Russians Eating More Bread Because They Can’t Afford Meat – and Moscow Doesn’t Get It, Economist Warns

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 26 – Because of the pandemic-exacerbated economic crisis, Russians are increasingly being forced to buy bread rather than meat, fruits and vegetables, but tragically, economist Nikita Krichevsky says, the powers that be in Moscow don’t understand what is happening (regnum.ru/news/3125661.html).

            Officials are telling themselves that Russians will put up with this forever, making do with bread rather than meat; but that is the kind of self-deception by those who are in charge will at some point collapse with potentially disastrous consequences for the country, the economist adds.

            Today, Russia set records in the number of new infections – 25,487 – and new deaths – 524 (t.me/COVID2019_official/2058). Most of the increase reflects the spread of the pandemic, but part of it is the product of decisions by regional officials to report more accurately after Putin called for them to do so (idelreal.org/a/30970151.html and regnum.ru/news/3126330.html).

            The pandemic continues to spread across the country with most places getting worse rather than better and forcing the government to pull 10 billion rubles (150 million US dollars) from reserve funds (regnum.ru/news/society/3122025.html and znak.com/2020-11-25/mishustin_poruchil_vydelit_iz_rezervnogo_fonda_10_milliardov_na_vyplaty_medikam).

            Polls show broad support for giving priority to the construction of new hospitals and clinics, after many of them were closed in recent years by Putin’s “optimization” program (nakanune.ru/articles/116540/). In many regions, hospitals no longer have enough beds for those infected (regnum.ru/news/3125900.html).

            Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has extended some restrictions until mid-January but at the same time has pledged that he does not plan to shut down the capital again (regnum.ru/news/3126168.html and rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=88541).

            The Kremlin said it was not yet prepared to give an exact date for the start of mass vaccinations against the coronavirus, but officials did announce that the vaccine developed by the Vektor Laboratories was beginning clinical trials (regnum.ru/news/3125966.html and           

regnum.ru/news/3125443.html).

            On the economic front, Russians are buying far fewer New Year’s trees than last year, and in some regions, officials are saying that business there will not recover before 2022 at the  earliest (regnum.ru/news/3125475.html and regnum.ru/news/3125716.html).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         Some analysts are worried about the possible start of an updated “parade of sovereignties” now that Kazan officials have said they may restrict the sale of medicines to local people (regnum.ru/news/3125766.html).

·         Aleksandr Myasnikov, perhaps Russia’s leading TV doctor, says that he expects the coronavirus to return each year just like flu (regnum.ru/news/3125362.html).

·         Ever more medical students are being deployed to hospitals to treat patients, often under minimal supervision (7x7-journal.ru/articles/2020/11/26/studenty-meduniversiteta-v-orenburge-o-rabote-vmesto-terpevtov-vo-vremya-pandemii).

The 40 Million People in Small Russian Cities Among Most Neglected and Most at Risk Part of the Country, Kirilllov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – The Kremlin can always be counted on to focus on Moscow and the other metropolises of the Russian Federation, and there is a large group of writers who will not let anyone forget about the villages from which most Russians spring. But the country’s small cities, where about 40 million Russians live, have neither the one nor the other.

            As a result, Moscow’s policies are destroying what were only a few decades ago one of the most dynamic parts of the Soviet economy and key players in the promotion of the security of the USSR because they represented a link between the villages and the country as a whole, Valery Kirillov says (sovross.ru/articles/2054/50301).

            Life in these smaller cities was slower and more relaxed than in the big cities, the Russian writer who grew up in one of them says. People retained their ties with villages and even raised some of their own food. And “none of [his] friends ever said: ‘I want to be a millionaire or a manager or ‘a rock star.’” They wanted to be engineers, teachers, doctors or officers.

            But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the basis for the existence of many of these cities disappeared under the impact of economic policies which concentrated production in a few places and left the remainder to decay and die without the attention that bigger cities and smaller villages have received.

            According to experts, Kirillov says, “almost 60 percent of their population is below the poverty line. Ten percent of the small cities are on the brink of collapse, and the remainder continue to degrade and die off.” There are many reasons for this, he continues; but two are especially serious.

            On the one hand, Moscow no longer views these places as its allies in promoting the economy and holding the country together and so does not provide the kind of assistance that they need. And on the other, the officials the center inserts to run them have no incentive to develop the economies of these places so that more can be done.

            The extent of underfunding is obvious. Local self-administration in Russia currently gets about 3.5 percent of the state budget whereas in Europe, it receives 80 percent – and in the Soviet Union toward the end, this element of government received 50 percent. And that is only exacerbated by the lack of incentives among officials to promote growth.

            According to Kirillov, if current spending on governance in small cities continues at current rates, figures from Tver Oblast show, it will take 700 years to replace the electrical network, 150 years to replace the existing roads, and more than 150 years to replace communal networks.

            What this means, the writer concludes, is that “the Russian provinces will continue to be in a depressed state, something which is especially dangerous at a time when the issue of national survival has sharpened” with other countries challenging Russia’s ability to defend its territorial integrity.

 

Destroying Non-Russian Republics will Destroy Russia, Vakhitov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – For the third time in a generation, this time online, some Russians have bought into the idea that the promotion of a Russian nation state will “magically” solve all the country’s problems, Eurasianist writer Rustem Vakhitov says, arguing that they could not be more wrong (gumilev-center.ru/evrazijjstvo-ili-russkijj-nacionalizm/).

            In 1991, in the name of getting rid of imperial ballast, Russian nationalists promoted the disintegration of the USSR. In 2011, a revived Russian nationalism called for casting aside some non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus failing to see that this would spark massive refugee flows and allow NATO to advance closer to Moscow.

            Now, online but much less in the population itself, Russian nationalists are arguing for the establishment of a Russian nation state, some of an ethnic kind given that 80 percent of the population of the country is Russian but most of a non-ethnic “civic” variety like the ones in Western countries.

            On the basis of that mistaken and misguided notion, Vakhitov says, they call for dismantling all non-Russian republics and declaring all non-Russians to be Russians of this or that ethnic origin, with some Russian nationalists openly calling for the total assimilation of all non-Russians.

            “Anyone who has even lived a little in the national republics of Russia will tell you that such ‘an innovation’ will instantly lead to the destruction of the national peace that exists up to now in Russia,” the Eurasianist says. That should be obvious to all even with an unaided eye, but to Russian nationalists now, it is somehow obscure.

            He points out that “if Tatar nationalists raise such a ruckus concerning the liquidation of the position of president in the national republics, then just imagine what would happen if the Kremlin in which our national democrats have entered, were to require that all Tatars list themselves as ‘ethnic Russians of Tatar origin’?!”

            Even the advocates of “civic” Russian nationalism forget that there are “civic nationalists among Tatar and Bashkir nationalists” who have called for “local ethnic Russians to give up the title Russian and call themselves instead Tatarstanis of Russian origin.” They would only become more vocal if Russians insisted Tatars and others change their identities.

            Russia has been strong only when it has had a super-national identity, and “the Eurasians were right when they argued that a strong side of the communists was that they created a state super-ethnic identity intended for all peoples of the Russian space.” And the Eurasians continue to promote this in Russia today.

            The reason that the Internet is breeding so many Russian nationalists who have forgotten the history of their own country is that “nationalism is also a form of Westernism to such an extend that the nationalists do not attack other Westernizers, in this case, the liberals,” Vakhitov continues.

            And that leads to another important conclusion that few in debates about Russian nationalism recognize: “the dissemination of nationalism among non-Russian peoples (and Russians are one) is a variety of the acceptance by them of Western culture. That is, it is yet another step toward the assimilation of these peoples (including the Russians) into the cosmopolitan substrate of pan-Europeanism and pan-Westernism.”

            And that is true, the Eurasianist author says, even if the nationalists view themselves as “enemies of the West” because they are bringing into their culture another element of Western culture.” If they win, he argues, their children and grandchildren will be speaking English; and those who proclaim themselves Russian nationalists today will be responsible.

New Reports about Putin’s Mistresses No Longer Boost His Support, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – New media reports about Vladimir Putin’s mistresses are not having the same effect on his standing with Russians as they would have a decade ago, Abbas Gallyamov says. Then, they would have given him a boost because such stories would have been seen as an indication of his vigor. Now, they are making people angry.

            In a Facebook post, the former Putin speech writer and now frequent commentator says that these reports in fact are doing even more and threaten to become a destabilizing element in Russian politics (facebook.com/abbas.gallyamov/posts/10217964336090563 reposted at rusmonitor.com/abbas-galyamov-eshhe-neskolko-let-nazad-novost-o-nalichii-lyubovniczy-putinu-tolko-plyusov-dobavilo-by.html).

            The situation at present, Gallyamov argues, is “in a zone of unstable balance that now that even such information so insignificant from the point of view of politics … can raise a wave of anger,” something that must shock those in power who remember when such stories would have added to Putin’s stature with many Russians.

            In his brief post, the commentator does not address what is perhaps the most obvious possibility, that the release and even more the dissemination of this information about Putin’s personal life is part of a new political campaign against him and that more such stories are likely to emerge and spread about other aspects of his personal life.

Residents of Russian Island near Vladivostok Want It Renamed for Navalny to Get Moscow’s Attention

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – Residents of Vladivostok’s Russian Island to which Vladimir Putin had an enormous bridge built a few years ago are still suffering from the ice storm that hit the region a week ago and have decided to demand that their still-isolated island be renamed after opposition figure Aleksey Navalny in the hopes of getting Moscow’s attention.

            So far, the bridge has not been reopened, electricity and internet connectivity are still down, and heat has only just been restored. People can get food, but local stores have raised their prices to the point that many can’t afford it. And the behavior of Moscow and its representatives in the region have outraged the population (readovka.ru/news/65166 and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5FBE403EF3D79).

            Moscow’s failure to act quickly and do more for the people of Vladivostok and the Russian Island shows, Russian commentator and frequent Kremlin critic Igor Yakovenko says, that “for the Kremlin, Vladivostok isn’t Russia and the Russian Island isn’t Russian either” (ej2020.ru/?a=note&id=35615).

            Yakovenko notes that international media responded to the events in the Russian Far East quite quickly, but the Russian government didn’t say anything until four days after the storm hit. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told Aleksey Chekunov, the minister for the Far East and the Arctic, to visit the region and see what could be done.

            But Chekunov, not wishing to interrupt his weekend, delayed another day and arrived in Vladivostok only on November 23, five days after the storm hit and left the people of the region in the cold and dark and increasingly hungry as well. He compounded that mistake by suggesting that the storm was not an accident but something “completely predictable.”

            He compiled a list of what local officials said they needed to solve the problems and then flew back to Moscow, prompting an explosion of criticism online that included vocabulary that could become “an important supplement to Plutser-Sarno’s Great Dictionary of Russian Curse Words, Yakovenko continues.  

            But perhaps more seriously, the Russian commentator says, many in their posts asked why Vladimir Putin could send more than a billion US dollars to Syria’s Asad and 1.5 billion to Belarus’ Alyaksandr Lukashenka but for people within the borders of  is own country could do no more than send Minister Chekunov.

            It would be far better, they said, “to send Chekunov to Asad and Lukashenka and send the 2.5 billion US dollars to the needs of the residents of the Far East.”

Russians Backed Putin Because He Compensated for Their Lack of Self-Respect, Gudkov and Gozman Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – Vladimir Putin won support from Russians who had lost confidence and self-respect because of the turmoil of the 1990s by offering them in compensation his efforts to return their country to the status of a great power, sociologist Lev Gudkov and psychologist Leonid Gozman say.

            The two made these points during a wide-ranging discussion at Moscow’s Sakharov Center on “The Psychology of the Putin System – Love, Fear and Illusions” (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2020/11/25/1874829.html).

            Gudkov, head of the Levada Center polling agency, said that even before Putin came to power, “polls showed that Russians expected two things from a new leader: an exit from the economic crisis and the return to Russia of the status of a great power. People did not have other expectations beyond a return to empire.”

            In the years since, he continued, there have been “three stable types” of popular attitudes toward Putin and his team: “37 percent are supporters of the president, about 10 percent are his opponents, and an absolutely indifferent majority.” But he suggests that the president’s support is beginning to slip as Russians see he has not delivered on his promises.

            Putin once acknowledged, Gudkov noted, that “the president must be what the people wants to see in him. But this doesn’t explain why people want to invest in him such qualities.” That pattern reflects the fact that Russians lost their sense of self-respect; and at least initially, Putin provided a compensation for this loss.

            In Soviet times, the sociologist continued, “government institutions suppressed individuality and gave rise to a weak ‘ego,’ one dependent on the all-powerful nature of the state which provides their well-being. Even after the collapse of the USSR, a different picture of the world, one based on self-respect, did not appear.”

            “Nothing besides soviet stereotypes has been developed,” Gudkov said. “The individual was deprived of value and he understood this. He needed respect, but he could achieve that only by the demonstration of national power.” And that is exactly what Putin offered, allowing Russians to regain a kind of self-respect by investing in him.

            According to Gudkov, “Putin placed his bet not on the creation of institutions which would give each individual the chance to feel his own dignity and self-confidence.” Instead, he acted in ways so that Russians would acquire these things “only via victories, military force, and the size of their territory.”

            “And with time, the greater the role of military might has become,” and the more Putin’s rhetoric has reflected and exacerbated this reality. Related to this, Gudkov said, is the fact that “people only want to be proud of their country; they do not want to be responsible for its crimes in the past.” Putin has fully met that need as well.

            “Btu complexes remain, and the sense of shame now is just as strong as that of pride. The formula – ‘we’re a great people but we live in poverty’ – reflects this.” Displays of force reduce this, but to be effective, they must be repeated ever more often. But these do nothing to mitigate the continuing sense of hopelessness in the population.

            Russians are increasingly critical, but they are “forced to support the regime and subordinate themselves to this pressure because they do not have any other bases for collective respect. The regime is based on this, on the absence of a sense of the dignity” of its individual members, Gudkov concluded.

            Gozman, an opposition politician who was trained as a psychologist agreed. He said that Putin has offered three things to rebuild the national self-respect of Russians: enemies they can collectively hate, a spiritual supremacy over everyone else, and the annexation of Crimea. The last was especially important because it showed Russia could do what it wanted no matter what.

            But he continued, “the self-assessment of Russians is based on an illusory world. Society has landed in the position of a drug addict who cannot cope with reality and escapes it with new doses, or of a neurotic individual who also in an attempt to flee reality creates an illusory world where he is the tsar.”

            Putin played to that successfully, but with the coronavirus and his retreat to the bunker, he has lost much of his former attractiveness in this regard. “People see all this and their attitude to him is changing. They are disappointed,” Gozman continued.

            He suggested that society is not the only component in the Putin system that is undergoing changes. The powers that be are also changing, and they are increasingly disappointed in the people. Earlier when they had resources, they could play the philanthropist; but now they resent the demands of the population.

            The powers that be are thus retreating from reality as well. They want only displays which appear to show that they retain the respect and fear of the Russian people, he said. The Putin regime is not going to last forever, but unless these attitudes change, the country is going to be in trouble for a long time after he goes.

Moscow Using Russian Journalists as Agents against Baltic Countries, Khodorkovsky’s Dossier Center Documents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 25 – During the Cold War, people in the West sometimes bitterly joked that their countries sent diplomats to the Soviet Union which treated them like spies whereas the USSR sent spies to Western countries where they were treated like diplomats. Something similar could be said about journalists.

            Unfortunately, that continues to be true; and if anything, it is now worse because those who suggest that Moscow is using journalists in this way are invariably dismissed as unreconstructed cold warriors who are unwilling to recognize that the world has changed and that Russian journalists abroad are just what they claim to be, journalists.

            Many of them are, but a significant fraction of them aren’t. And those that aren’t hide behind that fact and routinely use the access and freedom of action accorded to journalists to gather information, public and otherwise, and to identify and recruit those prepared to work against their own countries on Moscow’s behalf.

            If during the Cold War, most people in the West at least suspected that Soviet journalists in their midst might wear more than one hat because the behavior of such people was often anything but reassuring and because Western institutions devoted significant attention to these people lest they damage the countries in which they were working.

            Now, the Russian journalists working abroad are often far more polished than their Soviet predecessors; and the number of Western institutions, public and private, tracking what they do and gaining broader attention to what can only be described as subversive activities is far smaller.

            That makes the work of the Dossier Center especially valuable. Created by Russian exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky as part of his effort to expose the way in which Soviet-style criminal structures have taken over the Russian government, it has in recent years prepared reports on the way in which Russian “journalists” abroad are often something else.

            Its latest report focuses on the structures Moscow has created and the people it has dispatched under journalistic cover to the Baltic countries, three NATO countries where its agents both gather information and recruit people in ways that can be used to destabilize these states and use their status to get in contact with others in the West (dossier.center/pribaltika/).

            The report, which was prepared by Dossier together with Tallinn’s Eesti Ekspress and the Siena investigative journalism center in Vilnius, highlights three things. First, Moscow’s efforts in this regard are large and continuing and involve a significant fraction of Russian journalists who come to or work on the Baltic countries.

            Second, this world is inevitably and by design murky, extremely difficult to describe with the kind of multiple sources most Western outlets demand and thus gives Moscow the kind of plausible deniability that it needs to continue to use journalists for other purposes.

            And third – and this makes the new Dossier report especially important – Moscow is using its beachhead in the Baltics not only against the peoples and governments of these three countries but also as a jumping off point for penetrating Western countries, including the United States and its political elites.

            In such cases, the details are everything, and Dossier’s 4200-word report should be widely translated and attended to by all those concerned with the ways in which Vladimir Putin, himself trained as a KGB officer, has built on and gone beyond the activities of the organization from which he emerged.  A minimal concern for self-defense requires no less.