Welcome to stagnation

Russia entered the era of stagnation, and the Putin regime, despite all the problems that it faces, is quite stable - contrary to many forecasts about its imminent collapse. So believes the economist and political scientist Dmitry Travin, professor of the European University in St. Petersburg. “Welcome to stagnation” is the course of lectures by Dmitry Travin, which he will read outside the walls of the European University, recently deprived of a license and evicted from the mansion in the city center.

Dmitry Travin answered Radio Liberty questions.

- You will read your course dedicated to the era of stagnation in the House of Jewish Culture in St. Petersburg. Have you been going to read this course at the European University and were forced to postpone your performances?

- This course has been prepared based on the materials of the book that I have been working on about seven years already, which is not yet ready for publication. And in separate passages, I told about this in different audiences. I did not prepare a course for a particular site and could well read it at the European University. I hope that when we move to another building, I can also collect my traditional audience there. But this will probably be already in the next semester.

Dmitry Travin

- What will your book be called?

- There is no exact name yet, but it is quite possible that it will be called "welcome to stagnation." In today's Russia, I see many parallels with the congestive Brezhnev Soviet Union in which I grew up. These are the years of my childhood, my youth. Until quite conscious age, I lived in the Brezhnev system and I remember it very well, I know it well. And I see quite a lot in common with that, then it is being formed now. Although, of course, these are different systems. They are not identical.

Among the influential groups of interests there is no request for reforms

- One way or another, “welcome to stagnation” means that you are firmly sure that Russia is inevitably awaited by Russia. Why do you think so? Because the leader is aging and eventually begin to resemble Brezhnev? Does Russia not face many challenges that can quickly undermine the existing regime? Say, conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, a possible drop in oil prices, the economic isolation in which Russia was now?

- Everything you said right. But I would like to notice that the Brezhnev stagnant system was held for a very long time, to the death of Brezhnev, and then I survived two more Secretary Generals, who replaced him - Andropov and Chernenko. They did not ruled for long. Nevertheless, this system died not because there were challenges. And there were a lot of challenges, but the system in the very least coped with them. This system fell apart because a new generation of rulers, Gorbachev’s generation, a generation of sixties, as they said in the Soviet Union, came. And this generation has already come with new ideas. It was the new generation with new ideas that destroyed the stagnant system. I must say that the problems that the Soviet regime faced under Brezhnev were even more serious than today's Russia. Since today people, at least, can buy the necessary goods in stores. And then they could not buy sausage in the vast majority of cities in the country. The supply was more or less decent only in the capitals. So, if the system withstood then, it is quite possible that it will last quite a long time now.

- How do you determine the very concept of "stagnation"?

- First of all, stagnation is economic stagnation. The economy is not developing, the life of people does not become better. In the Brezhnev years, although formally, according to statistical indicators, there was some development, but it was the development in the production of all junk, all kinds of goods unnecessary to people. Starting from weapons, which then all the same went into the remelting, and ending with machines for which there were not enough machine tools. They were never used. Today we have a market economy. And the situation is somewhat different.

This is a classic stagnation, when there is neither development nor new ideas

But if we look at statistical indicators, then stagnation has already existed since 2009. During this time, on average, the economy announced less than 1 percent per year. There were years when there was a height of 3-4 percent. There were years when there was just a fall. Well, on average - no more than 1 percent. That's when we see this situation, the question arises of new ideas. Are there any new ideas on how to make an economy growing 5-7 percent per year, and better 10 or 11, as was the case in China in the best of times? There are no such ideas. Scientists have them, but the authorities do not have them.

And if during the years of the Medvedev presidency there were illusions that this president would try to modernize (Medvedev often used this word), then over the last presidential term, Putin, these ideas were completely dispelled. For some time, Putin still supported the illusion that there would be reforms. He ordered the development of the program of economic reforms to Alexei Kudrin, ordered the Stolypin club. But now it is quite obvious that progressive reforms, such as the Kudrinsky reform, will not be implemented. There will be the same course, maybe with increasing taxes and retirement age after the 2018 presidential election. This is a classic stagnation, when there is neither development nor new ideas.

- And it turns out that stagnation inevitably leads to the decomposition of the system? Or maybe some critical moment will come when Putin still listens to Kudrin?

Experts who predicted that the year of the century of revolution will lead to great changes, were disgraced

- Among the influential groups of interests, relatively speaking, security forces, oligarchs, personal Putin’s environment, there is no request for reform. These groups are satisfied with the current situation, or, more precisely, they are not satisfied, but they are trying to improve the situation in the struggle with each other. Whoever plants whom, who will push whom. There is not a single serious group of interests that would like reforms. Intellectuals speak of reforms, but they are not influential in today's Russia. But despite the fact that serious reforms are not expected, this system has mechanisms for self -preservation in medium -term and even in the long term. These are the same mechanisms that were used in the Brezhnev stagnant system. Here, even fundamentally, nothing new needs to be invented.

The first mechanism is the suppression of dissatisfied. If the KGB or the FSB works effectively and cuts off the leaders, then the mass cannot change anything. We saw Andropov effectively solved this problem. And now, under Putin, so far she is decided no worse. Secondly, this is a unity among the elite. The elite conflicts with each other. They try to eat each other, but as in the Brezhnev years, no one attempted to remove the already senile Secretary General. Everyone calmly waited for their turn into power. So today. There are no conspiracies against Putin. The elite eats each other in the framework of those institutions, those rules of the game that Putin established. Individual players like Serdyukov or Yevtushenkov suffer, but the system as a whole does not suffer. She continues to exist.

This is not what can lead to a serious, spontaneous indignation of people

Well, the third factor that ensures the stability of the system is that both in Brezhnev time and now there is no truly sharp fall in the standard of living. Such that people go out into the street with protest, as it was in February 1917. There is a differentiation of income. There is a deterioration in the position of individuals, individual groups. But this is not what can lead to a serious, spontaneous indignation of people. Therefore, I think that the system can exist for a long time. And my generation will live in stagnation, and young people of some part of their lives will also live in stagnation before a new restructuring begins.

- You confidently said that there were no conspiracies against Putin. This is due to the fact that they are very afraid of him?

- It makes no sense to overthrow the president who has a high support rating that can win elections with some falsifications, but without mass repressions, without suppressing thousands, millions of dissatisfied. This leader is quite satisfied with the system. Everyone, of course, would like, as Shevchuk sang in one of his songs, "the country is more built." The security forces believe that more repressions are needed, the oligarchs believe that there is more order in the economy. But there are no such groups of interests that would be ready to take the risk of a qualitative change in the system in the hope of getting another ruler instead of Putin. Which is hardly better.

That's why the system survives. If Putin’s rating drops sharply, if he has health problems, if there are some calls like falling oil prices up to $ 5 per barrel, well, then the situation will be different, then it is necessary to discuss it separately. But so far, if we analyze the current trends, then there is no reason to believe that this system will collapse, in the foreseeable perspective. By the way, this year we can once again state that all experts who predicted that 2017, the year of the century of revolution will lead to great changes, or experts-economists who, back in 2014-2015, said that under the sanctions the economy of Russia will collapse and everything will collapse now, all these experts were disinfected. Nothing of the kind happens.

- In modern Russian series, Soviet stagnation, Brezhnevsky, is now almost romanticizing. It looks that everything was more or less calm. The crime rate was significantly lower than, say, in the same "dashing nineties." People know about the deficit, but probably have a bad idea, especially the younger generation, which did not encounter empty shelves in stores. There was no freedom of speech, you won’t go abroad, but you can travel with a backpack through the vast expanses of the homeland. Are you trying to destroy these myths?

- Yes, sure. With my modest forces I try to resist modern crazy propaganda. But the point here is not only in propaganda. People, when they live poorly, try to romantize some era, and represent in their own imagination that it was better than in fact. By the way, our generation thus romanticized the old tsarist Russia, which, of course, was a more effective society than Soviet, but nevertheless far from ideal. We had many illusions related to how it was wonderful until 1917. So I want to provide real facts, and not some speculation. Those facts that are recorded in all kinds of documents - in letters, and in diaries, and in memoirs - a variety of witnesses of those events.

- Can you give examples?

There are always those who won and losers with reforms

- There are many documents showing how the provision of products in the Soviet Union was arranged. I will talk not only about my personal memories. Someone might think that I am lying. No, there are a lot of documents. There is, say, a wonderful document - the diaries of the literary critic Igor Dedkov, who lived in Kostroma, in a normal provincial city, neither large nor small, and recorded his whole life for many years. There are quite clear instructions on how they ate, what was in stores, what was not there, that they “threw” on the shelves for the holidays, which disappeared.

There are memories of a completely different person - the son -in -law of Brezhnev General Churbanov, a man from the elite, who sometimes, being in the rank of Deputy Minister of the Interior, traveled along the outback. And in his memoirs, he describes how people rushed to him, say, in Central Asia and said: "Well, what do we have in stores? Where is the goods? Why is there nothing?" This is described by a person who, it would seem, must defend Brezhnev, and he writes as it really was. There are memoirs of the priest Ardov, who lived in Yaroslavl, and describes how the so-called "sausage train", a long-long train, was arranged. For her in Yaroslavl, a platform was specially built, because the usual was small for her. People on this train went to Moscow in order to specially buy scarce goods and bring them to their Yaroslavl. There was nothing there. There are memoirs of the singer Galina Vishnevskaya, who describes how her husband Mstislav Rostropovich, an outstanding Russian Soviet musician, accepted Benjamen Britten at his place of English composer, what difficulties he faced in order to feed the guest.

There are a lot of this kind of examples. I will talk about how the Soviet person worked, how the production system was arranged, there will be other examples showing what anti -stimulars to work existed. There will be a special conversation about abroad, about how the Soviet man went to Western countries, if he managed to get there, and tried to bring the most simple goods - medicines, some kind of clothing, female tights, which then only appeared. They tried to import them from abroad, because we could not buy. In general, I collected hundreds of such facts.

-But stagnation for many still looks like an era of calm, a measured life. Without shocks ...

I was preparing for the fact that I would never visit the West, at best I would go to Poland or Bulgaria

-If a person does not count on anything, he doesn’t hope for anything and is ready to just work calmly in the place in which he is sitting, maybe a little advantageous, then in this sense, yes, this is such a calm system. Say, I graduated in the stagnant years of Leningrad University, became an economist, a teacher of economics. And, not expecting big changes in the country, I was preparing for the fact that I would teach the economy at a small institute all my life, advance forward, and I will become an associate professor. He did not even hope to become a professor. And all my life I will tell about the same thing, because the Soviet textbooks of political economy have not changed. There was the same nonsense in them that in the late Nestalin time, that at the time when I began to teach.

I did not like such a measured life. But I had no hope that it would somehow change. I was preparing for the fact that I would never visit the West, at best I would go to Poland or Bulgaria. I was preparing for the fact that while there is strength, I would walk with a backpack in Soviet expanses. By the way, I liked to walk with a backpack in the mountains of the Caucasus or Carpathians. It was wonderful. There was a lot of pleasant emotions.

But then my life changed as the life of all citizens. I could travel. I changed my job. My knowledge in the field of economics and politicians expanded as I could not imagine if I lived in the Soviet Union. I read all the best literature that exists on the scientific problem that I am engaged in. Moreover, much of this I did not even have to read in libraries in English, because books are actively translated and published today in Russia. If a strong monograph of the American professor comes out, after five years it is already in our stores. I am very glad that life has become so dynamic. But someone is upset by this. Yes, with reforms there are always both winners and losers. This must also be taken into account, ” concludes economist Dmitry Travin.