Fewer Russian Residents Think about Their Ethnic Nationality because State Asks Them for It Only Once in Ten Years, Zorin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 25 – In Soviet times, all residents had their ethnic nationality listed in their passports and had to provide that information whenever they applied for anything. Not surprisingly, all knew their nationality. But now, Vladimir Zorin says, the state asks them to provide their nationality only once every ten years. It’s now surprise that many don’t know it.

            The prominent Moscow ethnographer surveys all the reasons many have given for why 16 million residents of the Russian Federation are not listed by nationality in the most recent national census (tatar-inform.ru/news/vladimir-zorin-scitat-obrazcovoi-perepis-2020-bylo-by-ne-obektivnym-5894262).

            But in addition to pointing out that census takers could not list a nationality for anyone unless they had spoken with him or her, he says that changes since Soviet times have had the effect of reducing the salience of nationality in ethnic terms for large numbers of residents of the Russian Federation.

            There can be little doubt, Zorin says, that “in our time when the majority of people are asked their nationality only once every ten years during a census and otherwise don’t use it, that has the effect of reducing the significance of ethnic identity in the consciousness of a definite part of the population.”

            But he stresses as well that there are increasing debates about just what nationality is and reiterates a point he has made frequently: “a census counts not people by their nationality; it counts responses of the population to that question,” two very different things entirely.

            In other comments, he dismisses the conclusion of Valery Tishkov, former head of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, that the 2021 Russian census was a failure. Such a view is “extreme;” and to insist on it requires providing an alternative data set. None exists that is as comprehensive as the census and so the census must be used, albeit carefully. (On Tishkov’s view of the census, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/of-17-million-russian-residents-without.html.)

            And he says that the decline in the number of Tatars in the census both absolutely and relative to other peoples like the Baskirs and Chechens reflects long-standing trends, including most importantly that the Tatars are far more urbanized than those which have seen gains. It has long been understood that ethnicity survives longer in rural areas, Zorin says.

‘We Don’t have Human Rights So Why Do We Need Rights Activists like Moscow Helsinki Group?’ Russians Ask

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – Russians reacted calmly to the announcement that a Moscow court had liquidated the Helsinki Group given that since they have no rights, there is no reason for human rights defenders to continue to exist. After all, what could they possibly do under the circumstances? Russians ask.

            This is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled that provide key insights into what Russians are really thinking about Russia today (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45007/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       As of March 1, Russians who want to leave the country by air will have to sign up in advance on the list of “traitors to the Motherland.”

·       The Kremlin says that Berlin’s decision to supply tanks to Ukraine doesn’t bode well for the future of German-Russian relations, an optimistic assessment in that it is based on the assumption that those relations have a future.

·       Duma deputies, most of whom were mediocre students, are likely going to ban not only the five point scale on which Russian pupils are graded by also the numbers two and three.

·       In any normal country, someone who claims he is being attacked by Satanists from 50 countries will be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. In Russia, however, such a person becomes star on state television.

·       Russian government outlets gave prominent play to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Eswatini, even though 99.9 percent of Russians have no idea where that is. After all, Putin’s Russia has no other partners on this earth.

·       The Duma may soon pass a law making it a criminal offense to “discredit” Wagner PMCs who were recruited from Russian prisons. That’s real progress. After becoming the first country to declare murders and pedophiles heroes, it will then be the first where anyone who continues to call a pedophile a pedophile will be imprisoned.

 

Russian Economy Not Declining Quantitatively but Decaying Qualitatively, Zubarevich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 25 – Those who predicting that the Russian economy will collapse are going to be disappointed because in purely quantitative terms, any decline is likely to be small or even reverse because of military spending and import substitution, Natalya Zubarevich says. But what is happening and will continue to happen is a qualitative decay in production.

            Such decay is not captured in official statistics about GDP size and so can easily be denied by officials and propagandists, the economic geographer at Moscow State University says; but it matters enormously to Russians who no longer have the choices they had just a year ago (newizv.ru/news/2023-01-25/natalya-zubarevich-obvala-ekonomiki-ne-budet-budet-rost-tehnologicheskoy-otstalosti-394938).

            Everyone needs to understand that what is going on is “a growth in technological backwardness rather than any collapse; but step by step, there is an ongoing transformation of the Russian economy into a less technologically developed one. That is what awaits us, Zubarevich says.

Putin’s Power Rests on Russians’ Fear of Separatism and Belief in His Ability to Prevent It, Yusupova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – Within the Russian population, Vladimir Putin’s power rests on two things: fear of separatism and the disintegration of the country, on the one hand, and a belief that he is capable of preventing it, on the other, according to Guzel Yusupova, a sociologist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.

            The experience of the two Chechen wars and Putin’s victory in the second continue to play an outsized influence in Russian thinking and in the feeling of the overwhelming majority that only harsh and authoritarian measures can prevent the disintegration of the country, she continues (idelreal.org/a/32238658.html).

            That helps explain two other developments as well, Yusupova says: the focus Russians have on migration which in their minds threatens to “Islamicize” Russia and the moves of the government by means of manipulation of the census to suggest that Russia is not becoming more Muslim and that any threat from the Muslim republics is under control.

            The results of the 2021 Russian census on nationality must be read with these two factors in mind, she concludes. 

Neither Pandemic nor War in Ukraine has Changed Center-Periphery Relations in Russia, Busygina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – At a time when many believe that everything is changing, one of the most useful tasks an analyst can perform is to consider what hasn’t changed. Irina Busygina has performed precisely such a task regarding the Russian political system. And she argues that neither the pandemic nor the war in Ukraine has changed center-periphery relations there.

            In an article for Riddle Russia, the Higher School of Economics political scientist says that the current model of the state’s relations with regions precludes any shift in power from the center to the periphery because “this model serves the interests of Moscow and, what is no less important, the Russian governors” (ridl.io/ru/regiony-i-tsentr-chto-ne-izmenila-vojna/).

            Because they are appointed rather than elected, Busygina points out, governors not only lack their own independent legitimacy but have “a personal interest in maintaining the stability of the current regime,” something that is best achieved by ensuring that the president remains overwhelmingly popular.

            She argues that “the governors will prefer to support Putin’s popularity even at the expense of their own,” an arrangement that has arisen because of “the painstaking work of the Presidential Administration,” the absence of horizontal ties among the governors, and the awareness among the governors that they risk political suicide if they vary from this.

            Both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have created new challenges that the current system is not nearly as well equipped to respond to as a genuinely federal one would, Busygina continues; but in neither case has this arrangement changed: the center sets the agenda and the governors carry it out.

            Putin thus has no incentive to decentralize and in fact recognizes that any step in that direction would be dangerous for himself. There are conditions under which that could change, but “so far” and despite the predictions of many “they have not arisen.” As of now, governors have no alternative to complete loyalty to Putin and Moscow if they want to survive politically.”

 

Russian Civil Aviation Safety Now Ranks Below Every Country Except Bhutan and Eritrea, ICAO Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 25 – Sanctions have intensified the problems of Russian civil aviation, forcing nine Russian companies to close over the last year, leading to massive and recently legalized cannibalization of planes to keep others flying, and effectively ending all the measures that had been in place to maintain the security of air travel on them.

            As a result, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) now rates Russia at the bottom of the list of countries in terms of flight security along only Bhutan and Eritrea, Sibreal journalist Marina Aronova reports (sibreal.org/a/rossiyskaya-aviatsiya-v-usloviyah-sanktsiy/32234493.html).

            The situation is a disaster, Andrey Patrakov, founder of a Russian firm involved with the security of air travel. He says that what has happened in the case of Russian carriers is analogous to what happened when McDonald’s closed its restaurants in Russia and then they were taken over by Russian managers.

            As long as the hamburger outlets worked as a franchise, he says, “everything was fine. But when management passed to Russians, everything changed immediately. In the toilets, there was no longer enough soap and the floor was dirty. That had happened before but much less often.”

            “So what’s the problem? The people were the same and the equipment was the same. But then what had changed?”

            The answer is simple: upper level management which no longer was committed to maintaining standards and so “everything began to deteriorate.” The same thing has been happening in Russian civil aviation, Patrakov says, but with this difference. Dirty bathrooms may be an inconvenience but when planes aren’t serviced and maintained properly, people die.

            At present, and as a result of the intensification of problems with the branch that have been building for the last two decades, Russian civil aviation is among the three worst in the world, he says. More accidents on carriers under Russian control even if the planes are of Western manufacture are almost a certainty.

            Moscow officials may say that “everything is fine with us,” Patrakov concludes, but “I definitely would not.”

 

Russians Want Change but Believe Only Powers can Produce It so Regime has No Good Reason to Make Changes and Can Survive Without Doing So, MGIMO Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 27 – The Russian foreign ministry’s elite training and research center, MGIMO, recently conducted 48 focus groups across the country to find out what Russians see as the main problems and how they see them being resolved. The answers, Pavel Pryanikov says, offer little encouragement to those who hope for change.

            According to the Russian commentator (publizist.ru/blogs/117734/45019/-), the MGIMO study reached seven major conclusions:

·       People want changes but neither society nor business is capable of becoming ‘change agents.’ Only the state can play that role.

·       No one wants radical changes lest they threaten what they have achieved over the last 30 years.

·       The population has a largely negative view of the bosses.

·       The opposition is irrelevant and was seldom mentioned.

·       Young Russians are the most upset about their country being cut off from the world.

·       Most Russians have a schizophrenic view of Moscow, seeing it as a negative oppressor but also wanting all the regions of the country to be like it.

·       Putin is the only leader Russians even mention.

 

The MGIMO study also concluded that the war in Ukraine has had little impact on the consciousness of Russians. Their faith in a good tsar who serves as a sacred function remains in place. Moreover, “the people don’t view itself as a subject of politics;” and there is no inclination to protest even among the young.

            Given such a society, Pryanikov says, “there is no reason for the elites to think about change.” The only thing that might change that would be a radical decline in the availability of food and consumer goods of short term need. That is what shook the USSR to its foundations; but today, Russians have far more options to ensure that they get these goods of first necessity.

            And because that is the case, the current regime is likely to be able to continue in power without any fundamental changes for as long into the future as one can see, the commentator concludes.