Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 7 – “The
greatest social inequality [in Russia today] is between the capital and the
regions,” not only in terms of income, medical care, and opportunities but in
terms of life expectancy, IMEMO economist Yakov Mirkin says. On average today,
Muscovites live 12 years longer than do those in the regions and
republics.
Pay and opportunities in many
regions outside the cities are now so low, he continues, that most people can
do little more than go to work and then garden at home to make ends meet, a
situation that lands them in despair, a despair which “give rise to a lack of
desire to escape and even to a lack of trust in that possibility” (if24.ru/yakov-mirkin-borba-neravenstvo/).
As a result,
people are kept at a level of illiteracy in all respects, “a deficit of
knowledge. Sometimes it even seems,” the economist continues, that “we have begun
to move in the direction of archaic forms of life, when people are satisfied
with what they have to eat and wear and watch on television.”
Such people may be easier to
control, but their existence in massive numbers prevents the country from
developing and means that Russia will fall further and further behind other
countries, almost all of whom display a greater aptitude for progress and a
significantly small gap between rich and poor.
But addressing that problem in
Russia’s case will be extremely difficult because it will require a reordering
of the entire political system, one that allows the regions and republics
greater flexibility and ends the hyper-centralization of Russian life that has
been true under tsars, commissars, and nominal democrats.
No comments:
Post a Comment