Sunday, June 7, 2020

Putin Officials Fighting Current Crises Like Old Generals Fighting Last War


Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Putin officials are fighting the current crisis in ways that recall the saying that old generals always fight the last war, assuming that the situation is the same when it isn’t and acting in ways that make the situation far worse than would otherwise be the case (profile.ru/economy/pro-et-contra-vozmozhnye-riski-plana-pravitelstva-po-vosstanovleniyu-ekonomiki-328854/).

            When a country is forced to fight a new war, one of the first things that happens is that the authorities have to weed out old generals incapable of recognizing new realities and promote new ones who can. But when the government approaches a problem with the ideas and tool kits from the past, it is far from clear that something similar will happen, at least easily.

            As a result in Russia today, this failure to recognize how different the current crisis is from those of 1998 or 2008 is having three consequences: it is making both the epidemiological and economic situations worse, it is driving down the ratings of Vladimir Putin, and it is ensuring that Russia will take longer to emerge from the crisis and won’t make needed changes.

            Before considering each of these, first the figures: Today, the number of new coronavirus cases was 8831, bringing the total to 441,108 since the pandemic began. The number of deaths rose by 134 to 5859. The number of deaths rose by 134 to 5859 (http://club-rf.ru/news/57314  and https://стопкоронавирус.рф/information/).

            The analogy between the current crisis and a war and between old generals and the need for new is drawn by Vladimir Mau, the rector of the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service. He says Moscow is not only acting as if its traditional methods will work but also assuming that the best outcome is for the future to look like the past and Russia to remain a raw materials exporter (vedomosti.ru/economics/articles/2020/06/04/831900-rossiya-mozhet-opravitsya-pandemii-koronavirusa).

            That is suppressing the search for new approaches and new outcomes, he and other economists say (profile.ru/economy/rechka-dvizhetsya-i-ne-dvizhetsya-pochemu-vlasti-ne-speshat-vosstanavlivat-ekonomiku-330619/), reinforcing past practices (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/76958), and not addressing underlying problems (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/76975).

            There is a positive model available but Moscow isn’t using it. Different regions are trying different things, with some succeeding and some failing. Moscow should be choosing from among them and then pushing that as countrywide policy. But it isn’t (eastrussia.ru/material/dalniy-vostok-vybral-raznye-ogranichitelnye-puti/).

            This failure, increasingly obvious to the population, is pushing down Putin’s rating. In the past, Russians blamed others. But Putin has made himself so central that now they blame him above all, especially given his desire to remain in office forever and his inconsistent messages, simultaneously suggesting everything is getting better and then intervening because it obviously isn’t (levada.ru/2020/06/04/pochemu-vo-vremya-pandemii-rejting-putina-stal-rekordno-nizkim/, tass.ru/obschestvo/8647553 and novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/06/04/162045-putin-poruchil-razvernut-voennyy-gospital-v-zabaykalie-iz-za-vspyshki-koronavirusa).

            A major reason Putin is acting as he has been is that many in the population continue to view him as a tsar, who must be appealed to in order to address local problems, an attitude that he may welcome but that is making the articulation of a national policy almost impossible (e.g.,

            The absence of such policies regarding both the coronavirus and the economy is increasingly obvious to everyone.  Shortcomings in the medical system are on public view every day, with ever more people linking sickness and death to Putin’s “health optimization” cutbacks (sibreal.org/a/30650824.html).

            Like Putin, Russian officials are simultaneously saying that everything is getting better and then warning about the need to wear masks into next year lest a second wave of the coronavirus hit, something that has already happened in a few places (newsru.com/russia/04jun2020/sobyanin.html, agoniya.eu/archives/5887 and govoritmagadan.ru/gubernator-s-nosov-v-nachale-ijunya-na-kolyme-sluchilas-novaya-vspyshka-kronavirusa/).

            The same pattern holds in the economy. Incomes and the country’s GDP are dropping, while the number of unemployed is soaring. According to Superjob, ten million Russians are unemployed now, and the number is likely to increase in the coming months to 20 million, putting burdens on the state it doesn’t know how to bear (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/76961).

            And among the problems looming over Russia is the near certainty, experts say, that there will be a radical upsurge in migration from the regions hardest hit to big cities as Russians try to find employment after their firms are shuttered perhaps forever (levada.ru/2020/06/04/ot-izolyatsii-k-migratsii/).

            Meanwhile, in other crisis-related news from Russia, there were the following developments:




  • Muslim leaders are putting out detailed rules about visits to mosques, far more detailed than any the Russian Orthodox Church has issued for those planning to attend services (islamsng.com/rus/news/15791).

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