economic crisis
than with Russia’s own domestic problems, including its reliance on raw
material exports and unwillingness to invest in human capital.
Russia’s tasks “are not geopolitics,
not a struggle with America and not a restoration of the empire.” Those are
distractions, the commentator observed. “Our task is to achieve economic
competitiveness” and that can only happen by increasing productivity of Russian
workers and limiting the influx of low-wage and low-skill foreigners.
Inozemtsev said that he “has no
ethnic, rational or religious motivations” for saying that. Rather, “if we want to establish a
multi-national and poly-religious empire a la the USSR,” we should recognize
“how all this will end,” just as it did in the past. But “if the people wants this, then that is
the people’s choice.”
Putin reflects this “opinion of the
majority” and would win election easily because he “is the representative of
the majority,” a majority which, unfortunately in Inozemtsev’s opinion, in Russia supports a dominating role for
ideology over economics.” And he gives a concrete example of the expression of
this problematic view.
He was once on a television program
during which the possibility of a Eurasian Union was discussed. The audience was asked whether they backed
the idea of “the reestablishment of a powerful European Union with all our
former republics.” Ninety-nine percent
said they were for that.
But when the same audience was asked
whether they wanted citizens of Tajikistan to be able to come to Russia without
a visa and have the same rights they do, 99 percent answered: “No!” That is a special feature of Russian
consciousness today, Inozemtsev concluded, “No one wants to understand that if
one says A, then B follows.”
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