Russian Army in Ukraine Regrouping but Kyiv’s Forces ‘Shamefully’ Pursuing It, Muscovites are Saying

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 27 – An anecdote circulating in Moscow shows that many Russians fully understand that the Kremlin’s talk about “regrouping” is only another word for “retreat” and a forced retreat at that, given that wits say Ukrainian forces are “shamefully” pursuing Russian troops as they “regroup.”

            That is just one of the new Russian jokes and anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/43891/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Moscow outlets now saying that Europe will freeze this winter and that Russia is dealing well with sanctions are the same ones who said earlier that Ukraine would be defeated in two days and that Ukrainians were waiting for the Russian army with flowers.

·       A concert in Izyum entitled ‘Russia will be here forever!’ had to be cancelled when the Russian army fled the city as Ukrainian forces advanced.

·       Putin is a hero for the tourism business in Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Thanks to his work, those are the only countries Russians can go to easily. It is entirely possible that pictures of the Russian president will soon go up in travel companies in these three.

·       Senator Elena Mizulina explained one Russian regrouping by suggesting that “the Ukrainian army took our soldiers by surprise because they were mourning the death of the queen of England.

·       Russia is going to achieve all its goals in Ukraine, the Kremlin says; but now it uses the future imperfective rather than the present or past.

·       Given the success of the Russian army in demilitarizing Ukraine, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod Oblast says that residents should use the basements of buildings there as bomb shelters.

·       Russian legislators are considering requiring large families to send their children to military training en masse given how much cannon fodder the state needs.

·       Another sign of who is going to win the war: members of the Russian elite are now buying Ukrainian patterned clothing and practicing speaking with at least a Ukrainian accent.

 

Five Factors Primitivizing Russian Economy While Rest of the World’s Economy is Becoming More Advanced, Nikolayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 27 – Five factors are combining to make the Russian economy more primitive, Igor Nikolayev says, a trend that by itself might not be disastrous were it not for the fact that the economies of other countries are rapidly diversifying and becoming more complex, thus leaving Russia’s ever further behind.

            The senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Economics lists the five as follows: First of all, “sectoral sanctions are depriving Russia of advanced and even not so advanced but contemporary technologies,” thus forcing Russian firms to rely on old fashioned ones because the domestic economy cannot produce substitutes (mk.ru/economics/2022/09/25/nazvany-pyat-faktorov-primitivizacii-rossiyskoy-ekonomiki.html).

            Second, the primitivization of the Russian economy has been intensified by the inability of Russian firms to handle the complex logistics the most advanced technologies require. When components need to be assembled from multiple sources, the absence of world class logistical arrangements forces firms to rely on what they can produce rather than what they need.

            Third, according to Nikolayev, “the primitivization of production is the natural result of business behavior of companies under today’s crisis conditions.” Firms try to maintain what they have rather than develop, and what they have is increasingly behind what other countries are able to produce.

            Fourth, “the simplification of the economy is the result of the reduction in the level of competition in it.” If firms aren’t at risk of losing sales to others, they are less inclined to try to produce new things or introduce more efficient forms of production. As Moscow has worked to reduce competition, it has simultaneously promoted primitivization.

            And fifth, the economist says, Russians aren’t putting the pressure on Russian firms they might because “the Russians themselves rate the quality of Russian goods as higher than imported ones” and thus are not inclined to demand that domestic firms struggle to be better than they currently are.

            If the economies in other countries were doing the same, that would not be a problem, Nikolayev continues. But they aren’t. Instead, “in an entirely natural way, they are becoming more complicated, more diversified, seeking additional ways to add value, and consequently becoming more profitable.” That in turn allows for more investment and economic growth.

            Russia must ultimately follow their lead, Nikolayev says; or it will risk falling ever further behind.

Mobilization’s Economic Impact Even More Serious than That of Start of Putin’s War in Ukraine, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 26 – Russians are accustomed to speaking that this or that event means that after it they have “awoken in another country,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says. But that sense of being at a watershed is entirely true for Putin’s partial mobilization which will have “more significant impact” on the economy than even the start of the war did.

            “Today it is clear that the authorities want to treat the population like cattle but that they are constrained from doing so above all by the expectation that the cattle may react,” the Russian economist says. That is why they are seeking to mobilize people “in distant regions, rural areas and small cities” (theins.ru/opinions/inozemtsev/255405).

            Inozemtsev points out that “there are already examples from the Far East, from Buryatia or Sakha where nearly half of the male population from some villages are assembling at the collection points,” an indication “the already long-stagnating local economy is on the verge of collapse,” with “thousands of families left without income and smaller businesses left to die.”

            That alone suggests that the Russian GDP this year will fall not the four or five percent that most were predicting before the declaration of mobilization but ten percent or more by the end of 2022, he says. If the regime risks extending callups to the cities where the economy is more active, the consequences will be even more dire.

            So far, the military has been seeking people at their places of residence, allowing them to move about and escape the summons by moving or even fleeing abroad; but it is likely that the authorities will soon go after people at work, something that will harm the economy further because men will stop showing up at work.

            Other reasons for assuming mobilization will harm the economy is that it will sharply increase the amount of corruption in the system, require the raising of taxes and thus driving more economic activity into the shadow sector, and leave the population with ever less income to spend and keep the economy moving.

            The Russian stock market has already taken note of this and fallen 15.5 percent in the first week since Putin’s announcement, Inozemtsev continues; and it is likely to fall far further before the end of the year, reducing the possibilities for raising money in this capital market and thus reducing investment still further.

            And all of that will only be intensified by the certainty of a new wave of sanctions.

            What will increase is the number of caskets coming home from the war, something that Inozemtsev argues will nullify the authority of the powers that be “even more effectively than the elimination of term limits on the president in 2020. Indeed, that is evident from the rise of what should be described as “the women’s revolution.”

            The actions of women have become “the very greatest threat for the powers in the conditions of the continuing war in Ukraine: men in Russia in significant numbers long ago lost their feeling of self-preservation and ability to separate themselves from the passive masses, but women instinctively feel” the costs of the war and are speaking out.

            By announcing mobilization, Putin effectively “terminated the existing contract with the country.” He hasn’t given the country either freedom or economic growth in exchange for the right to act in an unconstrained way. Instead, he has taken first the one and then the other from the Russian people, Inozemtev says.

            And in conclusion, the economist points out that “the redistribution of wealth through theft and corruption over the last 20 years” has been far less than the cost of the war Putin is waging now. The cost of Putin’s palace amounted to less than two days of what the war is costing Russia now.

‘Mobik’ for Someone Mobilized Only Latest Example of Orwellian Newspeak in Putin’s Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 26 – Orwell’s Newspeak, the totalitarian language of 1984 in which words lose their original meaning and acquire a different and often opposite one, is being enriched, if that is the right word, by Putin’s “special military operation,” itself an example of this genre.

            Michele A. Berdy of The Moscow Times and Russian philologist Gasan Guseynov provide useful guides to this latest example of this attack on the Russian language and Russian thinking (themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/23/newspeak-in-the-new-russia-a78816 and rfi.fr/ru/россия/20220925-новое-в-языке-пропаганды-и-самомобилизации).

            Among the examples they give which can provide a kind of guide for the perplexed are the following:

·       “Russia’s self-defense” which actually means “attacking another country that hasn’t threatened Russia or anyone else.”

·       “Everything is going according to plan” which means that there is no plan and that it isn’t.

·       “Liberated territories” means “occupied territories of another country.”        

·       “Goodwill gesture” means “a forced retreat.”

·       “Liquidation” means “death and destruction.”

 

            But perhaps the richest vein of this new trend involve “the protection of Russian speakers and especially Russian-speaking children,” Berdy suggests, adding that “people in Russia must be protected from many terrible things” but these things must never be discussed in normal language but only in newspeak.

            Among these threats, she continues, are “provocations,” newspeak for criticism of the authorities, “fakes,” anything that doesn’t come from or is approved by those authorities, and discrediting the Russian army, “any criticism of the armed forces.” And if these new terms aren’t sufficient, the powers will punish or block those who engage in them.