Monetization of benefits

Anatoly Papp, Demos Center

On January 10, actions by pensioners against the monetization of benefits began in different regions of Russia. Reviews of events can be found on NEWSru.com , as well as in Novaya Gazeta .

The geography of the rallies is from the Moscow region to regional and district centers, numbering up to 5,000 people (Almetyevsk, Tatarstan).

As a rule, these are unauthorized rallies that take place near city administration buildings and/or blocking highways and streets. In Togliatti , “protesters behaved aggressively and tried to break into the administration building.” But “in the Chita region, people are law-abidingly waiting for permission to hold a rally.”

Slogans and demands relate mainly to the return of transport benefits; often protesters demand to cancel the entire monetization program, “to return everything as it was.” Samara pensioners demanded to maintain previously existing benefits and cancel the increase in fares for municipal transport from January 1. Participants in the protest against the abolition of benefits in Ufa demanded to increase the amount of compensation to benefit recipients, return their right to free travel on transport, and take measures to prevent a “catastrophic rise in prices” for bread, gasoline and essential goods.

In some places it comes to more radical demands. For example, pensioners of Izhevsk intend to begin the procedure for recalling State Duma deputies of the Russian Federation from Udmurtia Svetlana Smirnova and Evgeny Bogomolny (United Russia faction), who voted for a number of laws on social security reform.

There are interesting incidents: protesters demanded to make Khimki a district of Moscow, where benefits were maintained at the expense of the local budget.

There are few reports about the actual organizers of the actions and they are not always confirmed by other sources. For example, according to Interfax, among the organizers of the action in the Moscow region were representatives of the Russian Communist Youth Union (RCYU) . NEWSru.com reports that “leaflets from the local Union of Pensioners calling for people to gather at the city administration building at ten o’clock in the morning appeared in the mailboxes of Khimki residents the day before.” The protest action in Samara was initiated by members of the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation . In the Krasnodar Territory, members of the Krasnodar Regional Committee of War and Labor Veterans, the Armed Forces and law enforcement agencies declared their readiness for rallies.

The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) stated that it is ready to organize protests if the authorities do not make changes to federal and regional laws related to preferential payments.

There are examples of self-organization at spontaneous rallies. “The Public Council of Pensioners of the Udmurt Republic was created from among the participants in the rally that took place on January 12 in Izhevsk.

The police usually behave softly. However, Ekho Moskvy reported that “from two to four pensioners were injured as a result of assault by the Moscow region riot police; two were taken to the hospital.” There was a report that pensioners in Khimki were dispersed by riot police with dogs (Novaya Gazeta in the article “Departing Nature” of January 13). According to other sources , “the Khimki police did not try to interfere with the old people. Some smiled condescendingly. “My benefits were canceled,” a sergeant whispered. - Well done, old women!

But in Kaliningrad and other cities there were cases of police arbitrariness against conductors: the head of the Kaliningrad Regional Internal Affairs Directorate, Police Major General Sergei Kirichenko, ordered “to immediately take measures to suppress actions by transport workers against employees of internal affairs bodies who are on duty.” “In the Kaliningrad region, the main clashes (according to some sources, even with the participation of local riot police) occur between conductors, on the one hand, police officers and employees of the Baltic Fleet, on the other” (REPORTING FROM THE EDITIONAL “Novaya Gazeta”, January 13, 2005) .

The reaction of the prosecutor's office ranged from initiating criminal cases to promising not to consider road closures even as an administrative violation. According to the RIA-NOVOSTI agency, protocols on administrative violations were drawn up against 12 participants in the rally, which took place on Leningradskoye Shosse. And the prosecutor's office of the Samara region began checking the legality of holding rallies of pensioners against social reform, although the prosecutor's office itself states that the rallies were not authorized.

At the beginning of the protests, officials were clearly at a loss and rarely made contact, which sometimes led to an escalation of the protesters’ actions and cases of road blocking. “On January 10, about 300 pensioners staged a rally on the square in front of the Samara City Hall. After standing under the walls of the city administration for half an hour and without waiting for any explanation from officials, the pensioners went to block the city center. Some of the protesters, shouting “Putin, choke on your 150 rubles!” and “The State Duma gave us a ride!”, she remained at the entrance to the mayor’s office to guard someone from the authorities” (REPORTING FROM THE EDITIONAL “Novaya Gazeta”, January 13, 2005).

Quite quickly, the authorities chose a policy of pacifying the protesters and, at the same time, searching for the culprits, real and mythical.

In the struggle for the sympathy of beneficiaries, local authorities make completely democratic gestures.

The head of the Khimki region, in addition to the administration’s “hotline” for protection from conductors, announced that on January 15 there would be a meeting of the administration with residents of the district regarding the problems that caused the rally.

In Novosibirsk on January 18, there will also be a “hotline” on issues of “monetization” of benefits; citizens will be able to ask questions by calling the mayor’s public reception.

Finally, in some regions the authorities are already making concessions . The city administration of Yekaterinburg decided to maintain transport benefits for pensioners, of whom there are 84 thousand in Yekaterinburg. The head of the city, Arkady Chernetsky, emphasized that the decision taken was more political than economic. There is no money for these purposes in the city budget.

In the Sverdlovsk region, beneficiaries can travel on public transport using the certificates of a war veteran or home front worker until April 1. In a number of cities, local authorities have decided to leave free travel for all pensioners. This issue is being resolved in Yekaterinburg .

Deputy Governor of the Moscow Region Alexey Panteleev said: “We expect that residents of the Moscow Region will be able to use public transport in Moscow for free. In turn, residents of Moscow will be able to travel around the Moscow Region for free.” The only unresolved issue remains free travel for residents of the Moscow region in the Moscow metro, but this problem will also be resolved in the near future. He also said that the Moscow region authorities intend to return to providing in-kind benefits for travel on public transport for federal and regional beneficiaries. “The 3 billion rubles that we planned to pay as compensation for providing benefits in kind will now be used to ensure the operation of transport enterprises,” Panteleev said .

In the center, as well as in regional administrations, they are looking at neighboring echelons of government in search of those to blame. For example, according to Gryzlov , “people’s dissatisfaction is caused by non-compliance with the provisions of the law. The speaker believes the law itself to be fair.”

State Duma deputy, deputy chairman of the Defense Committee Alexey Sigutkin said that “failures are occurring precisely because of the government and regional authorities.”

Vladimir Putin himself, at a meeting with the governor of the Novosibirsk region, Tolokonsky, drew attention to the transport problems of former beneficiaries: “You took the right, timely measures. We need to think about whether they are sufficient. We need to make sure that labor veterans, home front workers and the repressed do not feel offended.” .

“Izvestia” writes that in the end, Minister Zurabov will most likely become the ultimate leader for failure in social reform, reports “Echo of Moscow” .

“Only the chairman of the Council for Promoting the Development of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights under the President, Ella Pamfilova, tried to turn the conversation into a constructive direction,” says Newsru.com . “Now we need to not blame each other, but the Duma and the government should work together to finalize, monitor how the law is being put into effect, and urgently amend this law where something can still be corrected ,” Pamfilova urged on the radio station “Ekho Moskvy” ", and then said the obvious that no one yet wants to admit either in the Duma or in the government. - The reform of the social sphere had to begin with a change in the income of the population. The population is insolvent. While the level of income is so low, the level of benefits that are offered is not can compensate for benefits."

In the bureaucratic search for the perpetrators, these most often turned out to be representatives of other government structures; in some cases, there were attempts to look for “instigators.” For example, the governor of the Moscow region, Boris Gromov, said that criminal cases would be brought against the organizers of the rally in Khimki, while he emphasized that we are talking specifically about the organizers, and not about the pensioners participating in the rally. The governor said that those who push pensioners to take such actions themselves, as a rule, do not participate in such actions, Polit Ru reports .

The head of the Khimki region published an official appeal in the Khimki News newspaper, which states that “the state has deprived the most worthy and the most socially vulnerable - veterans, pensioners.” The head of the district has almost found the switchmen - he promises to help pensioners fight the “rudeness of conductors”, for which they are even offered to call the administration’s “hotline”.

Samara Region Prosecutor Alexander Efremov said that the prosecutor's office has information about the main organizers of the action - the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) of Limonov. However, the leader of the NBP, Eduard Limonov, knows nothing about his party’s involvement in organizing unauthorized rallies.

State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, arguing in Novaya Gazeta on the topic “who is to blame?”, points out: “This time, for the umpteenth time, governors and mayors... This is the vile anatomy of a lie. The cynical lies of the federal government and its parliamentary “courtyard people” (“Chant for help”, “Novaya Gazeta”, January 13, 2005)

And in the Sverdlovsk region the media were to blame for “escalating the situation.”

The media paid quite adequate attention to the protests; in any case, reports about the rallies were present in the news of all central television channels. “Novaya Gazeta” complained that “not a single Russian TV channel showed how pensioners in Khimki were dispersed by riot police with dogs. These footage could only be seen by those who have a satellite dish or who thought of turning on Euronews” (“Novaya Gazeta” in article "Departing nature" dated January 13).

The general tone of media reports ranges from neutral to clearly sympathetic towards the protesters.

The accusations against the authorities are also common, the main ones being:

• in the worsening conditions of beneficiaries. One of the articles of the federal law explicitly states that the situation should not be worsened;

• in poor preparation and insufficient explanatory work of officials;

• delay in payment of compensation;

• insufficient transport compensation compared to the cost of a single travel pass;

• point out the unevenness of compensation , for example, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, from January 1, disabled people of group II (federal benefit recipients) receive a total compensation of 550 rubles per month, and pensioners (regional benefit recipients) receive a targeted transport compensation of 50 rubles per month; that's 10 trolleybus trips.

These accusations are quite fair, although with a reform of such a scale it could have turned out worse “than always.” Here is a colorful picture from Saratov: “Since January 1, conductors of city electric transport have been demanding money from old people for travel. However, veterans often have nothing to pay. Not a single one of the 500 thousand regional beneficiaries has received the promised compensation to date. However, in the New Year’s greetings, the mayor and governor announced, that travel for beneficiaries will remain free - since Saratov residents have not yet been given money. “And the madhouse began,” characterizes the situation at Gorelektrotrans. The grandmothers tried to return the January passes, purchased in advance, back to the kiosks and refused to pay the conductors. They didn’t give a gesture to transport workers, but they cut budget funding by 2.5 times and doubled the collection plan. Old people are mercilessly disembarked, and car drivers are given valerian after each trip" (REPORTS FROM THE EDITORIAL, Novaya Gazeta, January 13, 2005).

An expert at the Center for Political Technologies, Alexey Makarkin, believes that “... all this will work towards a strong moral deterioration of the regime and a decrease in trust in it... This is a very real danger. After all, for the existence of a regime, one of the most important foundations is trust in it from the outside the majority of Russians."

“Novaya Gazeta” in the article “Departing Nature” of January 13 writes: “Street disobedience, in which thousands of people took part in different regions of the country, not only demonstrated a blatant lack of responsibility for their decisions on the part of the legislative and executive authorities, but also created a qualitatively new socio-political situation,” says NEWSru.com .

“Civil society... has finally directly declared its rights to participate in the life of the state,” Newsru.com rejoices. And he quotes the head of the Mercator research group, Dmitry Oreshkin: “A grassroots fire began: people felt that politics affected them directly, and they demand that the authorities enter into partnership relations with them.” ... Fortunately for the country, the outcome of the reckless decision of the government and parliament on such a social support mechanism does not necessarily have to be tragic. “If this protest spreads to other social groups, then a crisis of power will ensue... In my opinion, what is happening is a sign of the growth of society, which over the 15 years of perestroika has ceased to be afraid of power... This is our chance to enter the normal path of development of the country.”

“The reform of the social sphere had to begin with a change in the income of the population. The population is insolvent. While the level of income is so low, the level of benefits that are offered cannot compensate for the benefits,” says Ella Pamfilova.

“What is inaccessible to the minds of those in power was predicted by experts long ago. “A negative reaction to the state’s social policy should have broken through at some point, because throughout the year the population heard information about how the country was getting richer, how oil prices were rising, the size of the stabilization fund and gold and foreign exchange reserves, and the citizens themselves feel that they are getting poorer, and they don’t understand this , says Konstantin Simonov, director of the Center for Political Current Affairs in Russia. “ I am convinced that if there had been no monetization of benefits, the crisis would still have occurred, but when beneficiaries were no longer allowed on public transport for free against the backdrop of a growing richer state, the reaction of the population could be terrible.”

The specific reasons for the protests were most often the non-payment of compensation for travel on public transport. However, judging by the demands of the protesters, pensioners are not seeking timely payments at all, but the return of the system of benefits, often not only for transport, but also for housing and telephone payments.

On a general wave of sympathy for pensioners, their demands, like the system of benefits itself, are not criticized by the media. “The amount of monetary compensation for victims of political repression, for example, will range from 200-250 rubles. A single ticket for travel on public transport in Nizhny Novgorod costs more than 500 rubles,” reports NEWSru.com, without explaining why transport compensation for a pensioner should be in the amount a single travel ticket, which not every working person needs.

This approach coincides with the position of the protesters themselves: in their letter to the leadership of the executive and legislative authorities, residents of Khimki - participants in the rally on January 10, complain that “a 2,000 ruble pension can only support ten trips there and back. But that’s the entire pension! For us, the right to free travel is It's just life itself." Why Khimki pensioners need to travel to Moscow ten times a month at 200 rubles per trip, pensioners do not explain, and journalists are not interested.

The same logic is in the first lawsuit challenging the law on the monetization of benefits, filed by St. Petersburg University professor Kim Burkov: “The basis for the claim is the norm of federal law, according to which the conditions for providing benefits locally cannot be worsened. The St. Petersburg authorities offer compensation to pensioners unequal replacement for the benefits that they lose, and amounts to 230 rubles - 40% of the cost of a single travel ticket,” commented Boris Vishnevsky, who represents Burkov’s interests in court, on the lawsuit.

State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov calls travel compensation of 93-300 rubles a month “shameful” (“Chant for help,” Novaya Gazeta, January 13, 2005).

From agency reports it follows that sometimes pensioners wanted to simultaneously maintain both benefits and compensation for them. For example, in Ufa, protest participants demanded to increase the amount of compensation for beneficiaries, return their right to free travel on transport, and take measures to prevent a “catastrophic rise in prices” for bread, gasoline and essential goods. “In Vladimir, pensioners demanded an increase in the amount of compensation for lost benefits, the preservation of free travel on trolleybuses, as well as the arrival of the governor and the head of the city. ... Pensioners shouted to the mayor: “Your salary is 55 thousand, the governor’s is 94 thousand, and we’ll get a handout.” They threw me 200 rubles!”

“While working part-time, we tried to remain law-abiding citizens and regularly paid for housing ,” say pensioners, “ but today we are put in a hopeless situation.”

We did not find any discussion in the media about the following issues:

• Is it possible to build a compensation system in such a way that no victims appear, even if the amount of compensation remains the same? If one of the old women lives next to a cheap market and a clinic (and there are many of them - for example, in residential areas of Moscow), and the other needs to travel far, then the first benefits from compensation, and the second benefits in kind. Is some kind of “averaging” of interests possible here?

• Is compensation in the amount of a single travel ticket, the cost of which many protesters and journalists refer to, fair? What do the rights of the rest of the population (for example, in small towns and villages) and taxpayers look like in this regard?

• If we now return to benefits and cancel compensation, will no one suffer?

• When a working pensioner cannot travel to his place of work for compensation, or when this concerns civilian military personnel (security service for special facilities), perhaps this should be considered as a salary problem? Why does a retired courier travel at the expense of the taxpayer, and not the employer?

• If we had an excellent government that calculated everything in advance, explained it and managed to pay, would there be no rallies?

• There are 26 (36) million beneficiaries in Russia. If at least 1/5 of them suffered financially: wouldn’t they be enough to block all the roads in Russia?

Comments:

Alexander Auzan, Institute of National Project:

- Corr.: The authorities, obviously, screwed everything up, the law was adopted by a manipulated parliament, and the rights of citizens suffered. Can we say that the negative result is a consequence of the absence of a normal parliament and civil society in Russia?

- A. Auzan: Of course. I would say that even a normal parliament would screw this up. This kind of drafting is a very delicate work, it is an attempt to sew a suit for a non-standard figure without meeting the customer. As a result, it presses so hard that it hurts. There are a lot of small details that cannot be foreseen without communicating with the interested groups themselves. This does not mean that they always offer the right solution, but they would, in any case, communicate where their significant interests lie that may be violated by the law. This was not done. And indeed, one of the reasons is a controlled parliament, and the second reason is that this reform was pushed in such a way that the thought immediately arises: it was more important for someone to redirect financial flows rather than implement real social reforms.

It was necessary to consult with different civil organizations at different negotiating platforms, find out lists of problems that would arise along the way, and make several versions in preparing the bill.

The idea itself is correct, the previous system of benefits works poorly and does not work for everyone for whom it was supposed to work, it needed to be reformed in approximately this direction. But absolutely not like that.

Lev Levinson, Institute of Human Rights:

- Corr.: Are the current mass protests caused by errors in the implementation of the law, or by its fundamental shortcomings?

- L. Levinson: The law is categorically unacceptable. That is, from the point of view of reducing costs in the social sphere, the law is correct, it, as they say, optimizes costs. If we talk about saving budget funds, about transferring all responsibility to the regions (which do not have the ability to carry this burden for a long time), if such a task is set, everything is correct, everything has been done strategically and intelligently. If they dealt with each subject separately: veterans, the law enforcement system, culture, the North, employment, firefighters, the police - then, naturally, there would be battles for each position, departmental lobbyists would be everywhere, and they would get stuck in it. And when 450 laws are shoved into one package, and it is no longer possible to isolate anything, a high-speed race is announced - this must be passed in one month! - then, naturally, except for confusion among those who are trying to figure it out, nothing will work out. They pulled it through very competently, and now it’s very difficult to get it back. Therefore, as a last resort, the government has come up with the idea that if they continue to fuss and do not calm down, they will make a decision to suspend this law. This makes it possible, in the worst case scenario, to really think, sit down, and over the course of a year figure out all the rules: leave something (there are some healthy grains - there are very few of them), and change it.

And if we talk about why it is bad in itself: on the whole it significantly reduces the guarantees of social protection and social security. Essential. It removes government obligations regarding minimum amounts of funding for the social sector, be it healthcare, education or culture. Not all of this was implemented, but, in any case, it was stated as a goal of state policy, legitimized in the norms of budget percentages for culture, education, etc. Now it is possible to lower the level of social financing lower and lower. Reduction, rollback - this is not related to monetization at all.

The second is the transfer to the regional level of the main costs of social protection. Despite the fact that tax revenues to regional budgets not only do not increase, but decrease. Regions receive less and less taxes, but spend more and more, and on top of this is the problem of local self-government, a new distribution of functions, when a significant amount of social responsibility falls on this level, while the sources of funding are negligible, the possibilities of self-sufficiency are very doubtful. We will face the fact that some vital problems will “sag” in 2006, when the law on local self-government comes into force, when significant obligations on public utilities, clinics, kindergartens, and so on will be transferred to this level.

Alexander Cherkasov, "Memorial":

- Corr.: What, in your opinion, was the purpose of monetizing benefits?

- A. Cherkasov: The goal of this, like several other reforms, in my opinion, is quite obvious: we are reviving a great power. This means that you need to get money from somewhere. In the early twenties, money was taken through collectivization, i.e. village robbery. Now we have few villages, but why do we have a lot? We have a very money-intensive thing called the “social sphere”. These include benefits, education, healthcare, housing and communal services, plus the need for all this state greatness of military conscription - a human resource. And if the goal of this idea is to withdraw funds to restore the greatness of the state, or not to spend them on anything other than the greatness of the state, then it could not give any other result than the worsening of the situation of a significant part of the population. So this idea in this form, it could not but give rise to mass discontent. Another thing is how it is implemented, how it is, what it results in.

- Corr.: From your point of view, did the masses perceive this as a robbery?

- A. Cherkasov: The masses accepted this late, because all this was obvious at least six months ago, when they voted for it, and actually a little earlier - when it was discussed. But in conditions when there is no system of political parties, there is no parliament as a platform for discussion, there are no media in which this discussion should have arisen - they began to protest, only to be faced with reality. In general, at a much earlier stage the feedback mechanism could have been turned on. We now have the most primitive feedback mechanism possible: street protests. In normal systems, this role is played by political parties, parliament and the media.