Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 17 – It is
universally acknowledged that be that Russian villages are dying. What is not
understood is that this is not some natural process but rather the result of specific
actions of the powers that be, including the adoption of laws that have “transformed
rural life into a hell,” APN commentator Nikolay Begiyev says.
In the first of what he promises
will be a series of articles on Moscow’s pernicious role in this process, the
commentator points out that “’in the depth of Russia’ no one knows precisely
what is going on” because there are few sociological studies and the people
there live in “a half-natural, almost medieval” way (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=37920).
Moreover, “the
powers that be in the Kremlin and at the level of federal districts is
completely uninterested in the real picture of life in the villages, even from
the point of view of protest potential,” Begiyev says. “The authorities aren’t afraid
of the village and have already written it off.”
Some of Moscow’s laws about the
village appear to have been adopted because of good intentions, improving
public health, for example; but they have been written without any recognition
of the realities of the Russian village or applied in ways that have led to impoverishment
or even starvation, the commentator continues.
While some in the villages may be
doing more or less all right, the rural poor now do not have money “even for
daily bread for their children.” In the North Caucasus, for example, people have
been reduced to what looks like “stone soup” because they do not know who now
owns the land and cannot sell their own private production without being in
violation of the law.
“In recent years,” Begiyev continues, “a new
generation of ‘inventors of laws’ has grown up.” Many of them are to be found
in the Higher School of Economics whose denizens take their ideas and sometimes
even texts from the Chicago school of economics without bothering to consider
Russian realities and particularly the realities of the Russian village.
For example, when Moscow began to
talk about import substitution, instead of relying on the private plots and stock
of Russian peasants, the authorities at the center decided that the only group
worth supporting where the rural oligarchs, those who owned enormous swaths of
land and could meet Moscow standards.
As a result, new laws were adopted which
made local trade illegal. The consequence was the impoverishment of rural
Russians and the death of villages without a significant improvement of the diet
of Russians in urban areas. This all was justified by reference to fighting
disease, but the consequence was to fight Russian villagers in the first
instance.
Villagers were told they couldn’t
raise food or livestock or, at a minimum, they could not offer it for
sale. That led to a dramatic decline in
the standard of living in the villages, a falloff in deliveries to urban
centers outside of the megalopolises, and protests by hungry villagers. But Moscow
did not reverse course. Instead, it imposed new limits on local production.
The situation has been especially
bad in Siberia and the North Caucasus, but the worst case involves
Russian-occupied Crimea. There overly zealous officials have not just banned the
sale of livestock owned by peasants but actually destroyed it, thus leaving the
rural population without money, food or hope.
All this has been compounded,
Begiyev says, by problems with the registration of property. In many places,
the peasants do not know who owns what and therefore decide not to grow food
lest the rural oligarchs take it from them. Again, food production has
plummeted as a result, with fatal consequences for the villages.
But perhaps the worst Moscow law as
far as villagers are concerned, at least among those Begiyev surveys in this
first part of his report, involves legal requirements for packaging of
foodstuffs. “Urban residents, in the opinion
of liberals and liberal officials must east only products packed in plastic by
major food corporations.”
Laws back up these corporations, and
individual peasant farmers are thus legally excluded from the marketplace.
Fortunately, the APN commentator says, these laws aren’t enforced everywhere;
but any peasant who sells his products piecemeal is at risk of being hauled
into court.
“The peasant and the small-time
farmer aren’t needed by the Russian state,” and they know it. They have been “thrown
to the winds of fate and the arbitrariness of local authorities.” They may protest, but ultimately, they are
driven to flee their villages in order to save their lives.”
Consequently, Begiyev says, when
officials in Moscow shed tears about the death of the village, these are
hypocritical crocodile tears shed by people who have caused many of the problems
that they are now complaining about.
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