Translated material
Protest
In the regions
Protest
March 24, 2010 Julia Latynina
The elections on March 14 ended a number of significant defeats for United Russia, for example, in the elections of the mayor of Irkutsk, and a wave of rallies that swept the next Saturday in Russia showed that the regime is not as strong as it seems.It is amazing that in all regions the protest movement is caused not by some objective circumstances (hail, pestilence, drought, a drop in oil prices, etc.)-and specific defiant mistakes of the Kremlin.
Take, for example, the defeat of the nominee of United Russia Serebrennikov in the mayor’s elections in Irkutsk. The Irkutsk region is one of the most developed industrial regions of Russia-Braz, the Irkutsk Aluminum Plant, the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, the Brotherhood LPK, the Ust-Ilim LPK, and the Angarsk refinery are working there. Such an area should be profitable. However, the region is a subsidized region, and Irkutsk is one of the fastest empty cities in Russia.
This is possible only in the inverted mirror of Putinomics-when everything is taken from the region to the center, and then a little bit of the center is given back. And Oleg Deripaska and his patron Vladimir Putin are traditionally considered symbols in the region.
Here, with such a background and on the eve of the elections, in which United Russia tried to put the silverfish of the fraternal mayor of the Silobrenniks to the post of mayor of Irkutsk, Vladimir Putin and decided to launch the Baikal Central Bank. This decision is difficult to regard otherwise than a spit in the face of the Irkutsk residents, and the most striking spit is that there is no economic necessity in it.
The good of the Baikal Central Bank, poisoning the waters of the lake, would have been a cornerstone in the Deripaska empire, and the question would be like this: either to launch the Central Bank, or to bankrupt Deripaska. So no: in a huge collection of dozens and dozen factories, picked up by Deripaska since Putin began to especially notify him, BCBK takes a place the size of a mushroom head.
The good would still be about the launch of a city -forming enterprise, and the question would be like this: either the Central Bank poisons Baikal, or people die without work. So no: while the BCCS stood, tourism began to develop in Baikalsk, and now the situation is exactly the opposite: either in Baikalsk there will be tourism, clean air and work for the population, or there will be a BCC for Deripaska.
The same thing happened in Kaliningrad. The region is a poor region, and the cars in it, due to the fact that it is located on the border, are extremely cheap. Therefore, the region takes 3rd place in Russia in terms of the number of cars per capita and the 28th-in terms of living standards. In this situation, the governor Boos raised the transport tax by 26%.
Governor Boos is a man, to put it mildly, arrogant, and not very hiding his attitude to others. What is only one of his famous phrase, when he was the head of the headquarters of the Fatherland, that the Yeltsin family will envy the fate of the Chayescu family. And on Kaliningrad sites there were immediately replicas that if the governor Boos registered his personal aircraft in Kaliningrad, then some payments would immediately block the entire amount of the transport tax. The discussion began how much and to whom the former wrestler with “unity” paid in the Kremlin for his appointment.
The same thing is Primorye. While neighboring China is continuously growing, Vladivostok is all empty and empty, and this does not happen for some objective reasons, but thanks to the Kremlin’s sincere ignorance that there is some kind of people in Primorye and that he also wants to live.
What was the economy of Primorye before the crisis? Fish export, forest export, scrap metal export, cars import. What happened after the crisis? Putin actually forbade the import of cars to help a friend Chemezov, who controls the AvtoVAZ, and even added that everyone who buys a foreign car in a year of crisis is the enemy of the Fatherland (Putin himself continued to move to Mercedes).
The export of the unprocessed forest was also banned, then it was allowed, but it was too late - the industry got up. The export of scrap metal was allowed only from the find - in connection with the respectful circumstance that the Putin’s coach in judo disposes of the Nakhodkinsky port.
They demanded to be taken as the shore for export, and there to unload (!) And to recalculate (!)-an order that, of course, does not fulfill, but which shows how the power in the Kremlin applies to all these strange people who for some reason smoke the air in Russia.
From the polls of public opinion conducted by the Levada Center, it follows that the popularity of the Russian president (anyone, regardless of what his name) directly depends on the price of oil. The price is high - and popularity is high, the price is low - and the popularity is low. This means that, in principle, Putin’s regime is very stable: he can afford anything, and still be popular. Surprisingly - but the Kremlin completely persistently breaks this stability of the regime, signing all kinds of pieces of paper, scored by good people - Deripaska, Rotenberg, Chemezov, etc.
The second circumstance, which is often forgotten, is the quality of Russian protest. Deripaska’s protege did not defeat Irkutsk, but the communist won instead. In Kaliningrad, the Communists made up about 10 thousand people who went out onto the streets a month and a half ago, and the local leader of the “solidarity” Mr. Doroshko quickly faded into the bushes and began to participate in the “constructive dialogue” with Mr. Boos. Most people who go out into the streets require not freedom, but for someone to make them happily and happily. The regime that will win as a result of such a protest will hardly differ significantly from Putin - except for the worse.