ECOLOGY
1. Russia and global warming
ECONOMY
2. The Russian economy in 2006
3. A Russian managerial model?
POLITICS: RUSSIAN NATIONALISM UNDER PUTIN
4. The mainstreaming of extreme nationalism
5. Skinheads under pressure
6. Football fans and the ultra-right
SOCIETY
7. Post-Soviet dedovshchina
8. Russian social stratification
DEMOGRAPHY
9. Demographic forecasts for St. Petersburg
RUSSIA AND CHINA
10. China in Russian eyes
11. Comparing Stalinism and Maoism
GEORGIA / ABKHAZIA
12. The hardest word
FEEDBACK

ECOLOGY

1. RUSSIA AND GLOBAL WARMING

Source. Russian Analytical Digest No. 23: Russia and Global Warming, 19 June 2007. http://www.res.ethz.ch/analysis/rad/

Although I have written on the theme of “Russia and global warming” more than once, (1) I must draw attention to the valuable analyses in this source.

Alexei Kokorin, who coordinates the climate program of World Wildlife Fund — Russia, and Inna Gritsevich of the Center for Energy Efficiency (Moscow) assess the losses and gains that Russia can expect from global warming (GW) by 2015, 2030, and 2050. They note that in the longer term things could get much worse.

Average temperatures for Russia as a whole, and also for Central Russia, are set to rise a further half-degree (Celsius) or so by 2015 and 1.5 degrees by 2030. The regional variation, however, is astonishing, with a rise of 3—4 degrees in Western Siberia forecast for 2015. Winter temperatures will tend to rise faster than summer temperatures.

Precipitation will also increase, especially in winter (by about 5 percent, again with big regional variations). Swamps will expand in some regions due to rising ground water levels. River flow will rise sharply in the north and decline in the south.

The number of extreme weather phenomena, which doubled from 150 to 300 p.a. between 1990 and 2005, will double again to 600 by 2015. Floods are a growing threat, especially in spring and in mountainous areas, where they trigger landslides.

Boundaries between the various zones ­ tundra (permafrost), taiga (forest), steppe ­ will shift north by 200 ­ 350 km, or according to worst case scenarios 600 ­ 1,000 km. Forests will be damaged by more forest fires as well as tree parasites and diseases. Entire food chains (e.g., lemmings / owls and foxes / polar bears) will be disrupted.

The authors turn next to impact on economy and life style. Thanks to a shorter heating season, Russians could in theory save 10 ­ 20 percent of current energy usage by 2050. However, the energy cost of increasingly unstable weather with more extreme events, e.g. unseasonable cold spells, may cancel out this saving. Further expense will arise from buildings and infrastructure becoming less durable.

The benefits of GW for agriculture certainly look impressive. Arable area will increase by 150 percent; the frost-free growing season will be extended by 10 ­ 20 days; in many places it will become possible to cultivate higher value warm-weather crops. Against this we must consider the jeopardy to harvests from increased flooding in some regions and more severe droughts in others. The authors do not try to assess the net effect. (2)

Demand for water will rise, but heavily populated areas will suffer increasingly severe water shortages. More frequent heat waves will extract their toll in human life.

Dr. Roland Gotz of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Berlin) focuses on the impact of GW in the Far North. Melting permafrost has already caused great damage to housing and infrastructure in the areas affected (as in Alaska). It also greatly raises the costs of oil and gas extraction and pipeline maintenance, although the opening of ice-free Arctic sea routes will eventually offer new transportation options. Nevertheless, warns the author, extraction will continue so long as prices remain at high levels. (But that depends on the availability of competitive alternative fuels.)

Petra Opitz of the German Energy Agency considers the prospects for energy savings in Russia. The energy consumed per unit of GDP in Russia is almost three times greater than in Germany, with correspondingly high greenhouse gas emissions. But there is great potential for saving energy at moderate cost. There are many potential savings in the energy sector itself ­ e.g., by cutting losses in the extraction, transmission, and distribution of natural gas, making oil refineries more efficient, replacing obsolete power plants, and improving the domestic heating system.

However, these savings remain potential because despite a declaratory policy in favor of energy efficiency (the Energy Strategy) there is no incentive structure in place to discourage waste and encourage the introduction of more energy-efficient technology. In fact, existing incentives, such as subsidized domestic energy prices, work in the opposite direction. The author also analyzes the interests and modus operandi of the gas and heating monopoly Gazprom as they bear upon energy efficiency. (3)

The source contains a very useful series of tables and diagrams that add a comparative international perspective. In terms of its share of global carbon dioxide emissions, Russia at 6 percent comes well behind the US (23 percent) and China (16.5 percent) but ahead of India and Japan (5 percent each). In per capita emissions, however, Russia comes second after the US (with 10.3 metric tons per person per year).

Notes

(1) Most recently in RAS 37 (item 4), which gives further references.

(2) As both positive and negative impacts of GW on agriculture have already been in evidence for at least a decade, it should be possible to assess the net economic effect and, indeed, its trend over time.

(3) I can’t summarize what she says on this because I don’t fully understand it.

Back to Table of Contents

ECONOMY

2. THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY IN 2006

Source. Clifford G. Gaddy, The Russian Economy in the Year 2006, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 23 No. 1, January ­ March 2007, pp. 38 ­ 49.

Clifford Gaddy (Brookings Institution) starts by highlighting the dramatic “reversal of fortune” in Russia’s financial position. When Putin became PM in August 1999 Russia was bankrupt, deep in debt and with foreign exchange reserves at $8bn and falling. In August 2006 foreign reserves were $323bn (including $65bn in an oil stabilization fund) and still rising fast. Russia has now paid off all its debt, holds one of the largest current account surpluses in the world, and helps to finance the US current account deficit.

The boom rests on “two pillars” ­ that is, on the soaring proceeds from oil and gas exports. True, the share of oil and gas in the economy is declining, but everything else depends on them. The oil and gas companies are obliged to share the rent from these resources with other economic actors and with central and regional government by various formal and informal (often “corrupt”) mechanisms. As “rent manager,” Putin oversees the process, ensuring secure control of rent flows by men loyal to him. (1) The oil and gas companies are also expected to serve the strategic and foreign policy goals of the state.

Next the author turns to the challenges facing Russia, pertaining both to physical capital (the low level of investment) and to human capital (the demographic and health crises).

A key factor in the high mortality among males of working age is that “all too many Russian men are drinking themselves to death” and a major reason for this is that vodka has become so cheap. (2) It seems, however, that Gaddy’s emphasis is misplaced here. A study recently conducted in Izhevsk found the leading cause of male mortality to be the consumption not of vodka but of household products such as antiseptics and cologne, drunk by the most impoverished alcoholics. (3)

In general, the author argues, the problem is not only that not enough will be done to tackle these challenges, but also that the measures chosen may make things worse. Examples of such counterproductive “bear traps” include:

-- investment that “locks in” inherited economic structures and thereby inhibits opportunities for long-term growth;

-- new investment programs to develop geographically and climatically non-viable regions like Siberia and the Far East; (4)

-- a quantitative approach to demographic policy that neglects qualitative factors.

These, however, are long-term issues. In the short and even medium term, Russia’s prospects depend mainly on the volume of oil and gas rents and how they are used. These, in turn, depend on what happens to world oil and gas prices and on the competence of Putin’s successor in managing rents and controlling intra-elite rivalry.

The author concludes that Russia has a good chance of remaining stable in the short term. As for the longer term, “the bear traps are waiting.”

Notes

(1) As an example the author mentions the senior Gazprom manager Valery Golubev, “another former KGB colonel from St. Petersburg.”

(2) The price of vodka today (adjusted for inflation) is roughly one tenth of what it was in 1988.

(3) See http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2103670,00.html

(4) Gaddy, co-author with Fiona Hill of the controversial book “The Siberian Curse,” considers the whole of Siberia non-viable. Many disagree and argue that much of Siberia ­ in particular, the southwest ­ is in fact quite viable, especially when global warming is taken into account (see item 1 above). See RAS 31 and RAS 33 item 10.

Back to Table of Contents

ECONOMY

3. A RUSSIAN MANAGERIAL MODEL?

Source. A. P. Prokhorov, Russkaya model’ upravleniya [The Russian Model of Management] (Moscow: Eksmo, 2006)

I am told that this book has sold very well in Russia. (1) It must have struck a chord. The author currently lectures at Yaroslavl University and works as a business consultant, though it is clear from some of the examples he cites that he also has personal experience in industrial management.

The basic thesis is that there exists a distinctive “Russian model” of management ­ or administration or government or control (2) ­ that persists from one regime to the next. Prokhorov shows how similar managerial problems have been solved in broadly similar ways in the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. For example, tsarist authorities, Soviet enterprises, and post-Soviet firms have all responded to the problem of turnover of scarce labor with various measures designed to prevent people from moving around in search of better conditions. This exemplifies the aversion of the model for market competition as well as for legalistic constraints.

The Russian managerial model is BOTH highly inefficient AND remarkably effective in accomplishing urgent tasks by means of improvisation and the concentration (“mobilization”) and redistribution of resources. The author illustrates the capacity of the model for effective action by examining the successful evacuation of industry and population to the rear at the beginning of the German-Soviet war. I noticed that other examples (e.g., nuclear weapon and missile development) likewise reflect external military pressure. (3)

In Russia a centralized state has typically engaged mainly in mobilizing resources and in redistributing them among primary social, economic, and military units (“cells” or “clusters”). These units retain a certain internal autonomy; their members are held responsible for one another.

Prokhorov challenges the commonly held view that this type of state was an inevitable result of a threatening external environment and, in particular, of the Mongol invasions. Other countries, he points out, suffered devastating invasions without a similar result. He argues that the centralized redistributive state has very ancient roots, predating Kievan Rus, in the practice of exacting tribute known as “polyud’ye.”

The author does NOT say that the Russian model has persisted DESPITE sociopolitical upheavals. The model has stable and unstable (or “crisis”) states that alternate, and this alternation is essential to its preservation and reproduction. Quite different variants of attitude and behavior correspond to the two states: hence the “dualism of the Russian soul.”

In Russia, uprisings, revolutions, and destructive reforms function as mechanisms for coercive transition from the stable to the unstable state when the managerial system has grown too stagnant. (4) The unstable state entails great losses, but fortunately it soon degrades into a new stable state. “The sharper the changes in sociopolitical structure, the more striking the unchanging nature of the basic elements of the national system of management” (p. 317).

In a concluding chapter on the prospects of the Russian model, Prokhorov emphasizes the strength of the factors conducive to the model continuing to reproduce itself. He discusses the managerial behavior of the three types of post-Soviet entrepreneur (former Soviet managers, former speculators, and specialists) and finds that all, for different reasons, are unlikely to establish a new managerial model. In any case, “a nation, like an individual, cannot renounce its mentality, however much it may want to” (p. 317).

Alexander Privalov, scientific editor of “Ekspert” magazine, in his preface gently rebukes the author for being so fatalistic. In his view a genuinely entrepreneurial model of management is gradually emerging in Russia.

Notes

(1) Communication from Leonid Khotin, to whom I am indebted for sending me this book and drawing my attention to its importance.

Part of the book’s appeal, however, must surely have been the colorful little cartoons that decorate the front cover.

(2) Depending on context, the Russian word “upravleniye” can mean any of these things.

(3) However, he also talks about cultural achievements such as early twentieth-century Russian futurism in art and “Russian rock.” These seem to be characteristic of the model in its unstable state.

(4) In referring to destructive reforms Prokhorov undoubtedly has in mind the reforms carried out by Gorbachev, who called the preceding era under Brezhnev the “period of stagnation” (zastoi). The last decade of tsarist rule was also such a period.

Back to Table of Contents

POLITICS: RUSSIAN NATIONALISM UNDER PUTIN

4. THE MAINSTREAMING OF EXTREME NATIONALISM

Source. Galina Kozhevnikova, “Putinskii prizyv”: ideologi ili mifotvortsy [Putin’s Recruits: Ideologists or Mythmakers?]. In Aleksandr Verkhovskii, ed. Putyami nesvobody [By Paths of Unfreedom] (Moscow: Information-Analytical Center “SOVA,” September 2005), pp. 6 - 16

SOVA, which broke away from PANORAMA, has continued the series of highly informative publications on developments in Russian nationalism that was PANORAMA’s trademark. (The analysts are mostly the same people as before.) This and the following two items are based on selected papers from three of their recent volumes.

The author describes how Putin has integrated a large section of what was previously the extreme nationalist fringe into the mainstream of Russian politics. (1) This process has taken two forms. First, Putin himself has brought into public life individuals whose ideas would previously have been regarded as extreme nationalist. Two examples given by Kozhevnikova are:

-- Boris Gryzlov, former interior minister, currently leader of United Russia and speaker of the State Duma;

-- Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council.

Second, a number of political figures regarded under Yeltsin as “extremists” have acquired respectability by eschewing opposition to the Putin regime and supplying the kind of great-power (“patriotic”) rhetoric it requires. Their propaganda “is aimed not at creating any kind of coherent ideology but at serving the current tasks (not even the strategic tasks) of the ‘Putin regime’ (insofar as they may know or guess its tasks).”

It is part of the implicit deal that co-opted nationalists should keep within certain limits. In particular, they are expected not to present themselves openly as Nazis or fascists and to avoid explicit (as distinct from coded) anti-Semitism. They are then able to write regularly for the mainstream press, are frequently invited to speak on television as political “experts,” and so on.

The author makes special mention of three such co-opted Russian nationalists:

-- Natalia Narochnitskaya was in the early 1990s a leading figure of the Constitutional Democratic Party. (2) Currently aligned with Fair Russia (the successor to Rodina) and deputy chair of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee, her main themes are geopolitics and the clash of civilizations. (3)

-- Dmitry Rogozin was the leading figure in the Congress of Russian Communities (Russian acronym KRO) in the mid-1990s. (4) He led the Rodina electoral bloc in 2003 ­ 2006 and in April 2007 announced the formation of a new party, the Great Russia Party.

-- Alexander Dugin is by far the most extreme of the three cases. His prolific writings reveal him as a fascist ­ and, indeed, he calls himself a fascist. (5)

Kozhevnikova presents as another case of the mainstreaming phenomenon the output of the renovated website of the Political News Agency (Russian acronym APN) established in May 2004 by the National Strategy Institute. (6) APN serves as the vehicle for a circle of publicists who advocate anti-liberal, authoritarian, and imperial policies.

Notes

(1) For earlier discussion of trends in Russian nationalism under Putin, see RAS 34 item 1 and 35 item 1. For a survey of extreme Russian nationalism under Yeltsin, see my book “Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements” (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).

(2) I interviewed her in 1992. For my notes of the interview see RAS 22 item 7. This party was one of two parties of the same name, both claiming to take their inspiration from the pre-revolutionary Constitutional Democrats (Cadets). The other new CDP was less nationalistic.

(3) See, for instance: http://www.opec.ru/library/article.asp?d_no=1211&c_no=66

(4) In November 2006 the KRO was revived, again under Rogozin’s leadership.

Unlike the author, I do not regard Rogozin (judging from his writings) as such an extreme nationalist.

(5) Many analysts have written about Dugin. I devote half a chapter of my book to him and his ideas (see note 1). Marlène Laruelle gives a synopsis of his ideological position in her contribution to “The Price of Hatred” (see source for following item). For a commentary on Dugin’s “Eurasia” movement and its program, see RAS 12 item 3.

(6) URL: APN.Ru. The institute was headed by Stanislav Belkovsky, later replaced by Mikhail Remizov. See the author’s paper “Neoimperiya APN” [The Neo-Empire of APN], pp. 81 ­ 96 in same source.

Back to Table of Contents

POLITICS: RUSSIAN NATIONALISM UNDER PUTIN

5. SKINHEADS UNDER PRESSURE

Source. Aleksandr Tarasov, Skinkhedy v usloviyakh vneshnego davleniya: sluchai Naberezhnykh Chelnov [Skinheads Under External Pressure: The Case of Naberezhnye Chelny]. In Aleksandr Verkhovskii, ed. Tsena nenavisti: Natsionalizm v Rossii i protivodeistviye rasistskim prestupleniyam [The Price of Hatred: Nationalism in Russia and Counteracting Racist Crimes] (Moscow: Information-Analytical Center “SOVA,” October 2005), pp. 166 ­ 74

This is a study of a city in which the social environment is so hostile to skinheads that attempts to establish a skinhead movement there have repeatedly failed. (1) While this is not a typical case, it demonstrates that the spread of the skinhead movement is not an inexorable process: successful resistance is possible. As such, it provides an antidote to the alarmist tone of most accounts of the skinhead phenomenon.

The author warns that in the absence of more objective sources of information he had to rely on informants from the local youth milieu who cannot be regarded as unbiased and due to their involvement in illegal activity may have concealed certain things from him.

Several factors have made Naberezhnye Chelny (NC) an unfavorable environment for skinheads (and for extreme Russian nationalists in general):

-- NC being in Tatarstan, the regional and municipal authorities have no sympathy for skinheads and are unwilling even to connive passively at their activity. In this respect the situation is different from that in many “Russian” provinces.

-- Most of the inhabitants of NC are connected with the motor vehicle plant KAMAZ. Its original workforce was drawn from all over the Soviet Union and had a strongly “Soviet” mentality, elements of which have been passed on to their children and grandchildren. This helps to explain why neither Russian nor Tatar nationalism has gained a firm foothold in the city.

-- Since the early 1990s NC has become a center of Russia’s hip-hop subculture. It hosts a regional hip-hop festival. Rap and punk music is also popular. These subcultures are associated (to varying extents) with black people and with leftist and anarchist ideas, and are therefore hostile to the white racism that inspires most skinheads.

Skinheads first appeared in NC as late as 2001. There were only a handful of them and they were badly beaten in clashes with rappers. Rumor has it that the leading figure, known as “Tolik the Fascist,” fled to Perm.

A few skinheads reappeared in spring 2002. This time they initially avoided clashes with rappers and confined their activity to writing graffiti on walls. By the end of 2002 they numbered 60 ­ 90 in 5 or 6 groups (according to different informants). In the fall they started disrupting rap concerts and attacking lone rappers late at night, but they were soon singled out for revenge. This sparked off a “mini-war” that lasted until spring 2003 and predictably (given the correlation of forces) ended in the crushing defeat of the skinheads. Some left town; others went underground. (2) The skinheads had been kept so busy by the rappers that they never got round to mounting any attacks on their racial enemies.

Tarasov’s informants told him that skinheads had appeared yet again in NC in spring 2004. But can the people concerned really be counted as skinheads? Although they call themselves skinheads, they do not shave their heads, display skinhead attire, or beat anyone up, but merely engage in semi-legal propaganda, targeting mainly “gopots” ­ meaning “non-political uncultured alcoholic hooligan youth.” They do not produce their own literature or maintain their own internet sites, but simply distribute the literature of various extreme nationalist parties, so perhaps they should be considered activists of those parties rather than real skinheads. There is also a group of “redskins” in NC ­ that is, leftist, antiracist skinheads. (3)

Notes

(1) For an analysis of the potential of the skinhead movement in Russia as a whole, see RAS 22 item 1.

(2) The two biggest “battles” each involved about 60 people, with the skinheads outnumbered two or three to one.

(3) Like the standard Nazi-type skinheads, the redskins were imported into Russia from the West.

Back to Table of Contents

POLITICS: RUSSIAN NATIONALISM UNDER PUTIN

6. FOOTBALL FANS AND THE ULTRA-RIGHT

Source. Aleksei Kozlov, Ul’trapravye tendentsii v futbol’nykh fanatskikh gruppirovkakh v Rossii [Ultra-Right Tendencies in Groups of Football Fans in Russia]. In Aleksandr Verkhovskii, ed. Russkii natsionalizm: ideologiya i nastroyenie [Russian Nationalism: Ideology and Mood] (Moscow: Information-Analytical Center “SOVA,” October 2006), pp. 94 -- 101.

The author examines football fandom as a youth subculture. He explains that football fans fall into three categories: ordinary fans (bolel’shchiki, or in slang ­ kuz’michi), the smaller but more organized category of football fanatics (fanaty), and the smallest and most organized category of football hooligans (khuligany). Hooligans belong to hierarchical organizations usually called “firms” (firmy). Each firm has its own identity and mythology and engages in violent clashes (1) at weekly matches with hooligans and fanatics supporting the opposing team.

The number of firms supporting a particular club ranges from about 5 for a provincial club up to 15 or more for a famous club like “Spartak” in Moscow or “Zenit” in St. Petersburg, corresponding to perhaps 1,000 members. (2) Kozlov estimates the total number of active football hooligans in Russia as over 10,000.

The football subculture is quite distinct from but closely connected to the skinhead subculture. The dominant skinhead value is racial purity, while the main value for fans is football and all that goes with it: songs, symbols, films, websites, but above all fights with fans of rival clubs.

Nevertheless, racist, xenophobic, and other ultra-right attitudes are widespread among football fans. Such fans see their main enemies as people from the Caucasus, Central Asia, China, and Vietnam (although they are also willing to attack blacks). Indeed, in many cities (3) the majority of race hate crimes occur in the vicinity of the stadium before or after matches. And like skinheads, many fans also hate homosexuals, rappers, and anti-fascists.

Fans have taken part in extreme nationalist actions alongside skinheads. The author gives two examples:

-- On November 4, 2005, about 3,000 nationalists marched under the slogans of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and the Eurasian Union of Youth. The majority of the marchers were skinheads and football hooligans.

-- On May 27, 2006, about 1,000 nationalists, including many skinheads as well as 300 ­ 400 football hooligans, broke up a gay parade in Moscow, followed by street assaults on gays, lesbians, people from the Caucasus, and other “enemies” in over 30 recorded incidents.

Notes

(1) Fighting may involve the use of stones, bottles, brass knuckles, baseball bats, chains, belts with pendants, and even knives.

(2) A single firm may have as many as 300 members (e.g., the Nevsky Front in St. Petersburg), although a membership of a few dozen is more typical.

(3) For example: Voronezh, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Samara.

Back to Table of Contents

SOCIETY

7. POST-SOVIET DEDOVSHCHINA

Source. Françoise Daucé and Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski, eds. Dedovshchina in the Post-Soviet Military: Hazing of Russian Army Conscripts in a Comparative Perspective. Stuttgar: ibidem-Verlag, 2006

The material in this volume falls into four categories. One group of papers analyzes the phenomenon of dedovshchina in the post-Soviet Russian military in depth from a sociological or anthropological perspective. Other papers focus on the broader politics of dedovshchina ­ in particular, the attitudes and reactions of conscripts’ families (e.g., the soldiers’ mothers movement) and of the military hierarchy and the state. There are also sections devoted to more or less analogous problems abroad ­ in CIS countries (Kyrgyzstan and Georgia), Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic), and elsewhere (Britain and Brazil). Finally, various authors discuss how and when dedovshchina appeared and what if anything can be done to eliminate it. Specifically, what effect might be expected from a hypothetical completion of the transition to all-volunteer professional armed forces?

Dedovshchina entails a great deal of violence, often severe enough to maim or kill the victim or drive him to suicide. Violence, however, is not its defining feature. It is an unofficial but widely tolerated system of status differentiation among conscripts according to length of service, with the most senior cohort (the “grandfathers” or “dedy” who give the system its name) ruling the roost and new recruits reduced to a plight akin to slavery. The pervasive, systematic, and elaborate nature of dedovshchina distinguishes it, for instance, from bullying in the British army ­ though there are parallels with initiation rites (see the fascinating paper about a Brazilian police academy).

Dedovshchina apparently has its origins in the Soviet period, probably post-Stalin. It did not exist in the tsarist army (or so one author assures us). It first received broad publicity during perestroika, generating a massive protest movement among conscripts’ parents (mainly mothers). The movement has had an impact ­ not, however, in changing conditions inside the military, which evidently remain as bad as ever, but in vastly expanding the proportion of young men enabled (by law or by bribery) to defer or avoid army service. In effect, those families with the skills and resources to protest and “make trouble” have been bought off, so that conscription has become a burden imposed only on the poorest and weakest (predominantly rural) sections of society ­ a real “workers’ and peasants’ army,” as people ironically remark. The soldiers’ mothers’ movement still exists, but is clearly much weakened.

Dedovshchina has been inherited by other post-Soviet states besides Russia, though conceivably not by all of them. (As we have only two country case studies it is impossible to be sure.) It also survives to some extent in other former Warsaw Pact states.

As for whether a shift to a fully professional force (still being resisted by senior Russian officers) would solve the problem, opinion is divided. Dale Herspring, who has contributed a foreword, thinks that the crucial requirement is the creation of a well-trained and effective corps of NCOs, which Russia has traditionally lacked. In a concluding paper, Joris van Bladel argues that professionalization will do no good if (as he believes likely) it merely changes the method of recruitment and does not transform the culture of the military institution.

The editors and authors are to be congratulated for producing a volume so rich in information and insight. If I have one criticism, it is that there is not much systematic analysis of the strictly military implications of dedovshchina, although Kirill Podrabinek does comment on the way it undermines unit cohesion. At the most basic level, victims of dedovshchina may well prefer to use the opportunity provided by combat to take revenge on their tormentors rather than fighting an “enemy” who has not actually done them any harm. If we want to persuade the Russian high command to take serious action against dedovshchina, arguments pertaining to combat readiness will surely be more effective than appeals to their humanity.

Back to Table of Contents

SOCIETY

8. RUSSIAN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Source. T.I. Zaslavskaia, Contemporary Russian Society: Problems and Prospects, Sociological Research (M.E. Sharpe), vol. 45 no. 4, July ­ August 2006, pp. 6 ­ 53 [translated from Russian by Kim Braithwaite]. Section “Dynamics of the Social Group Structure” (pp. 25 ­ 33).

Academician Tatyana Zaslavskaya’s career as a prominent economic sociologist straddles the divide between the late Soviet and the post-Soviet period. In this section of her survey of Russian society, she compares Soviet, post-Soviet, and Western “models of social stratification.”

In the Soviet model social status was based on position in administrative hierarchies, and this remains the case in the state sector. Elsewhere, however, the decisive factor in stratification is now wealth, which is tightly linked to power in a “power ­ wealth axis.”

In this respect, the author contrasts Russia (both before and after the transition) with Western societies, where education, cultural resources, and “post-material values” play a greater role in determining social status. Here, I would say, she has an idealized image of the West and also fails to take national differences into account. Academic qualifications, for instance, have less influence on social status in the US than in Germany ­ or, for that matter, than they had in the Soviet Union. (Consider the prestige and privileges associated with being an academician.)

In another respect Zaslavskaya lumps Soviet society together with the contemporary West. Both have a social structure shaped like a column bulging in the middle: a small upper stratum, a very large middle stratum engaged in skilled mental and physical labor, and a considerably smaller lower stratum of the unskilled. In post-Soviet Russia this model (to be more precise, the bulge) has “sunk far down” so that it now more closely resembles a pyramid. (1) There is no longer a large stratum with attributes justifying the label of “middle class.” The stratum that does merit this name is not very large, while the largest of the intermediate strata needs a different name: the author calls it the “basic stratum” because it constitutes the social base of society. (2)

The six hierarchical strata that Zaslavskaya identifies in today’s Russia are:

-- A ruling stratum comprises under 1 percent of the population but disposes of roughly half of all social resources.

-- A managerial and entrepreneurial “sub-elite” comprises 5 percent of the population.

-- A heterogeneous middle stratum comprises 11 percent of the population and may eventually be able to perform social functions typical of Western middle classes (“but they have a very long way to go”).

-- A massive stratum of workers (including members of the “mass professions”: engineers, schoolteachers, physicians, etc.) comprises fully half the population and over two thirds of the workforce.

-- A lower stratum of unskilled, chronically unemployed, elderly, and handicapped people subsisting at survival level comprises some 30 percent of the population though only 12 percent of the workforce.

-- Finally, at the very bottom, a destitute stratum of the homeless, vagrants, prostitutes, pickpockets, alcoholics, drug addicts, and so on, “in effect excluded from society” (that is, from the official institutions of society), numbers up to 3 million people or 5 percent of the population. (3)

The author considers that the stratification pattern has been quite stable since the early 1990s. Thus, the ratios of the upper, middle, basic, and lowest strata of the employed population (4) were 6 : 13 : 73 : 8 in 1993 and 5 : 15 : 68 : 12 in 2000.

Notes

(1) I would add that this means Russia has moved toward a stratification model more typical of undeveloped countries.

(2) A persuasive case might be made for similarly subdividing the very large intermediate mass that it is customary in the US to call the “middle class” into a “real middle class” and a “basic class.”

(3) Here Zaslavskaya relies on L. Timofeyev’s data. The total for all six strata comes to over 101 percent, but the figures are only approximate.

(4) That is, excluding part of the fifth stratum and all of the sixth in the classification given above, which applies to the total and not just the employed population.

Back to Table of Contents

DEMOGRAPHY

9. DEMOGRAPHIC FORECASTS FOR ST. PETERSBURG

Source. I. I. Yeliseyeva, ed. Demografiya i statistika naseleniya [Demography and Population Statistics] (Moscow: “Finansy i statistika,” 2006), Ch. 12

The authors of this textbook review the official demographic forecasts for Russia as a whole issued by the Federal State Statistics Service (up to 2015) and also present their own forecasts for the city of St. Petersburg (up to 2025).

It is generally assumed that reproduction of the population at the same level in developed countries requires women to bear on average 2.1 children each (the summary coefficient of natality). Even the highest of the three scenarios in the official forecast does not envision Russia reaching that level by 2015 -- even in the rural areas, where the birth rate tends to be higher than in the cities:

Urban areas

Low scenario 0.8 Middle scenario 1.2 High scenario 1.6

Rural areas

Low scenario 0.9 Middle scenario 1.4 High scenario 1.8

The forecast for St. Petersburg in 2025 is 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 for the low, middle, and high scenarios, respectively. Basically, the high scenario assumes that the rise in the birth rate over recent years will be sustained, while the other two scenarios assume that the birth rate will stabilize at some level.

Turning to mortality, all St. Petersburg scenarios assume that life expectancy will rise for both men and women, despite the sharp declines in the 1990s, reaching 62 ­ 67 years for men and 73 ­ 77.5 for women in 2025. The high and medium scenarios assume that the socioeconomic situation will improve to one degree or another, while the low scenario assumes the stabilization of life expectancy at the level of 2000 ­ 2001 or continued fluctuations around that level.

Again, all scenarios assume that infant mortality will continue its recent fall, despite the rise in the 1990s, reaching 8, 6, and 4.5 per 1,000 in 2025.

Besides natality and mortality, demographic forecasts must take account of changes in population due to migration. The low scenario of the official forecast for Russia in 2015 assumes an annual population loss of 22,000 due to migration, while the medium and high scenarios assume corresponding gains of 133,000 and 278,000.

All St. Petersburg scenarios assume population gains due to migration: 10,000, 20,000, and 35,000 per year, respectively, in 2025. It is expected that half to two thirds of these gains will be concentrated in the young adult age group (17 ­ 26 years): 5,000, 12,000, and 22,000, respectively.

We can now consider the overall population forecasts for St. Petersburg. The city’s population peaked at about 5 million in 1990 and is now about 4,500,000. In the high scenario, the decline bottoms out by 2010 and the population reaches 4,700,000 by 2025. In the other two scenarios, the decline continues, with population falling to 4,300,000 in 2025 in the medium scenario and to 3,900,000 in the low scenario.

When we focus on the population of working age, however, we get a grimmer picture. This population peaked in the early 1990s at just under 3 million and is currently about 2,800,000. All scenarios envision substantial further decline, and only in the high scenario does the decline bottom out before 2025, at roughly 2,500,000. The 2025 figures for the other scenarios are in the region of 2,300,000 and 2,150,000.

This translates into a sharp increase in the demographic burden on the working age population of St. Petersburg ­ that is, the number of people not of working age per 1,000 of working age. This indicator, currently about 600, is set to rise to a peak of 810 ­ 860 (depending on the scenario) shortly before 2025.

The only way of coping with this burden, caused by a low birth rate and an aging population, appears to be a greatly increased inflow of young working migrants.

Back to Table of Contents

RUSSIA AND CHINA

10. CHINA IN RUSSIAN EYES

Source. Vladimir Shlapentokh, China in the Russian Mind Today: Ambivalence and Defeatism, Europe ­ Asia Studies, Vol. 59, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 1 - 22

Vladimir Shlapentokh (Michigan State University) characterizes Russian attitudes to China as uncertain, ambivalent, inconsistent, and unstable. At a general or abstract level attitudes tend to be benign: in opinion polls about half of respondents describe China as a friend or ally and about 30 percent as an enemy (the remainder abstaining). More widespread fear and hostility emerge when the focus shifts to specific issues like trade, immigration, and borders. Thus:

-- 76 percent disapproved of the decision in 2005 to cede to China a few small islands in the Amur River;

-- 71 percent fear an increase in the number of Chinese in Russia;

-- 66 percent oppose Chinese participation in the Siberian and Far Eastern economy;

-- 61 percent want to stop the import of Chinese consumer goods. (1)

While much of the general public entertains contradictory views of China, within the policy elite there is a clearer division of views. Some ­ the author mentions Yevgeny Primakov as an example ­ advocate close alliance with China against US world hegemony (despite the prospect of getting drawn into US ­ China hostilities over Taiwan). (2)

Others argue that although its leaders currently want good relations with Russia China is an ambitious, dangerous, and unpredictable power and may turn against Russia in the future, perhaps under the pressure of an oil shortage. It is therefore unwise to help China build up military capacities that may one day be used against Russia. They warn that Russia will inevitably be the junior partner in any alliance with China and may be caught between China and the US in the event of confrontation between them.

There is, in fact, a common resigned perception that Russia is already weaker than China in key respects. (3) This applies especially to the border regions, the links of which with European Russia have grown very weak. For instance, experts do not think that Russia is in a position to resist Chinese expansion in the Far East, whether economic and demographic or military.

Notes

(1) Data from surveys conducted by the All-Russian Center of Public Opinion in 2005 and 2006.

(2) On the related (though much less feasible) concept of a three-way alliance of Russia and China with India, see RAS 20 item 7.

(3) This corresponds to Chinese perceptions of Russia as an “older sister” (i.e., a weaker, dependent power, though one worthy of respect). See RAS 35 item 5.

Back to Table of Contents

RUSSIA AND CHINA

11. COMPARING STALINISM AND MAOISM

Recently I’ve read quite a few books about China under Mao ­ some works by Western academics, but mainly memoirs (straight or fictionalized) by people who experienced Maoism and lived to tell the tale. (1) At first I had no intention of writing on this topic for JRL, which is supposed to be about Russia not China. The reason I have changed my mind is that some of the conclusions I reached and want to share here have to do with Russia as well as China.

First, my reading has left me more impressed than before with the close similarities between Maoist China and Stalinist Russia (and in general between the PRC and the USSR). Of course, important differences stand out, connected to some extent with national peculiarities of the two countries. (2) But I am more struck by the parallels and feel that writers on China have exaggerated the “national” character of the Chinese revolution. Hardly any of the memoirists discuss this question, simply because (Liu Binyan is an exception in this respect) they know very little and care even less about life in the USSR. It is simply that so many of the things they describe have more or less exact Soviet equivalents ­ from the structure of party organizations to the system of residence permits, from the leader cult to virgin lands campaigns, from secret denunciations to falsified statistical reports…

Some apparent contrasts disappear when account is taken of the fact that the Maoists retained certain elements from the early Soviet period that were later changed in the USSR. For example, it was from this period that they borrowed the practice of formally classifying citizens by class origin (for those born after the revolution this meant the class position of their parents or grandparents in the old society) and discriminating against those of “bad” class origin. In Russia they were called “lishentsy” ­ i.e., “deprived” [of rights]. Stalin abandoned this system in the mid-1930s; in China it was abolished by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death.

Again, until the early 1930s a proclaimed goal of forced labor in the USSR was to “remold” prisoners and ideological indoctrination was a central aspect of labor camp life (as on the Belomor Canal: see Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”). Thereafter sole emphasis was placed on extracting as much labor as possible. This shift did not occur in China.

One stereotype contrasts rigid control from above in Stalinist Russia with sporadic bursts of spontaneity under Mao, at least during episodes like the “Cultural Revolution.” There is an element of truth here, but the difference is a matter of degree. “Stalinism from below” did play some role in the USSR, (3) while much of the apparent spontaneity of Maoism (as of Stalinism) was a deceptive product of behind-the-scenes manipulation.

A second and related conclusion pertains to the influence on China of developments in the USSR and in the Soviet sphere in Europe. This influence tended to be greater and more direct than standard Sinocentric accounts imply.

For example, Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin’s “cult of personality” had an immediate impact on the power struggle in Beijing, legitimizing the efforts of Mao’s colleagues to assert the principle of collective leadership and constrain Mao’s capacity for independent initiative. Although Mao managed to thwart their efforts at key junctures, his position would have been significantly stronger in the absence of Soviet de-Stalinization, conceivably obviating his motive for launching the Cultural Revolution.

Another example: Lysenkoism did enormous harm to China, arguably much more than it ever did to the USSR. Several disastrous agricultural practices imposed by Mao owed their inspiration to Lysenko, including very close planting, very deep plowing, a ban on chemical fertilizers, and counterproductive campaigns to exterminate “pests” like sparrows (leading to an explosion in the insect population). Lysenkoist practices were an important contributory factor in the great famine of 1959-61. (4)

Maoism was even more extreme and invasive than Stalinism as a totalitarian system for controlling behavior, speech, and even (to a considerable extent) thought. To a much greater degree than Stalin, Mao forced ordinary people to participate actively in mutual surveillance and persecution. In the USSR you might have to vote at meetings for resolutions demanding “shoot the mad dogs,” but only in China were there obligatory “struggle meetings” where you were expected to take direct part in humiliating and torturing a colleague who had fallen out of favor (and with whom you secretly sympathized). Stalinism permitted the existence of a narrow “non-political” private sphere; Maoism did not. Standards of conformity were stricter: a misinterpreted casual remark or diary entry ­ even personal diaries were not private -- or even a mispronounced slogan could earn you the label of “counter-revolutionary” and a bullet in the head. So the psychic trauma inflicted by Mao on his society was deeper and recovery more difficult.

Notes

(1) I don’t read Chinese. Numerous memoirs are not available in translation; many of them may be more valuable than some of those that have been translated.

(2) But only to some extent. Some of the differences, for instance, were connected to idiosyncrasies of Mao’s personality. If Mao had died in 1949, say, the PRC would have resembled the USSR even more closely than it did, though presumably it would still have been “Chinese” in certain respects.

(3) Sergei Sergeyev cites one instance of “Stalinism from below” in which a peasant community denounced as saboteurs veterinarians for vaccinating their cows and making them sick. Source -- http://www.kara-murza.ru/books/sc_a/sc_a98.htm

(4) The main cause was the diversion of rural labor to the construction and operation of “backyard furnaces” as part of the “Great Leap Forward.” See -- http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/chinese_famine.html This source is based on Joseph Becker’s “Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine” (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996).

Back to Table of Contents

GEORGIA / ABKHAZIA

12. THE HARDEST WORD

As an addendum to the special issue to the Georgian ­ Abkhaz conflict (RAS 24), I draw your attention to a truly remarkable “public appeal to the Abkhaz people” from the Campaign “Sorry”/ “Hatamzait” (Tbilisi, March 14, 2007). As “representatives of Georgian society,” the signatories “wish to beg every Abkhaz person to forgive us. Sorry for not having hindered the war. Forgive us for not having been able to avoid the disaster that happened.” For the full text, see http://www.humanrights.ge/eng_/articles.php?id=647

Back to Table of Contents

FEEDBACK

Sam Charap points out a couple of errors in my review of his article on the “siloviki” (RAS 38 item 3):

* Sergei Bogdanchikov is head of Rosneft, which controls the assets formerly belonging to YUKOS, not (as the source I used claimed) director of Gazpromneft, owner of Gazprom’s former oil assets.

* Viktor Cherkesov heads the Federal Service (and not the State Committee) for Oversight of the Trade in Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances. State Committees were abolished in the administrative reform of 2004.

Sergei Sergeyev responds to “Honored Chekists” (RAS 38 item 10) and specifically to my remarks about the oceanographer, explorer, and Chekist Pyotr Shirshov.

“Shirshov as well as [famous Arctic explorer] Papanin worked in polar research together with the special service. Their expeditions served security goals and were not purely scientific.

The NKVD-KGB was part of Soviet life, in the same way that the CIA and FBI are part of American life. In Togliatti on the Volga there is a street named in honor of Ivan Komzin, director of a gigantic hydroelectric plant that was built using prisoners’ labor. There were some calls in the media to rename the street, but it is not a hot topic at present. Komzin’s role in construction is considered to outweigh his service to the NKVD.”

It seems to me that the parallel between the NKVD-KGB and the CIA/FBI is not exact. The NKVD (etc.) was indeed integrated into Soviet life, and this does help explain why it has been so difficult to de-legitimize its legacy. Are the CIA and FBI integrated into American life in the same way? What integrated the NKVD was the role it played in the economy through the labor camps. I am not aware of the CIA or FBI having ever run labor camps, though that may be because I don’t have a good knowledge of American history.

Back to Table of Contents