Macro-Economic Problems Won’t Spark Protests but Kremlin Acts of Deception Will, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – Macro-economic problems like unemployment and falling incomes will not lead people to go into the streets and protest, Vladislav Inozemtsev says; but clear acts of deception by the Kremlin, be it over elections in 2011-2012 or concerning statistics now, are quite capable of doing so.

            That makes the controversy over Rosstat far more important than many imagine, the Moscow economist says. The Russian statistical agency has long been so inaccurate in its reporting that it was difficult to imagine that the situation could get worse,  but now it has (echo.msk.ru/blog/v_inozemcev/2343767-echo/).

            When the Kremlin decided to sack the director of Rosstat for inaccuracy, many expected that things would get better, Inozemtsev continues; but the new director followed in the footsteps of his predecessor and “corrected” earlier figures to the benefit of the regime, something that given the realities around them, many Russians view as an insulting display of deception.

            And that in turn leads to a loss of trust and creates the conditions on which serious protests can emerge. (Russians experienced this pattern when officials falsified election outcomes: protests arose. Now, they are seeing it in the economy where officials have compounded the real problems in that sector with “the big lie.”)

            This lie is happening even as the authorities “have begun a radical attack on the economic rights of Russians by raising the pension age and increasing a number of taxes and fees, including VAT.” No one expected miracles of the kind Putin promised, but Russians did expect they would be told the truth.  That is not happening, and all Russians can see and understand it.

            “The latest actions of Rosstat” in subservience to the Kremlin “directly tell Russians: you are slaves and the dregs of humanity. You do not deserve that the powers that be will consider your opinion in elections or even tell you the truth about the state of the economy, for the development of which you pay every day” without the promised returns.

            This trend in turn entails another: “it means that the only source of information about what is going on in the country has now become the subjective sense of its economic situation.” Having destroyed statistics, the powers that be have tried “a big lie.” But the people are turning away from it and them.

           

            And that does not bode well for the future of relations between the regime which is now openly lying and the population which sees these lies with an unaided eye.

Petersburgers Express Some Very Specific Wishes for Putin in 2019

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – A survey of 13 residents of the northern capital by Emiliya Kudysheva of the city’s Gorod-812 news portal finds that many of them have very specific wishes for Vladimir Putin in 2019 with a large fraction of them expressing the hope that he will change direction (gorod-812.ru/chto-byi-vyi-pozhelali-putinu-v-novom-godu/).

            These include the following:

·         Aleksey Tsivilyev, a United Russia Deputy in the City’s legislative assembly says he wishes that Putin will find “real and true friends” in other countries who will stand by him “in difficult times” rather than desert Russia s some like Belarus regularly do.

·         Dmitry Grigoryev, a Pomor old believer, says he hopes that Putin will behave as Boris Yeltsin did in 1999 and announce that he is “tired” and thus is leaving office.

·         Artem Smirnov, a financial consultant, says he wishes Putin will be able to achieve real and not false stability and thus be in a better position “to feel more easily the needs of the people and thus more successfully run the country.”

·         Maria Matveyeva, an employee of the Pekariya café, says she wishes that he will spend some time in the shoes of ordinary people rather than live in isolation from them.

·         Yelena Kalnitskaya, head of a demining company, expresses the hope that “our president will have the strength and power of the Peterhof Samson” statue.

·         Cherstin Kronvall, a correspondent of Finland’s YLE television channel, says she hopes he will give foreign journalists the interview they have long asked for but been denied. If so, she says, she would ask “has there ever been in the history of humanity a moment when state borders were considered correct and located in fixed place?”

·         Anastasya Melnikova, a United Russia deputy of the city’s legislative assembly, says she wishes the president will have “strength and devoted people around him.”

·         Oleg Bodrov, a leader of the Finnish Gulf Ecological Council, says he hopes that Putin will take up the issue of the aging nuclear power plants in Russia and seek to ensure that there won’t be any leaks or disasters.

·         Yevgeny Mikhailov, a trolleybus driver, says he hopes that Putin “will not forget that Russia is not just Moscow in which the government has promised to build 35 metro stations in the next three years while in St. Petersburg where he was born over 25 years have been built only 12 stations.  He also hopes that there will be an end to the endless repairs of Russia’s roads.

·         Leonid Zakharov, head of the Khimizdat publishing house, says that Putin has achieved a lot but is clearly running down as far as energy is concerned and that, as a result, Zakharov hopes that he will find “a worthy successor” sometime in the next year and then retire.

·         Nikolay Prokhorov, a tramway driver, says he wishes Putin to have “interesting travels” but not so much abroad as in various parts of Russia. That way, he continues, the president “will see with his own eyes how the people live now and draw conclusions.”

·         Yelena Sudakova, a bookkeeper at an Orthodox church, says she hopes that Putin will turn to God for help in his efforts “in the struggle with all sorts of internal and external enemies … The Lord will hear him and help.”

·         And Vladimir Zhukovsky, director of the St. Petersburg’s Club of Geniuses, says that he hopes Putin will follow Talleyrand’s injunction not to let zeal outpace judgment.

Putin’s Chekist Regime hasn’t Gone Mad but Want West to Think It has, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – A series of apocalyptic articles about possible Russian nuclear strikes on the West appears to suggest that the Putin regime has gone insane, Igor Eidman says. But that isn’t the case, he continues. Instead, it is a ruse intended to cause Western governments to draw that false conclusion and thus be more ready to make concessions to the Kremlin.

             Over the last several months, the Russian commentator says, the Voyenno-Promyshlenny kuryer has run a series of article about “how we will destroy the US,” with one advocating a nuclear strike on the Gulf Stream and another against the Yellowstone super-volcano (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2182631968466437&id=100001589654713).

                On the surface, these appear to be the work of madmen, Eidman continues; but a closer examination suggests a different conclusion. The chief sponsor of the online military industry journal is Igor Ashurbeyli, a successful businessman who has been accused of all kinds of murders and even as a man in the employ of foreign intelligence services.

            Anyone with that kind of record would be in jail, if he did not have serious protection from the highest levels. And in Russia, that kind of protection can be provided “only by the Chekist” regime.  And so instead of being in legal jeopardy, Ashurbeyli is “flourishing” and his  handiwork attention.

            Is Ashurbeyli threatening the US because he is a convinced “Stalinist hurrah patriot”? No, Eidman says. “Yes, he is a patriot but not of Russia. He has his own country. It is called Asgardiya and it is located in outer space.” That “state” was set up in October 2016 by Ashurbeyli who serves as its “king” and enrolls “citizens” from around the world.

            Is this an indication that he has “gone mad”? Not at all. Rather “he like the authors of his journal are only pretending to be” because “this Asgardia is an ideal cover for the world of Russia’s special services who very much want not to be taken seriously and to be considered silly madmen.”

            “Under the cover of Asgardia,” Eidman continues, they can “openly establish contacts, collect information, launch satellites, and recruit agents under the guise of recruiting new citizens into a virtual space state.”  And it is from this perspective that one must understand the articles he and his journal publish.

            They are clearly designed, the Russian sociologist and commentator says, “to frighten the Western world with nuclear catastrophe and to force its leaders to make concessions to ‘the mad Russians,’ who are ready to bury the whole world in the flames of a nuclear conflagration.”

            In another post Eidman explains why Moscow has to make use of this kind of threat: it doesn’t have the forces to back it up in a serious way.  The current trend in Moscow is not “guns instead of butter” but rather about television reports “about mythical undefeatable rockets instead of butter” (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2183510031711964&id=100001589654713).

                All of the successes in Putin’s world are fake,” he continues.  “Not oonly concerning well-being but even the sabre rattling is fake. What’s on television has completely replaced reality. And post-modernist militarism makes its move that way.”