Russia Still ‘Feeding’ Moscow to Excess, Blogger There Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – Per capita government spending on residents is 2.3 times as high in Moscow as in the Russian Federation as a whole, according to Pavel Spaidel, a blogger in the capital, who details how such spending ensures that Muscovites have a better life than even their earnings would appear to justify. 

            That Moscow is the center of private wealth in Russia has long been recognized, Spaidel suggests, but the ways the Russian powers that be are exacerbating its advantages are less so (spydell.livejournal.com/665966.html reposted at newizv.ru/article/general/28-02-2019/v-moskvu-v-moskvu-opublikovany-dannye-o-tom-kak-strana-kormit-stolitsu).

            Even though Moscow has only 8.5 percent of Russia’s population, the authorities spend 55 percent of all moneys allocated for parks, recreation facilities, sidewalks, and other public facilities for the Russian Federation as a whole. The city gets 257 billion rubles (four billion US dollars) a year while the rest gets less.

            Moreover, Moscow receives 70 percent of all government spending on public transport, 15 percent of all such allocations for road construction and maintenance, and more than 50 percent of all spending on public-funded housing, figures that are even greater than its overall 2.3 times advantage.

            Novyye izvestiya attaches the comments of four other bloggers to this report.  Pavel Pryanikov, the editor of Tolkovatel, notes that “in Soviet times, people went to Moscow for sausages which they took home to the regions. Today they also go to Moscow for sausages but they don’t go back to the provinces.”

            Aleksey Selivanov says that Spaidel is absolutely correct and that while Moscow is getting “more and more,” the regions are receiving “less and less,” exactly the reverse of what should be happening in a country committed to and something that is sucking ever more Russians out of the regions and into the capital.

            Valery Danilov in contrast says that the government money going into Moscow is not being equally distributed there. The wealthier areas are getting even more money but the poorer parts of the city are doing not much better than places beyond the ring road. In short, it isn’t Moscow as a whole that is benefiting but only official Moscow.

            Finally, Andrey Kolpakov warns against drawing incorrect conclusins from these data and asks “why write such posts? Doo you want to have Russia’s regions fighting for one another for a crust of bread?” The bigger problem is that many in Moscow are exporting their wealth to the West.