Russia Now has 15 to 20 Enormous and Horrifying ‘National Disaster Zones,’ Statistics Show

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 31 – Statistics issued by Rosstat and the United Nations show that Russia now consists of 15 to 20 “national disaster zones,” enormous regions larger than many countries and having standards of living which are “similar to the very poorest developing countries,” Yakov Mirkin says.

            The Moscow commentator gives as an example the Republic of Tyva. There GDP per capita is 66 percent lower than in Russia as a whole and amounts to 2460 US dollars (in 2015, the last year for which data are available). This puts it alongside Bhutan, Honduras, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea and other third world countries (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=597E2C1D3F79B).

                Life expectancy in Tyva is 63.1 years on a par with Kenya, Mauritania, and Papua New Guinea, which rank 149^th to 151^st among the world’s countries. For Tyvan men, the situation is even worse: Their life expectancy is 58 years, on par with Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo, Mirkin says. 

            At the same time, he continues, Tyva ranks fourth among federal subjects in terms of the number of crimes per 100,000 residents, with 2682 annually, “two thirds more than the average for the country.”

            And he concludes: “we cannot fail to direct our attention to these ‘national disaster zones.’ They very much need our support to rise” to something closer to the all-Russian figures the Kremlin and its supporters take so much delight in reporting. “The saving of human souls” is at stake. 

            At the very least, Mirkin says, Russians and others “need to begin to talk about this in public.” 

“Edinorossus vulgaris’ Even More Morally Flexible than Any Member of Soviet-Era Nomenklatura , Yakovenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – Members of the Soviet nomenklatura as officials named from above by the CPSU were known and were so brilliantly described by Mikhail Voslensky a generation ago followed every twist and turn in the party line, but their successors – the senior people in the ruling United Russia Party – are even more morally flexible than their predecessors.

            That is the argument of Moscow commentator Igor Yakovenko who suggests the term edinorossus vulgaris as the most appropriate description of the ultra-obedient and flexible “everyday United Russia” leader, who is capable of saying things that no Soviet nomenklaturshchik ever would (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=597CD55C2A682).

            Many people simply view the current species as a direct continuation of the earlier one, Yakovenko says; but there are important differences. No member of the nomenklatura could ever dream of having the wealth that United Russia people do, and no one of them could ever advise people in financial difficulties, as one Sverdlovsk United Russia official did, to “eat less.”

            According to the Moscow commentator, “an important evolutionary advance of the Soviet nomenklaturshchik was a flexible spine, but the degree of elasticity of the ordinary United Russia man is immeasurably greater” because unlike his predecessor “there is no core in the form of Marxism, communism, and also internationalism and other -isms.”

            Edinorossus vulgaris “in the course of a long and difficult evolution has rejected” all of them as unnecessary and even harmful “in the world of political struggle for survival in the era of developed Putinism,” Yakovenko says. As a result, there have been significant and irreversible changes in the brains of the ordinary United Russia leader.

           

            “The structures responsible for logic, empathy, and one’s own dignity have all disappeared.”  That becomes obvious, Yakovenko suggests, if one compares members of the Soviet nomenklatura with such figures as Yarovaya, Zhelenyak, Markov, Fedorov, Milonov and Poklonskaya.

            This year marks the centenary of the birth of homo soveticus, the commentator continues, noting that “one of the first to describe this strange anthropological type” was the philosopher Sergey Bulgakov. He has been followed by researchers at the Harvard Project in the early 1950s and then by the research of Yury Levada in the 1980s and 1990s.

            “Many archeologists,” Yakovenko recalls, “dream of being in Ancient Rome. Many paleontologists would like to see a living dinosaur.  Russian social scientists and anthropologists are incredibly lucky: they can observe while living the surprising zigzag of human evolution by examining the large population of everyday United Russia people.”

Is It Beginning in Belarus? ‘Little Green Men’ Appear Alongside Russian Troops in Vitebsk

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – A man from the Belarusian city of Vitebsk, a city not far from the Russian border, has posted on Facebook pictures showing Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms there something that will undoubtedly exacerbate existing fears that Moscow will use the upcoming Zapad-2017 military exercises to carry out regime change in Minsk.

            The blogger, who uses Drug Syabar as his screen name, says that in the photographs, one can see that “Russian soldiers are already beginning to arrive for the so-called military exercises. The arriving troops are beginning to take locations throughout all cities. But there are also appearing people with automatic weapons in military uniforms bearing no distinguishing marks”

(facebook.com/DrugSyabarPS/posts/1965479527068878)

The pictures also have been reported and described, in among other places, at  newvv.net/ukraine/253991.html, profi-forex.org/novosti-mira/novosti-sng/belarus-/entry1008309440.html, and dsnews.ua/world/v-belarusi-poyavilis-rossiyskie-zelenye-chelovechki-s-avtomatami-27072017162600).

            Given that such people became known as “the little green men” who led Russia’s invasion forces in Ukraine, such reports from Belarus now will only intensify existing fears about Russia’s intentions in Belarus even if it turns out as may be possible that those pictured are simply support elements for Russian forces rather than a genuine invasion force.