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:
- Russian psychologists project that there will be a rise of 40 percent in the number of Russians suffering from mental problems as a result of the twin crises (newizv.ru/news/society/04-06-2020/psihologi-otmetili-rost-trevozhnyh-rasstroystv-v-samoizolyatsii-na-40).
- New car sales in Russia fell by 50 percent last month (vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2020/06/04/831894-prodazhi-avtomobilei).
- Russian officials are now proposing to pay those who will be test subjects for possible coronavirus vaccines up to 100,000 rubles (1400 US dollars), an indication that Moscow is having some difficulty in getting volunteers (novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/06/04/162059-v-rossii-uchastnikam-ispytaniy-vaktsiny-ot-koronavirusa-zaplatyat-do-100-tysyach-rubley).
- 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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