I am trying to collect a richer database of all the large protests that have occurred in Russia since 1/1/17, and where they have occurred in space and time.
Our research is to determine the significance of cultural landmarks and locations for protests.
For example, we know 4 large protests occurred on the following day and locations (and we are trying to pin point the approximate time):
But we would love 100s more records.
By the looks of the attached white paper [there was no “white paper” attached], and the below links, CEPR has tracked over 2,500 protest locations. I would love to work with the CEPR team doing this research, collaborating in any way we can.
“With less than two months to go before the end of 2018, CEPR researchers said they have already recorded over 2,500 protests this year compared to under 1,500 nationwide last year, according to the report published Thursday.”
Thanks,
Mark
______________________
December 10, 2018
Mark,
You introduced yourself in no way, shape or form, and I’m not sure what it is that you’re asking me to do. I’m not an information clearinghouse.
I edit, translate, and write a blog called the Russian Reader, which is not affiliated in any way with the Center for Economic and Political Reform, although I have translated several articles by the center’s director, Nikolay Mironov, over the years.
If you would like to work with the CERP, you would have to send them a letter or call them. Their contact information is clearly indicated on their website.
If you don’t speak Russian, I would encourage you to learn it before doing research on Russia.
Yours,
The Russian Reader
______________________
December 11, 2018
Dear Russian Reader,
You sound angry. I think what I was asking for was pretty straightforward, and I don’t need to know Russian for what I am looking for.
I am looking for a dataset of protest locations in space and time, which is just simple math.
Have a nice 2019 and thanks for the tip on CERP.
Mark
______________________
And you are obtuse.
You just want a dataset. It’s simple math.
Where did I indicate on my site that I was in the business of handing out datasets I don’t have to people who don’t introduce themselves?
What you were asking for was not straightforward, and you were asking the wrong person.
People who don’t know Russia or Russian probably shouldn’t attempt to do research on it. Because you could have the most precise dataset on Russian protests possible, but it wouldn’t tell you anything about Russia or Russians.
Just as you failed to tell me anything about yourself or why you need this dataset.
“Dimon, what’s with the ballet?” Anti-corruption protesters on the Field of Mars in Petersburg. Photo courtesy of Sergei Nikolayev/DP
Experts Speak of Sharp Increase in Number of Protests in Russia Delovoi Peterburg
November 7, 2017
According to a report by the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CEPF), the number of social and political protests in Russia has risen sharply compared to the beginning of the year.
The number of protests has been continuously growing in Russia throughout the year. In the first quarter, 284 protests were recorded; in the second quarter, 378; and in the third quarter, 445. Thus, as noted in the report, the overall number of protests has increased by almost 60% since the beginning of the year.
The analysts at the CEPF divide protests into political protests, socio-economic protests, and labor protests. They note that around 70% of protests had to do with socio-economic issues, including protests by Russian truckers against the Plato road tolls system, and protests by Russian farmers against the seizure of land by agroholdings, as well as protests by hoodwinked investors in unbuilt cooperative apartment buildings.
Political protests came in second place, including protests by supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. A total of 106 political protests were recorded in the third quarter of 2017. There were 27 labor protests in the third quarter.
The number of conflicts related to labor relations has also steadily climbed throughout the year. The number of protests caused by cases of late payment and non-payment of wages, for example, has grown as follows: 142 in the first quarter, 196 in the second quarter, and 447 in the third quarter. Thus, by the third quarter, the number of such incidents had more than tripled.
The authors of the CEPR report cites figures provided by Rosstat, according to which the amount of unpaid back wages in Russia totaled 3.38 billion rubles [approx. 49 million euros] as of October 1, 2017. The number of incidents of late payment and non-payment of wages in the third quarter of 2017 (447 companies) was more than triple the number of such incidents in the first quarter (147 companies), and more than double the number in the second quarter (196 companies).
The analysts point out that Russia has not yet put in place a system for preventing and constructively solving social conflicts, and thus protests are still nearly the only effective means for employees to defend their rights.
“We should generally expect the high number of protests nationwide to continue, especially in the socio-economic realm. This is due to the fact the problems people (hoodwinked investors, truckers, farmers, opponents of construction projects, environmental activists et al.) have been currently protesting have not been solved. At the same time, evolution of the protest movement has been greatly hampered by the lack of capable political parties, grassroots organizations, and trade unions,” write CEPR’s analysts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (second right) and National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov (third left) take part in a ceremony marking National Guard Day in Moscow on March 27. Photo courtesy of Mikhail Klimentyev/TASS
Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed legislation to widen the responsibility of the National Guard, an entity created last year and headed by Putin’s former chief bodyguard, to include protecting regional governors.
The bill was published on the website of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on November 6.
The Duma is dominated by the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party and supports almost all Kremlin initiatives.
The proposed change could enhance Putin’s ability to crack down on dissent or seek to impose order if there is unrest in Russia’s far-flung regions.
The National Guard reports directly to the president. Its director, Viktor Zolotov, was chief of the presidential security service from 2000 to 2013.
The initiative comes months before a March 18 election in which Putin is expected to seek and secure a new six-year term.
Putin will be barred from seeking reelection in 2024 if he does win a fourth presidential term in the March vote, raising questions about how Russian politics will play out in the coming years and how he will maintain his grip.
Putin established the National Guard (Rosgvardia) in 2016 on the basis of the Interior Ministry troops and other security forces.
Its stated tasks initially included preserving “social order,” fighting against terrorism and extremism, and guarding state facilities.
The National Guard announced that it will be also responsible for a fingerprints database, issuing weapons-possession licenses, averting “threats to state order,” and protecting information security.
Analysts Claim Number of Protests Sharply on the Rise in Russia
Yevgenia Kuznetsova RBC
July 10, 2017
The number of social and political protests in Russia has risen in the second quarter by 33% compared to the beginning of the year. Experts attribute the rise to seasonal activeness and the growth of social tension.
Photo courtesy of Oleg Yakovlev/RBC
Protest Factors
During the second quarter of 2017, the number of protests in Russia rose by a third compared to the start of the year. There were 284 protests in the first quarter of the year, while 378 protest events were recorded in the second quarter, the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CERP) reported in its paper “Russia in 2017: The Number of Protests Grows.” RBC has a copy of the paper.
The CERP’s analysts divide protests into political protests and social protests. The latter include protests over the violation of social rights, declines in living standards, loss of work, and nonpayment of back wages. Over the second quarter, the number of both types of protest grew. The paper’s authors recorded 148 political protests from April to July, compared to 96 in the first three months of the year, while the number of protests provoked by social injustices rose from 167 to 205. The analysts collected their information about protests from the media, social networks, regional analysts, and workforces, who recorded the protests on the ground.
The paper claims the level of protests was high both in 2016 and early 2017. Last year, however, the majority of protests touched on specific issues—wage arrears, the demands of defrauded investors and residential building stakeholders, increases in utility rates, the launch of the Plato system of road tolls for truckers, etc. The authorities did not solve these problems, and so protests have been politicized this year. People involved in them have taken to the streets with more general slogans, for example, anti-corruption slogans, the paper’s authors note. In their opinion, this is the cause of the increase in political protests.
Protests recorded in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2017. [Green] Protests caused by socio-economic issues: 372. [Violet] Political protests: 244. [Light blue] Labor protests: 46. 1st quarter: 167 social protests, 96 political protests, 21 labor protests = 284 protests. 2nd quarter: 205 social protests, 148 political protests, 25 labor protests = 378 protests. Source: Center for Political and Economic Reform, “Russia in 2017: The Number of Protests Grow.” Copyright 2017, RBC
The growth of protests is explained by another factor: seasonality, CERP director Nikolay Mironov told RBC. People protest less at the start of the year than in the spring months. According to Mironov, the regime uses the seasonality of protests to decide when to schedule elections. In 2012, analysts at the Central Electoral Commission determined the populace was politically most active, including in terms of turnout, during two seasons: late March, April, and May, and late October, November, and December. Therefore, the regime moved the nationwide parliamentary and local legislative assemblies election day to September to lower the turnout while announcing the presidential election for March 2018 to raise the turnout
Other eventful factors in the second quarter of this year were the adoption of the law on residential housing renovation and the large-scale protests by Alexei Navalny’s supporters. But the main factor, according to Mironov, was the overall increase in tension due to the fact that the problems that have given rise to protests have not been solved or have been solved on a case-by-case basis.
“This is the Kremlin’s election strategy: solve problems on an ad hoc basis, because it is impossible to solve them as a whole. But you can go to a region and resolve a specific problem in a flashy way for the TV cameras,” Mironov explained.
Mironov argues that the federal authorities also expect that, after a public flogging during the president’s televised call-in show and his trips to the regions, local authorities will start solving problems on their own.
The increase in the number of political protests partly has to do with how the media covers the protests, Mironov argues. According to him, journalists usually pay more attention to political protests than to social protests, and this has a dampening effect on protests. People about whom reporters don’t write are “a priori less protected.”
Localization
The CEPR’s conclusions about the growth of protests have been indirectly confirmed by research carried out by the Levada Center. According to one of its surveys, the number of people who agree that political protests are possible in their town has risen from 14% in February to 23% in June, Levada Center sociologist Stepan Goncharov told RBC. The number of people willing to take part in political protests has increased from eight to twelve percent. An even greater number of people predicted social protests would break out in their towns. When asked, “Are protests against decreased living standards possible in your town right now?” 28% of respondents in June said they were, as opposed to only 19% in February.
Protests in the 1st quarter of 2017 by federal district. [Green] Social protests: 472. [Violet] Political protests: 244. [Light blue] Labor protests: 46. Volga Federal District: 160 protests. Central Federal District: 132 protests. Siberian Federal District: 86 protests. Northwest Federal District: 82 protests. Southern Federal District: 66 protests. Far Eastern Federal District: 47 protests. Ural Federal District: 62 protests. North Caucasus Federal District: 27 protests. Source: Center for Political and Economic Reform, “Russian in 2017: The Number of Protests Grow.” Copyright RBC, 2017
It would be wrong to say there have been considerably more social protests in recent months, argues Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, based on the results of his own research. According to Vinogradov, the number of political protests has increased mainly due to protests by Navalny’s supporters, but the number of social protests has remained at the same level. It would also be wrong to say the number of social protests depends directly on how the authorities resolve the issues that provoke them, says Vinogradov. According to him, the authorities do not have an overall algorithm. In some locales, they resolve issues immediately, fearing protests, while in other places they ignore problems or get bogged down in talking about them. The problem is that the authorities are not always able to determine the real cause of protests and react correctly to it.
Discontent is growing, but the majority of protests remain local for the time being, argues political scientist Konstantin Kalachev.
“The regime is fairly good at solving problems by nipping them in the bud,” argues Kalachev.
Although we cannot be sure social protests will not segue into political protests.
“For the time being it all comes down to demands to dismiss one governor or another, nothing more,” says Kalachev.
Given the dismal state of Russian healthcare, many people practice folk medicine. Photo by TRR
Experts Predict Reduction in Number of Hospitals to 1913 Levels
Polina Zvezdina RBC
April 7, 2017
The optimization of healthcare has led to massive hospital closures and a decrease in the quality of medicine in Russia, experts say. By 2021–2022, the number of hospitals in the country might drop to the level of the Russian Empire.
Hospitals of the Russian Empire
Between 2000 and 2015, the number of hospitals in Russia halved, dropping from 10,700 to 5,400, according to calculations made by analysts from the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CEPR), based on data from Rosstat. In a report entitled “Burying Healthcare: Optimization of the Russian Healthcare System in Action,” CEPR analysts note that if the authorities continue to shutter hospitals at the current pace (353 a year), the number of hospitals nationwide will have dropped to 3,000 by 2021–2022, which was the number of hospitals in the Russian Empire in 1913. (RBC has obtained a copy of the report.)
Healthcare reform kicked off in 2010, when the law on compulsory health insurance was adopted, David Melik-Guseinov, director of the Moscow Health Department’s Healthcare Organization Research Institute reminded our correspondent. It consisted in optimizing costs by closing inefficient hospitals and expanding the use of high-tech health facilities. The authors of the CEPR’s report explained that they examined a fifteen-year period when Vladimir Putin was in power, including his tenure as prime minister. In addition, the vigorous reform and optimization of healthcare kicked off between 2003 and 2005, as is evident from the statistics on the numbers of hospitals and outpatient clinics.
Hot on the heels of the hospitals, the number of hospital beds also decreased during the fifteen-year period: on average by 27.5%, down to 1.2 million, according to the CEPR’s calculations. In the countryside, the reduction of hospital beds has been more blatant: the numbers there have been reduced by nearly 40%. These data have been confirmed by Eduard Gavrilov, director of the Health Independent Monitoring Foundation. According to Gavrilov, the number of hospital beds has been reduced by 100,000 since 2013 alone.
Melik-Guseinov agrees the numbers of hospitals and beds have been decreasing, but argues these figures cannot be correlated with the quality of medical service and patient care. The primary indicator is the number of hospitalizations, and that number has been growing, he claims. For example, 96,000 more people were discharged in Moscow in 2016 than in 2015. This means that, although hospital bed numbers have gone done, hospital beds have been used more efficiently. Each hospital bed should be occupied 85–90% of the time, Melik-Guseinov stresses. If beds stand empty, they need to removed.
Outmaneuvering Outpatient Clinics
As the CEPR’s report indicates, the trend towards a decrease in hospitals and hospital beds could be justified were resources redistributed to outpatient clinics, but they too are being closed in Russia. During the period from 2000 to 2015, their numbers decreased by 12.7%, down to 18,600 facilities, while their workload increased from 166 patients a day to 208 patients.
“The planned maneuver for shifting the workload and resources from hospitals to outpatient clinics did not actually take place. The situation became more complex both in the fields of inpatient and outpatient care,” conclude the authors of the report.
In its report, CEPR also cites the outcome of an audit of healthcare optimization performed by the Federal Audit Chamber. The audit led the analysts to conclude that the reforms had reduced the availability of services. As the CEPR notes, the incidence of disease increased among the population by 39.1% during the period 2000–2015. Detected neoplasms increased by 35.7%, and circulatory diseases, by 82.5%. The analysts personally checked the accessibility of medical care in the regions. The report’s authors tried to get an appointment with a GP in a small Russian city, for example, Rybinsk, in Yaroslavl Region. If they had been real patients, they would have waited 21 days to see a doctor. In addition, write the analysts, hospitals do not have a number of drugs, such as dipyrone, phenazepam, and ascorbic acid.
Melik-Guseinov is certain that one cannot rely on data on the incidence of disease among the population as an indicator of deteriorating healthcare in Russia. He points out that what is at stake is not the incidence of disease per se, but diagnosis. The fact that the more illnesses are detected is a good thing.
Fastfood Wages
The CEPR’s analysts write that the lack of medicines in hospitals reflects another problems in Russian healthcare: its underfunding. The government constantly claims expenditures on healthcare have been increasing, but, taking inflation into account, on the contrary, they have been falling. The CEPR refers to an analysis of the Federal Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund. Their analysts calculated that its actual expenditures would fall by 6% in 2017 terms of 2015 prices.
The report’s authors also drew attention to medical personel’s salaries. Taking into account all overtime pay, physicians make 140 rubles [approx. 2.30 euros] an hour, while mid-level and lower-level medical staff make 82 and 72 rubles [approx. 1.36 euros and 1.18 euros] an hour, respectively.
“A physician’s hourly salary is comparable, for example, to the hourly pay of a rank-and-file worker at the McDonald’s fastfood chain (approx. 138 rubles an hour). A store manager in the chain makes around 160 rubles an hour, meaning more than a credentialed, highly educated doctor,” note the analysts in the CEPR’s report.
According to a survey of 7,500 physicians in 84 regions of Russia, done in February 2017 by the Health Independent Monitoring Foundation, around half of the doctors earn less than 20,000 rubles [approx. 330 euros] a month per position, the Foundation’s Eduard Gavrilov told RBC.
Compulsory medical insurance rates do not cover actual medical care costs, argue the CEPR’s analysts. For example, a basic blood test costs around 300 rubles, whereas outpatient clinics are paid 70 to 100 rubles on average for the tests under compulsory medical insurance. Hence the growing number of paid services. Thus, the amount paid for such services grew between 2005 and 2014 from 109.8 billion rubles to 474.4 billion rubles.
The authors of the report conclude that insurance-based medicine is ineffective in Russia. Given the country’s vast, underpopulated territory, one should not correlate money with the number of patients. This leads to underfunding and the “inevitable deterioration of medical care in small towns and rural areas.”
“It is necessary to raise the issue of reforming insurance-based medicine and partly returning to the principles of organizing and financing the medical network that existed in the Soviet Union,” the analysts conclude.
RBC expects a response from the Health Ministry.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade AT for the heads-up
Experts Predict the Closure of All Rural Hospitals by 2023
Ilya Nemchenko RBC
December 9, 2016
If the number of social welfare institutions continues to decrease at the same pace, there will be no hospitals in rural areas within seven years. Experts argue that all rural schools and medical clinics could be closed within seventeen to twenty years.
Due to “optimization” processes, over the past twenty years, rural areas have lost much of their social infrastucture, experts at the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CEPR) have concluded. In report entitled “Russia, Land of Dying Villages,” they note the numbers of hospitals, schools, and clinics in rural areas will continue to decline in the coming years. RCB has a copy of the report.
Based on Rosstat’s data, the CEPR has calculated that, over the past fifteen to twenty years, the number of rural schools had shrunk by nearly 1.7 times (from 45,100 in 2000 to 25,900 in 2014), the number of rural hospitals by four times (from 4,300 to 1,060), and the number of rural clinics by 2.7 times (from 8,400 to 3,060).
The upshot is that all rural hospitals could close in seven years, while all rural schools and clinics could close in seventeen to twenty years, claims the report.
“It is clear that this is not possible and that all ‘optimizations’ have their limits. However, there are fears that social welfare institutions will continue to close in the countryside in the coming years, albeit at a much less impressive pace,” write the report’s authors.
The optimization of schools and hospitals is often justified by decreases in population, although it is socio-economic problems that facilitate flight to the cities. The experts argue the government has deliberately pursued a policy of depopulating rural areas and has deprived the countryside of its “last hope for the future.” They call the current circumstances a vicious circle. Optimization of social welfare facilities has proceeded at a much faster rate than rural depopulation and the abandonment of villages.
According to the report, the rural population has been in constant decline over the past twenty years. This has happened due both to migration outflows and the fact that the death rate has exceeded the birth rate. The number of deserted villages increased by more than six thousand from 2002 to 2010, to 19,500. Moreover, less than one hundred people live in more than half of all rural settlements.
The experts note that while the number of depopulated villages has continued to grow in Central Russia and the north, rural areas have been developing vigorously in the south. In 2016, the North Caucasus Federal District had the largest population in terms of percentages (50.9%), while the Northwest Federal District had the lowest (15.8%).
The study underscores that the main causes of depopulation in the countryside are social and economic problems. The standard of living is low in rural areas, while unemployment is relatively high, and this has spurred a growth in the crime rate. The experts note that prices in rural areas are high, so country dwellers spend more money on food than city dwellers do.
Population outflow has also been due to the poor quality of utilities and housing. According to the CEPR, only 57% of rural housing stock is supplied with running water, while only 33% of houses have hot water. The condition of the water mains in the countrsyide has constantly grown worse: only 54.7% of residents are supplied with safe drinking water. The experts note that only 5% of villagers have sewers. (This figure has not changed since 1995.) However, the provision of natural gas is relatively better. According to Rosstat, approximately 75% of the rural housing stock is supplied with pipeline or liquefied gas.
The CEPR’s researchers write that the government policy has concentrated capital, jobs, and people in the large cities, while attempts to maintain the rural population have failed, because there are no conditions for developing the villages. The experts believe that comprehensive socio-economic reforms are needed to solve the problem. Otherwise, the number of deserted villages will have increased by the time of the next census.
Translation and photo by the Russian Reader
See some of my previous posts on life in the Russian countryside:
Whipping Bear: Why the President Needs a “Bad” Prime Minister
Nikolay Mironov Moskovsky Komsomolets
June 1, 2016
Remember the Soviet joke about the plumber who comes to an apartment to fix a leaky radiator?
“The entire system is rotten here: the entire system has to be changed!” he concludes.
The joke is as topical now as it was then, because the system, it seems, has hit rock bottom. But the nation is clearly of two minds. It is seemingly aware of what has been happening in the country, but at the same time it maintains its loyalty to the regime that has brought us to this pass.
On the one hand, we see a president with a huge rating. On the other hand, we see a rapidly failing economy, a deteriorating social sphere, and, consequently, a high degree of public dissatisfaction with the regime. How can it be that as the foundation crumbles, the president manages to maintain his popularity?
The logic of this social attitude was, I think, nicely expressed by a cabbie who recently gave me a lift.
“Putin is going like gangbusters: the West, America, Syria, Donbas. And Medvedev is supposed to be taking care of the economy instead of fiddling with his iPhone.”
And right then and there he served me up a helping of bad news. He has been getting less work. Prices are rising. Who knows where the hell we are headed.
The taxi driver in fact reproduced the classic propaganda formula he hears every day on the TV. Aside from America, bad officials and liberals are the root of our troubles. The government is clearly underperforming, while the president is terribly busy with foreign policy and lifting Russia from its knees. He is the country’s sacred patron, its guardian angel, and the shortcomings of officials do not stick to him.
If you are thinking straight, cognitive dissonance must kick in, of course. The president has a huge number of powers. He appoints the government, and he could, if he felt like it, sack any minister, including the prime minister, without consulting with anyone. He has the power to kickstart any reforms via presidential decrees. And the Duma is at his beck and call, for United Russia holds the majority of seats there. Why does Putin not appoint a good team, dismiss corrupt officials, and announce a policy shift for the country? How will he lift the country from its knees if the economy tanks? If he is weak and incapable of doing it, why should we support him? If he just does not want to do it, that is another strike against him. But the nation, which has a weak grasp of political institutions and sees no credible alternative in sight, is willing to believe that “Putin has it rough,” that “he is fighting,” and that “they are getting in his way.”
The massive brainwashing on this point allows the regime to keep a tight lid on the system and change nothing fundamental about it, thus preserving the current inertial scenario, which is favorable to the elites. It is favorable to them because, were the government to decide to undertake economic reforms, the economic interests of the elites would inevitably take a hit, forcing them to surrender some of their comforts and excess profits.
However, while the costs of the crisis are primarily borne by the masses, somebody has to be made the fall guy, the virtual whipping boy. With the exception of defense minister Sergei Shoigu and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the cabinet has been appointed to this role along with abstract liberal circles, who, allegedly, have a behind-the-scenes influence on officials.
It is obvious that today the head of state cannot officially support the current course, which has resulted in rampant poverty among the population. Equating this policy with the president would be, if not tantamount to suicide, then certainly a powerful blow to his popularity. But Putin has no intention to change course for the reason given above: the interests of the elites. For this reason, on the eve of the election campaigns, the plan is to deliberately unhook the domestic agenda from the president and hang it on Medvedev and his government. Consequently, the prime minister will no longer be the number two man in Russia, but an expendable, a scapegoat.
Nikolay Mironov. Photo courtesy of the Center for Economic and Political Reform (Moscow)
Moreover, we should not identify Medvedev with United Russia. Their identities are not blurred in the propaganda, and this is no accident. All the negativity towards officials and the head of the government must not devolve on the party tasked with winning a majority in the Duma in September. United Russia members have thus even been criticizing government ministers, pretending that they and the executive branch are different animals, despite the fact they have the same leader (Medvedev) and a majority in parliament, allowing them to make any and all political appointments and legislative decisions.
This is a quite important part of the spectacle. Medvedev has to be a lightning rod for Putin, and yet United Russia, which Medvedev chairs, has to make it successfully through the campaign for the new seating of the Duma. Since this is the task at hand, the regime will do its utmost to control the volume of criticism leveled at the prime minister, including criticism voiced by opposition parties. As for attacks by forces close to the regime (e.g., the Russian People’s Front’s usual philippics against bureaucrats), they will most likely come down to a matter of tweaking the picture to help the president avoid the impact of potential criticism for the current situation. But the propagandists will avoid belittling the government excessively during the election period. “Local officials” will bear the brunt of the negativity. The government, moreover, will be given carte blanche to spend budgetary funds for populist purposes and to mitigate the crisis, including through a temporary increase in dividends paid out by large corporations. (The figures currently quoted range between 300 and 400 billion, which should be quite enough to get through the summer.)
Thus, during the Duma campaign, Medvedev will draw fire upon himself. So-called managed democracy, however, will ensure this fire will not turn into a conflagration and burn the regime and the elites. The president must remain unharmed, since his main play strategically is the 2018 presidential election, a key election for the elites.
The next act in the political spectacle will be Medvedev’s premiership after the Duma elections in September and in the run-up to 2018. Here, too, he will function as a whipping boy and political expendable, readying the way for the launch of Putin’s next presidential campaign.
After the election, the prime minister, having received formal carte blanche from the voters, can undertake unpopular measures. (Unless, of course, the oil price suddenly rises miraculously.) It is inevitable. Someone has to pay for the crisis, and, apparently, the elites are still not this someone. In any case, it is Medvedev who will have to make ends meet in the 2016 budget, with its whopping 14.7% deficit on the expenditures side, and then rob Peter to pay Paul when drafting the 2017 and 2018 budgets.
If the situation gets ugly, and the populace’s complaints attain a critical mass, Putin can dismiss Medvedev on the eve of the presidential election, appointing him to some cushy post. And he will again profit from the decision, because in the eyes of the electorate, the president will be seen as a virtual national savior. Having dampened tensions in society this way, he will be re-elected to another six-year term as president, winning an acceptable percentage of the vote. The opposition will again be confounded, and someone like Alexei Kudrin can become prime minister. This will nicely symbolize the compromise between “liberals” and “conservatives,” while also functioning as a nod to the west, whose cheap money we need desperately.
The alpha and omega of all this complicated maneuvering is preserving the system, and thus preserving the privileges and assets of the supreme elites, their lifestyle, and their ability to peaceably transfer their wealth to their children. They will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and once again enjoy the sunsets on the French Riviera and in Italy.
Only time and economic conditions will tell what comes next. If the country’s currency reserves run out, and the oil price does not increase, intrigues around choosing Putin’s successor will kick off. Or a new scapegoat will be found, and so on ad infinitum. Generally speaking, the current regime just does not plan that far ahead.
Only one question remains. What is in all of this for Medvedev himself? Does he enjoy being expendable? Here it is like the line from the classic Soviet comedy film The Pokrovsky Gate: “Life is lived not for pleasure’s sake, but for the sake of conscience.”
I think the answer that immediately comes to mind is also the most likely to be the right answer. Medvedev does his job and is loyal to his boss. He cannot imagine himself outside the system, much less as the creator of a new system.
Another joke comes to mind in this connection. President Medvedev wakes up in a sweat. His wife asks what the matter is.
“I dreamt I fired Putin,” Medvedev replies.
2011 clearly showed that staging a revolution or even serious reforms was beyond the prime minister’s scope. Medvedev’s political career consists of brief ascents followed by a series of humiliations. However, his job has numerous upsides, too. Is it so bad being prime minister of such a rich country as Russia for a whole six years?
But we would love 100s more records.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (second right) and National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov (third left) take part in a ceremony marking National Guard Day in Moscow on March 27. Photo courtesy of Mikhail Klimentyev/TASS
The Russian Reader 