#8 - JRL 7306
RIA Novosti
August 28, 2003
COMMENTARY: RUSSIANS STORM THE INTERNET
Yuri Filippov, RIA Novosti
For the third successive year Russian Vladimir Kozlov starts his working day with the same routine: he turns on his PC at home, checks the e-mail and his homepage on the Internet. Kozlov is always ready to set off for a trip, not on the world wide web though, but along the roads of Central Russia: he is a freelance truck driver and needs the Internet and e-mail to find clients and receive orders.
"The Internet has increased the number of orders I receive by at least one third," Kozlov says. "Moreover, I keep all of the returns except taxes, whereas in a transport organisation, where the administration receives all the information, I would have to hand over part of the profit." "It's much better to spend this money on yourself and your family," he smiles.
A truck driver finding routes on the Internet is not typical in Russia. At the same time, it is not something completely out of the blue, either, and becoming a growing trend.
However, Mr Kozlov's situation, (he is an ex-Soviet engineer who became a freelance driver during the years of reform) is typical for many Russians who at the end of the 20th century saw the centralised command economy replaced by the free market.
In the 1990s, when the information revolution and hi-tech products were quickly changing the modern economy, it became obvious that the decades of multi-billion investments in heavy industry made by Soviet Communist leaders had been a mistake. Many gigantic enterprises that produced tonnes of non-competitive goods, outdated equipment and weapons were obsolete.
Many plants were closed then, while millions of qualified workers and engineers were forced to acquire absolutely unfamiliar, but quite marketable professions, first of all in the trade and services sphere.
Computerisation imported from the West for many people came at the right time. The most advanced were quick to understand: unlike the centralised economy where information is controlled by the state, free market success, especially when the market is only taking shape, directly depends on how well informed and communicable you are.
Here it turned out that not every Soviet-era investment project had been a failure. The state's investment in people and education turned out to be a boon for many people. It would be no exaggeration to say that for educated Russians learning to work on a PC and the Internet was no more difficult than learning how to play the famous Russian balalaika. As it happens, even according to the most modest estimates, the 30 million PCs in today's Russia far exceed the number of balalaikas in the country.
Major Russian companies, such as Gazprom and the electricity monopolist RAO UES were the first to get computerised in the late 1980s - early 1990s. But it is not them who receive the maximum profit from having Internet access. "Clerks in large companies and banks kill time playing noughts and crosses on modern computers," says Igor Orlov, manager of a Russian tourist company. "However, we in the medium business sphere do not have time to play games, as unlike monopolists we have to look for new clients every day", he explains. The Russian Internet in the .ru domain is full of offers from shops, private clinics, hairdressers, massage salons, foreign language courses, tourist bureaus and a large number of other, sometimes really exotic, small businesses, such as cactus delivery to apartments and offices.
The overwhelming majority of their clients are similar small and medium-sized businesses, as well as representatives of the growing Russian middle class for whom a home PC has become a usual feature of everyday life. These people can do without a computer at home no more that they can live without their own car.
The main restriction on the Russian Internet market's capacity is the level of population's incomes. The average computer and access to the Internet costs three of four average monthly wage packets, and not everyone can afford it.
Nevertheless, since the August 1998 financial crisis the Russian Internet market has grown by three times, to 3 million permanent users. It could grow by 10 or even 20 times, as two thirds of respondents of a survey conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, VTsIOM, maintain they would be glad to use the Internet, if they had the opportunity.
Director of the Russian Higher School of Economics Yevgeny Yasin believes that many people will have this opportunity in the coming years. Over the last three to four years, the population's incomes have grown by 50%, so food and clothes are no longer the dominate expenditure for the average Russian family, as the case used to be. Russians are spending ever more money on cars, new apartments and houses, and so as not get bored while they save, they also buy mobile phones, household appliances and, naturally, computers. Even the most modest government forecast presented by Dmitry Milovantsev from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry shows that the number of Internet-users in Russia will increase by three times in two-three years.
The Internet boom in society has forced the government to act: the state does not want to lag behind its "advanced" citizens. However, the authorities are not yet ready to spend too much. They will allocate no more than $2.5 billion within seven years to the federal programme "Electronic Russia." The money will be used to provide computers and Internet-access to state and municipal libraries, institutes, universities, schools and hospitals, as well as to set up Internet-portals for bodies of state power and local self-government. There will even be a campaign against computer illiteracy, as according to the VTsIOM, two thirds of Russians do not know how to work on a computer.
As the old saying goes, it is never too late to learn. This is all the more true, sociologists says, as the number of those eager to learn is increasing every year.
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