Russia’s radical new left

Russia’s radical new left

First we saw “Occupy Wall Street,” then “Occupy London” and “Occupy Berlin.” Will we see “Occupy Moscow” next?

Laughable as it may seem, the suggestion is not entirely implausible. Recently, I criticized “Occupy Wall Street” on Kommersant FM radio as yet another vacuous and pretentious reincarnation of the Marxist-anarchist-anti-globalist circus we have witnessed at every G8 summit.

As a result, I have become the target of intense criticism in the Russian blogosphere by people who could be called the “new Russian left.”

Ten years ago, people like that could have been squeezed into one telephone booth, and were just an amusing oddity. These days, intellectuals modeling themselves on Noam Chomsky and the Guardian crowd are increasingly vocal and visible on the web and among political activists. They take to the streets to protest environment abuses (like the Khimki Forest Defenders) or the political regime in Russia (such as Eduard Limonov’s unregistered Other Russia).

Their views are a somewhat strange conflation of anti-capitalist and libertarian slogans. Limonov’s people, who only a decade ago chanted “Stalin, Beria, Gulag!”, now say they stand for democracy, freedom of speech and government accountability, as well as for nationalizing strategic sectors of the economy.

Russia’s new left claims to take its spirit from the 1968 protest movement, disregarding the fact that conditions in Russia today are vastly different.

The Kremlin-inspired brand of unbridled greed and neardeification of material success, in combination with authoritarian politics, has started to symbolize capitalism to increasing numbers of Russian intellectuals.

Our new left is anti-capitalist, anti-church (although not uniformly atheist yet), mostly pacifist, supports LGBT rights, Women’s Lib (free access to abortion notwithstanding), but is otherwise confused about all other aspects of politics and economics.

I recently debated on Kultura TV with Alexander Kupriyanov, a founder of Falanster, a popular Moscow bookshop selling radical literature. Kupriyanov regularly complains about Russian society’s moral decay and lack of civic solidarity. When I noted that solidarity was a very Christian idea, which should go hand in hand with responsibility and initiative, Kupriyanov looked a bit perplexed. He seemed to think that anyone defending capitalism would be completely immune from any moral considerations.

Russia’s new left are definitely becoming a part of a global intellectual movement. They are small but determined to rid Russia of the Putin regime and its ruling class of the last 20 years. The left’s main competitors are increasingly vocal nationalists who are bigger in numbers but lack ideological coherence.

Although none of the new left is represented in the State Duma, they should not be discounted. While the government-sponsored loyal opposition parties are becoming more and more discredited, demand for voices from the fringe grows.

Russia’s new left is quite well positioned to offer an alternative to stale and corrupt Russian reality – and its small numbers should deceive no one. With their mix of social demagoguery and anti-authoritarian rhetoric they can capture a significant audience if given a chance. Those of us who still think capitalism and personal responsibilities count for Russia should take notice. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and not necessarily those of The Moscow News.

latimes.com

Russians are leaving the country in droves

Some chafe at life under Vladimir Putin's rule, but for many others, economic limitations are the prime motivator. Experts say the numbers have reached demographically dangerous levels.

3:39 PM PST, November 14, 2011

Reporting from Moscow

Over a bottle of vodka and a traditional Russian salad of pickles, sausage and potatoes tossed in mayonnaise, a group of friends raised their glasses and wished Igor Irtenyev and his family a happy journey to Israel.

Irtenyev, his wife and daughter insist they will just be away for six months, but the sadness in their eyes on this recent night said otherwise.

A successful Russian poet, Irtenyev says he can no longer breathe freely in his homeland, because "with each passing year, and even with each passing day, there is less and less oxygen around."

"I just can't bear the idea of watching [Vladimir] Putin on television every day for the next 12 years," the 64-year-old said of the Russian leader who has presided over a relatively stable country, though one awash in corruption and increasing limits on personal freedoms. "I may not live that long. I want out now."

Irtenyev and his family have joined a new wave of Russian emigration that some here have called the "Putin decade exodus."

Roughly 1.25 million Russians have left the country in the last 10 years, Sergei Stepashin, head of the national Audit Chamber, told the radio station Echo of Moscow. The chamber tracks migration through tax revenues.

He said the exodus is so large, it's comparable in numbers to the outrush in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution.

"About as many left the country after 1917," he said.

They don't leave like their predecessors of the Soviet 1970s and '80s, with no intention to return. They don't sell their apartments, dachas and cars. They simply lock the door, go to the airport and quietly leave.

The reasons are varied. Some, like Irtenyev, chafe at life under Putin's rule, which seems all but certain to continue with the prime minister's expected return to the presidency next year. But for many others, economic strictures are the prime motivation. With inflation on the rise, and the country's GDP stuck at an annual 3% growth rate the last three years — compared with 7% to 8% before the global economic crisis — Russians are feeling pinched.

Russian nuclear physicist Vladimir Alimov, who now works at the University of Toyama in Japan, said he couldn't survive on the $450 monthly salary of a senior researcher at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"Yes, I miss Russia, but as a scientist I couldn't work there with the ancient equipment which had not been replaced or upgraded since the Soviet times," Alimov, 60, said in a phone interview. "Here in Japan, I have fantastic work conditions. I can do the work I enjoy and be appreciated and valued for it, everything I couldn't even dream of back in Russia."

The wave of emigration, which has included large numbers of educated Russians, has grave implications for a country of 142 million with a death rate significantly higher than its birthrate. A study published this year by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development called Russia a waning power and predicted its population would shrink by 15 million by 2030.

Experts believe that 100,000 to 150,000 people now leave the country annually and warn that the exodus reached dangerous dimensions in the last three years.

"People are going abroad for better college education, for better medical help, for better career opportunities, believing they will come back someday, but very few actually do," said Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst with the Institute of Geography. "The intellectual potential of the nation is being washed away, as the most mobile, intelligent and active are leaving."

Lev Gudkov, head of Levada, also sees a political dimension. "The worst thing is that people who could have played a key role in the modernization campaign proclaimed by the Kremlin are all leaving," Gudkov said. "But it appears that the Kremlin couldn't care less if the most talented, the most active Russians are emigrating, because their exodus lifts the social and political tension in the country and weakens the opposition."

But Valery Fyodorov, the head of VTsIOM, says the current emigration has very little to do with politics.

"A majority of those who want to leave the country are already quite successful in Russia," Fyodorov said. "They simply want to live even better and try something new."

"However, I must admit that life in Russia has not been really improving in the last three years, and that of course applies pressure and encourages talk of leaving," he said. "But that is much more connected with economic crisis problems and consequences rather than politics."

About 20% of Russians are thinking about leaving the country and trying their luck abroad, according to various Russian polling agencies, from the independent Levada Center to the Kremlin-friendly VTsIOM. Among 18- to 35-year-olds, close to 40% of respondents say they'd like to leave.

One of the few to have returned is computer engineer Alexey Petrov, who came back in 2003 after four years in Argentina. He opened an Internet cafe in Buenos Aires, only to face economic crises there.

Recalling his emigration experience, Petrov, 38, cited the Russian adage "It is good where we are not" and pointed out that the whole world is afflicted with the same economic problems people in Russia are now fleeing.

"Most of the time I was away I was consumed with nostalgia, and it is one thing to be a tourist abroad and quite another to be an alien resident," Petrov said. "Now I know that if you ignore politics and stay away from it, you can lead a normal existence in Russia and be happy with little things life offers to you every day."

But politics can still intrude, with an atmosphere that can sometimes feel threatening. Take a recent day, when thousands of young people wearing the old imperial white, yellow and black flag and carrying extremist and ultranationalist posters marched the streets of Moscow screaming obscenities. Police stood aside.

Even though poet Irtenyev's wife, Alla Bossart, knows she will miss her cozy dacha near Moscow, as a former columnist of Novaya Gazeta she is well aware that in the last 10 years, five of her colleagues, including crusading reporter Anna Politkovskaya, have been killed.

On the morning she left Moscow with her husband and daughter, Bossart had to return from the taxi to her already locked apartment to pick up some things she had forgotten. And then she had to go back again to switch off the light.

As she walked down the steps again, she muttered an old Russian saying under her breath: "It is a bad sign to return."

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

November 14, 2011 5:45 pm

Rosatom firm on expansion plan

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Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power corporation, is pressing ahead with plans to double in size and expand its global reach.

“There was a risk that world demand [for nuclear reactors] would collapse after Fukushima,” Sergei Kirienko, the president of Rosatom, said last week. “Competition has become much tougher... But we have doubled our order book.”

Rosatom is established as a supplier in India and China, the countries with the most ambitious nuclear power programmes, and is encouraged by growing interests in the developing world for its services.

However, Rosatom is not totally insulated from the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy has derailed Rosatom’s plan to form an alliance with Siemens, the German engineering group, that was the cornerstone of its strategy to develop advanced nuclear technologies and broaden its international reach.

Mr Kirienko put a brave face on the loss of the Siemens alliance, saying Rosatom was negotiating a partnership with Alsthom, the French engineering group, to develop nuclear technologies in Russia, France and third countries. Talks about co-operation with Rolls-Royce and EDF were also under way.

Rosatom has a monopoly over Russia’s 11 civilian nuclear power plants and accounts for one-fifth of new reactors under construction worldwide. While global nuclear technology companies have scrambled for uranium assets, Rosatom controls huge reserves of the metal that underpin its 17 per cent share of the global fuel fabrication market.

In a bid to boost its technical expertise, it has also embarked on an international charm offensive, seeking partners across the nuclear cycle, including uranium mining and enrichment, fuel assembly and nuclear reactor design and supply. Since Fukushima, the Russian company has also landed new orders for reactors from China, Vietnam, Belarus and Bangladesh.

National Economic Trends

EBRD: Russia should reduce oil dependence in 2012

http://www.prime-tass.com/news/_EBRD_Russia_should_reduce_oil_dependence_in_2012/0/%7BE7B15607-48D2-48CF-9AE1-8CC376944666%7D.uif
MOSCOW, Nov 15 (PRIME) -- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has advised the Russian government to focus on economic diversification in 2012 in order to reduce its dependence on oil revenues, the bank said in its Transition Report 2011 on Tuesday, RIA Novosti reported.

The EBRD also said that reducing dependence on oil revenues remains the key long-term priority for Russia. Furthermore, this target requires further improvements in the business environment throughout the regions, stronger enforcement of competition laws and supporting investments in infrastructure.

In addition to economic diversification, the EBRD recommends that the Russian government concentrates on the following two goals in 2012.

Firstly, the bank advised Russia to strengthen its fiscal discipline as the country’s economic recovery gains momentum. The EBRD said that steadily oil price increased are to be slowed down, as this would enable the Russian economy to better withstand negative fluctuations in the external economic environment.

Secondly, the EBRD said that the Russian financial system needs further improvements in terms of legal frameworks, as well as in banking sector regulation and supervision. This would support the development of the domestic capital market and make progress in positioning Moscow as an international financial center, the bank said.

End

15.11.2011 12:14

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