‘Moscow-Centrism Acquiring Ever More Ugly Forms,’ Pryanikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 10 – Russians living beyond the ring road have many reasons to be angry about the concentration of power and money in Moscow, but now Russian commentator Pavel Pryanikov documents another, government social spending, that is certain to be even more infuriating at a time of economic difficulties.

            Of  the 462 billion rubles (7.5 billion US dollars) Russian regional governments spend on public services, 205 billion rubles (3.5 billion US dollars) or 55 percent are spend by and in Moscow even though that city has fewer than ten percent of the population of Russia (facebook.com/ppryanikov/posts/2692495277462181 reposted at region.expert/moscow-centrism/).

            And just how concentrated that spending is, Pryanikov continues, is reflected by the fall off between Moscow and anywhere else: Second place in such spending is Moscow Oblast with 30 billion rubles (500 million US dollars) on social services, and third place is St. Petersburg with 57 billion rubles (100 million US dollars).

            In a related measure which shows the same imbalance, Moscow spends 70 percent of the 560 billion rubles (nine billion US dollars) that all Russian regions spend on public transport, with an equally great fall off to St. Petersburg (57 billion rubles or one billion US dollars) and Moscow Oblast (8.1 billion rubles or 120 million US dollars).

            In short, the rich are getting richer with the help of the government and the poor poorer because it isn’t helping them; or as Pryanikov puts it, “the new national idea of Russia is that life is possible only in the Moscow agglomeration,” and that everyone who lives outside of it is going to be left to sink or swim on his own.

            Such imbalances have an ethnic dimension, although it is not one the Russian analyst addresses here. On the one hand, they make the massive subsidies that the Kremlin gives to North Caucasus republics even more irritating to Russians who aren’t getting any. And on the other, they add to anti-Moscow attitudes among Russians and non-Russians alike.