Zhivoi Gvozd, 23.07.2024

One of the key problems of the Russian economy, and perhaps of entire life in the country, is people’s lack of understanding of the future. Citizens do not have clear ideas about the future. People live for today.

Moreover, even according to official data from Rosstat (which should be treated, to put it mildly, with understanding), 13.5 million people in our country (and this is almost every tenth) lived below the poverty line as of the beginning of 2024. According to international economic analytics, Russia, according to the criterion of “the per capita GDP at market exchange rates”, is approaching 70th place in the world with an income of 1.2 million roubles, being behind such countries as, for example, Trinidad and Tabago (1.6 million roubles) and Guyana (1.8 million roubles).

In fact, in my opinion, about 70% of the citizens of our country live in real poverty. Moreover, all state policy in modern Russia bases precisely on poverty. In order to solve current problems of their families (sometimes extremely acute), people are ready to do almost anything (and by the way, the authorities promise considerable sums for this “everything”). It is this hopeless poverty that is the main driver of decision-making in such situations. Everything else is secondary.

In these days many economists like to discuss the relatively high growth rates of the Russian economy in connection with the increase in military-industrial complex production volumes. However, this is formal economic growth without real development. We observed this in the Russian economy in the first half of the 2000s. This is what is happening now. Economic growth under the conditions of the system created during the reforms of the 1990s, based on the merger of power, property and business, restrictions and suppression of an independent middle class which could be independent of the state, represents growth without development, based on the conjuncture of prices on natural resources. An economic model that does not support a large-scale private sector independent of the state, creeping deprivatisation and nationalisation lead to a qualitative lag, lack of creativity and initiative, a conflict with world reality and, ultimately, to a political dead end. This is exactly the path Russia has taken since the early 2000s, thanks to the rapid rise in oil prices. All this has led the country to what is happening today. How will the current not just preservation, but limitless expansion of this model end?..

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The modern Russian economy, the exclusion of Yabloko candidates from participation in elections, and how the ceasefire is becoming a global topic – all these themes were discussed on the Zhivoi Gvozd programme.