Russian Business and State are Doing Well; Only the People are Poor – and that Benefits the Kremlin, Prokofyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 13 – Both Russian business and the Russian state are doing well with their incomes rising even as the incomes of ordinary Russians continue to fall, Dmitry Prokofyev says, the result of “a conscious decision of the bosses” to ensure growing income for the first two and low and falling incomes for the citizenry.

            The reason that the incomes of citizens must be kept low, the commentator says, is that this is “a necessary condition” for the functioning of this arrangement. Why is that? The answer is straightforward:  “all countries whose people have high incomes are countries where the risk of doing business is low” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/08/11/81573-tri-tolstyaka-i-glubinnyy-narod).

            If the incomes of the Russian people were to rise and conducting business became easier in Russia, there would be more investment and more growth, the commentator says; but in that event, the state would lose the whip hand over the economy and more businesses would be profitable rather than the few favored by the regime.

                That would undermine the Kremlin’s power, and so the incomes of the population must be kept low so that the government rather than market demands will control where investment is made and how much.  And consequently, the current regime in the absence of radical change is not going to try to boost the incomes of the population because that isn’t in its interests.

            This creates “a quite specific construction of the divided exitence of two social strata in the framework of a single country,” Prokofyev says. “It is at one and the same time similar to ‘the oprichnik’ of Tsar Ivan and to South African apartheid and to the state of “the three fat en,’ dreamed up by Yury Olesha.

            “The lack of desire of the bosses to enter into dialogue with the people is treated all the time as ‘a mistake of the powers that be,” he continues. “But from the point of view of the bosses, there is no mistake: they simply do not have anything to talk about with those whom they consider not people worthy of having a conversation with.”

            In fact, he suggests, they do not consider the population “people in general,” in much the same way that “the organizers of the system of racial segregation in South Africa did not consider that it was necessary to negotiate with the black population.” According to Prokofyev, “the social segregation [in Russia] is not much different from the racial one.”

            Those on top of the current Russian system just like those on top in South African apartheid can’t imagine that any other system is possible.  The one that benefits them is the best and must be maintained so that they will continue to benefit and have power, the commentator continues.

            If that requires that those on top say things that appear to contradict their own interests in order to remain part of the charmed circle, they will do so because their wealth and power depend upon it. Thus, Russian elites attack the West because the Kremlin requires it, but they certainly don’t really fear and hate it: they keep their money and their children there.

            There is no single or clear answer as to how one gets into this upper caste, Prokofyev says. But those in it are committed to remaining there and the Kremlin is committed to arranging things so that they can even while remaining totally dependent on it for their profits and preferments.

            The conclusions that flow from this are all negative, Prokofyev says. It is certain that “the low incomes of citizens don’t both the powers that be at all. Those ‘above’ are convinced that if people today are prepared to buy what they need at current prices, this means that they will somehow find the money” with additional jobs or loans.

            “The bosses do not have any motivation to a real and not an imaginary increase in the well-being of the citizens.” That would violate “the existing political-economic model.”  And “in a direct sense, every ruble earned by a citizen above the minimum necessary, the bosses feel to be a threat to their personal well-being.”

            And the bosses have yet another reason for drawing that conclusion: “a growth in incomes if it by a miracle occurred would force the authorities to raise the pay of their mercenary defenders and that is something those on top do not want to have to do.”