Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 4 – For the first 20 years of his reign, Putin relied on a social contract in which the people were to remain loyal “in exchange for relative economic stability and the distribution of rents from the sale of raw materials abroad.” But that is no longer possible, according to a homemaker in the Urals writing anonymously.
Now, the regime is offering the population something far more honest but also more brutal and less attractive, she says, and that is “austerity in exchange for survival,” a deal that “sets in motion processes which make the decolonization of the Russian empire as currently configured inevitable” (region.expert/contract/).
According to her, “the economic basis of the old contract has disappeared. The share of oil and gas revenues in the budget has fallen below 20%, hydrocarbon revenues in January fell to half of what they had been, and the overall deficit for the first month has reached almost half of the annual plan.”
Moscow is compounding this problem by taxing many who weren’t taxed before and by the redistribution of money to support the war in Ukraine, two thing s which have “hit the middle class and skilled workers in the regions harder than Moscow expected” – and that is provoking anger and a greater willingness to protest, according to polls taken by officials.
That is leading to discussions not only among the populations of the federal subjects but among the leaders of these oblasts, krays and republics over how much they are giving to the center and how much they are receiving back. When the answer becomes obvious, people and officials are talking about a revision of federal relations or even complete independence.
The Urals homemaker says that “the Russian Empire and the USSR maintained a multinational space through the centralized redistribution of resources;” but when that became impossible, the result was the same: “national and regional elites bean to reassess the benefits of remaining part” of those states and those states collapsed.
The situation in the Russian Federation today differs not only in scale but in the speed with which it is happening, she continues. “The war in Ukraine is accelerating the depletion of resources while sanctions and declining revenues from exports are making the restoration of the old model impossible.”
“The Kremlin is attempting to compensate for the economic deficit with ideological and repressive measures: the narrative of ‘patience for the sake of the front,’ the strengthening of the church's role in promoting ‘humility,’ and harsh signals to governors about the need to maintain a "manageable background," the homemaker says.
“But in regions with a strong identity and resource base, this narrative is causing open irritation. In Tatarstan and Sakha, for example, voices are already being heard calling for the need to protect their interests from a centralized ‘common good,’ which increasingly looks like a unilateral expropriation.”
That doesn’t mean that the Russian Federation is about to disintegrate in the immediate future. “Decolonization here,” she says, “does not immediately mean disintegration in the classical sense. It can manifest itself in milder forms from de facto increased autonomy” to “demands for a revision of tax arrangements” and a refusal to send taxes revenues to Moscow.
“But even these "mild" scenarios undermine the imperial vertical: the metropolis-center loses control over resources and loyalty. By 2026, the Muscovite princes themselves have destroyed the main glue that held the system together—the illusion of a mutually beneficial agreement,” she continues.
And she concludes that the center’s new offer – “quiet survival in exchange for increasing austerity” – “isn’t sustainable” in the long run in a multi-national country. As more and more people in the federal subjects recognize what is going on, they will be less and less willing to have it continue.
No comments:
Post a Comment