Translated material
Economics of a single charter
The director of the World Bank promises the Russian economy average global growth rates. The head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation reports on the restoration. The Minister of Economic Development confidently predicts GDP growth. The Prime Minister declares the importance of these indicators for the benefit of people. All this is happening at the prestigious Gaidar Forum in Moscow. And in the Russian outback, children who are desperate and have lost faith in everything are blowing up and slaughtering their teachers and classmates.
For the economic elite there are things more important than the economy
The Gaidar Forum, which is called the “Russian Davos,” brought together the cream of the local economic elite. (By the way, the head of the organizing committee, State Advisor Vladimir Mau, said that one should not think that a random name means adherence to the ideas of Yegor Gaidar.) He even attracted a number of foreign specialists. For several days now, this entire gilded crowd has been enthusiastically pouring out numbers and percentages, proving how much better and more fun it has become to live in the Russian Federation. The economy is reaching new levels. Its growth rate is about to exceed the world's. And if they don’t exceed it, they’ll catch up. And if they don’t catch up, then it’s still good. Because “there are things more important than the economy.” The prime minister especially emphasized the latter. “The main economic indicator - GDP - is still important, but it must be complemented by others, for example, the indicator of the distribution of benefits,” he said edifyingly.
And this, it should be noted, is especially alarming. Somehow I immediately remember an anecdote about a government meeting with Putin’s participation. Everything is fine with our economy, the leader of the Russian Federation states, now it’s time to think about people. “That’s right, Vladimir Vladimirovich! Two hundred showers each!”
The very fact that the head of government talks about distribution - no matter whether it is fair or not - indicates that the economy has ceased to be even nominally a market economy. And political relations are sliding towards feudal-absolutist ones. A good or not so kind king or president for life must show concern for his subjects in one form or another. Especially in the current politically correct and tolerant world, which sometimes you have to look back at. And especially on the eve of the elections, the outcome of which is still predetermined. The main candidate himself, at least, is absolutely confident in the result. And treats the procedure accordingly. The only question is turnout. Its future president would like to see it on a massive scale. Hence the distribution of bread in the form of handouts for first-born children and the setting up of public gardens in small towns . And distribution of spectacles like swimming in an ice hole (for the common people) and “Russian Davos” (for the intelligentsia type).
Russians are forced to save on almost everything
Meanwhile, according to forecasts from the Development Center of the Higher School of Economics, if the current policy in the Russian Federation continues, the economic growth rate will slow down threefold. According to the director of the center, Natalya Akindinova, by the end of 2018, GDP will increase by only 0.5%. The Ministry of Economic Development's forecast of acceleration has no real justification. Claims about a way out of the recession are “an attempt at wishful thinking.”
These statements, unlike the declarations at the Gaidar Forum, are confirmed by real data. Profits are falling in all sectors of the Russian economy. According to the most optimistic estimates, GDP growth in 2017 was 1.4-1.8% instead of the promised “about 2%.” Construction volumes have dropped to 2010 levels. Manufacturing industry production is at the level of 2012. Domestic private demand corresponds to 2009. Net capital outflow from the Russian Federation, according to preliminary estimates by the Central Bank, increased 1.6 times year-on-year ($31.3 billion), and by the end of the year it had increased 3.5 times. The influx of foreign direct investment (Finanz data) fell by a quarter. Retail turnover in 2017 decreased by 13.1% compared to 2014. The growth of real incomes of the population, predicted by 1.6%, decreased by 1.4%.
At the same time, Rosstat notes that citizens’ savings increased by 14% over the past year. Their volume is almost 30 trillion rubles. Saving for a rainy day. Denying yourself almost everything. According to the Romir research holding, more than half of Russians have not allowed themselves any entertainment activities at all over the past six months. Those who did decide to take such a step tried to spend as little as possible. Even in cheap fast food restaurants, costs have been reduced by an average of 100 rubles. Now they also try to go to the cinema without any fuss - no popcorn or Coca-Cola, just watching a movie. Accordingly, spending on this modest entertainment was halved - 365 rubles compared to 615 rubles three years ago.
Many Russians deny themselves less interesting, but more relevant things. More than half of the population saved on buying clothes and shoes, and slightly less than half on food. The share of those who made purchases of household appliances and electronics fell by half by the end of the year, from 21% to 11%. Only 9% of Russians decided to make repairs by the end of the year (15% at the beginning of the year). What can we say about cars, apartments and jewelry. More than a third of the country's residents (36%) admitted that they did not make any major purchases at all last year.
But, as they say at the Gaidar Forum, “there are things more important than the economy.” This is true.
School emergencies happen one after another
On the eve of the opening of the forum of the country's best economists, on January 15, two schoolchildren carried out a massacre at a Perm school . 15 people were injured, including the criminals themselves, who tried to cut each other.
A day later, on January 17, at a school in the village of Smolnoye in the Chelyabinsk region, one of the ninth-graders stabbed another with a knife during recess. The victim was taken to the hospital with a non-penetrating wound.
On January 18, at the entrance to one of the Moscow schools, a student was stopped who was trying to bring into school several knives, a bottle of gasoline for a lighter, hunting cartridges, a bag of metal balls and a set of screwdrivers.
On the same day, a seventh-grader at Simferopol school No. 1 shot a fifth-grader with an air pistol. The bullet hit the boy in the leg.
At school No. 5 in Ulan-Ude, a ninth-grader threw a Molotov cocktail into the classroom and injured fifteen people with an ax. Three are in serious condition, including the bomb thrower himself, who tried to commit suicide.
In none of the cases have investigators been able to establish the true causes of the aggression. The most “perceptive” are trying to see in this some kind of all-Russian conspiracy among schoolchildren. Roskomnadzor was ordered to block VKontakte groups “calling for massacres in schools.” Three are already blocked.
This is, of course, correct. But it is already known that the Buryat arsonist and butcher has not used this social network for a long time. There are suggestions that he and two other suspects (but who did not participate in the crime) were members of a very real, and not virtual, local community AUE (Arrest Rule is One) .
Protest can take the form of criminal violence
This motto has long-standing criminal roots. But it entered into youth usage en masse and became a subculture only in recent years. Experts believe that minors united under this slogan will certainly form gangster groups and profess the laws and concepts of the world of thieves. They extort money from classmates, create common funds and prepare to enter the zone. There is such a thing. But not only.
“Network gangster associations have emerged in which AUE is cultivated - a set of criminal “concepts” adapted for teenagers,” states opposition publicist Igor Yakovenko. — According to the TFR, in 18 regions of Russia (Trans-Baikal, Stavropol Territories, Buryatia, Tatarstan, Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk regions, etc.) the majority of schools are under the influence of AUE. The personnel policy of the criminal world in Putin’s Russia is becoming more sophisticated than during the time of Yeltsin and the Soviet period... Tens of thousands of Motorolas went to kill. Not everyone returned, but those who return brought the war with them to Russia... This part of Russia has no protest potential, but, if anything happens, its representatives will be the first in pogroms.”
The personnel policy was very accurately noted. “Tramp, our call to you! More attention to the youth of general and enhanced regimes!” - this call of thieves in law, issued in 1988, concerned, as we see, the contingent behind the wire. Now the approach is being widely unleashed. And it assumes the use of the same modern technologies that the pro-government “trolls” have mastered . Those who naively believed that such smart people would no longer be found.
But there may be different opinions about the protest potential. Protest is not necessarily something that pleases the liberal intelligentsia. Socio-economic and cultural policies sometimes produce results that are unexpected for the authorities. The anti-government, counter-state nature of AUE is obvious. The monstrous concentration of official arbitrariness, servility and obscurantism, the atmosphere of social hopelessness and futility naturally give rise to not only opposition-democratic, but also criminal resistance. Unconscious, thoughtless and therefore extremely dangerous for everyone. Especially the youth. Especially with skillful adult guidance. Flocks gather in AUE not only for defense, but also for attack. The victims of which so far are mainly those who are weaker from the same teenage environment. Although in the spring an attack on the police was also recorded in Chelyabinsk .
The nightmarish nature of what is happening inside this system, the cruelest cult of violence implanted in AUE, is also obvious. “Pissing in the toilet,” “circumcision,” “stitching on the wall”—all this flaunting of tin descended from the Kremlin Olympus into the depths of Russian existence and consciousness. Foreign policy based on global lawlessness has also returned like a boomerang. The state lovingly cultivated the aesthetics of banditry and policing. The society got into it. So much so that the authorities are having a hard time hiding their fear.
You can strengthen security measures in schools, kindergartens or cadet schools. You can report on the lessons taught in patriotism and Orthodox morality. You can endlessly repeat scientific tales about cultural codes and agitate about spirituality. But as long as the national leader’s main competitors in the presidential election remain an unprincipled glamorous TV personality and a communist millionaire, the answer to everything will be a cry of “AUE!”