Paul Goble
Vienna, July 10 – Election results in the new Perm kray, which folded the Komi-Permyak autonomous district into the surrounding Perm oblast, are certain to disturb many Russian politicians and likely to cause many of them to put off any further consolidation of regions until after 2008.
According to an article in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” yesterday, the vote there for a new kray legislative assembly suggests that people in the former autonomous district may be less happy with the combination than many had expected and are prepared to vote against those who they believe are its authors.
In the past, voters in the former Komi-Permyak AO were among the most supportive in the country of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party. In the last vote before consolidation, 46 percent backed its slate. Now, in the latest count, only 34 percent did, a politically significant decline (http://www.ng.ru/printed/80044).
While the percentage voting for United Russia across the entire kray in fact rose from 31.4 percent to 34.6 percent, “Nezavizimaya gazeta” journalist Aleksandr Kynyev pointed out, few of its members are likely to be happy about putting themselves and their party at risk by engaging in any further territorial re-engineering.
That is all the more so because the Kremlin is rapidly running out of places where consolidation could take place without too much difficulty. So far, the Kremlin has organized the consolidation of Perm oblast and the Komi-Permyak AO, Krasnoyarsk kray with Taymyr and Evenkia, Kamchatka with the Koryak AO, Irkutsk with one Buryat region, and Chita with another Buryat territory.
When these unions are all formally completed by mid-2008 -- and all have much longer transition periods built into the plan) -- President Vladimir Putin over the last two years will have overseen a reduction in the number of federation units from 89 to 83, a small but significant reduction.
All involved “matryoshka regions” – federal subjects located within other federal subjects – and all of the smaller, non-Russian regions so far were poorer than the predominantly Russian areas into which they were combined, something that made this step more attractive than it might otherwise have been.
Only three other “matryoshka” regions are typically named as immediate candidates for consolidation: the Nenets AO within Arkhangelsk oblast and Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets districts within Tyumen oblast. But they are different in an important respect: In both, the non-Russian regions are wealthier than the Russian ones.
Indeed, the Moscow journalist suggests, the smaller non-Russian units will pay off the larger Russian ones in order to maintain their independent status well into the future, a kind of bribe that he suggests the leaders of the two Russian areas will be only too willing to take.
That has led Moscow to look elsewhere, either to areas in the Far East that were combined in Soviet times, to some Russian oblasts, and to the absorption of Adygeia by Krasnodar kray. But in many of these cases, there is serious opposition on the ground and various practical problems that Moscow would have to overcome.
Moscow could arrange, Kynev says, to “force the unification of the richer Khabarovsk kray with the depressed Jewish Autonomous District or ‘to return’ Chukotka to Magadan oblast, but at this point, the list of relatively ‘problem-free’ unifications is exhausted.”
Local officials and popular groups in both the Altai and in Adygeia have shown they are prepared to demonstrate against any such move and in the latter case to invoke powerful co-ethnic groups abroad. (Adyge is the self-designator for Circassian, and there are more than three million Circassians in Turkey and the Middle East.)
And the only other candidates for consolidation Kynyev mentions – Kostroma and Yaroslavl oblasts – would do nothing to help the Kremlin in its drive to reduce the number of non-Russian units in the country and could spark questions about Moscow’s intentions for other predominantly Russian regions as well.
That makes the results of the voting in Perm kray so important because with the upcoming elections to the Duma and the presidency, no Russian politician is likely to be interested in taking any step that could undermine the ability of his party or himself remaining in office.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Are St. Petersburg’s Poor About to Get Food Stamps?
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 10 – Dramatically rising prices for bread – up more than 10 percent this month alone -- have led some officials in the northern capital to think about issuing food stamps for the city’s poor or even ration cards to ensure that everyone there will be able to purchase this basic staple, according to a member of the local legislature.
In comments to the Fontanka.ru news agency yesterday, Yuriy Rakov, the first deputy chairman of that body’s Committee on Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, said that “in the immediate future, the introduction of ration cards in Petersburg is possible” (http://www.fontanka.ru/2007/07/09/069/).
But as soon as he said that and indicated that city officials, including Governor Valentina Matvienko, were considering what to do about the rising price of bread, Rakov backed off, saying that “this sounds bad. Perhaps [what he should have said is the introduction of] food stamps like in the United States for less well-off families.”
The reasons for increases in the price of bread are not far to seek: Ukraine stopped exporting grain to the Russian Federation this year. Russian production is stagnant. And processing costs are up. But the kind of step Rakov is talking about highlights just how unequally Russia’s recent economic gains have been distributed.
His remarks are especially striking because they come less than a week after the Public Opinion Foundation published the results of a recent poll on hunger in Russia, who has experienced it and who has not, and when Russians feel hunger was most prevalent in their past (http://www.fom.ru/topics/1969.html).
Only 10 percent of the sample said that they had ever had to go hungry in recent times, compared with 67 percent who said they had never had to do so. But an increasing share said that they feared there could be food shortages in the future – 62 percent this year as compared to 55 percent last.
At the same time, however, many recalled hungry times in the past – during and after the second world war, in the course of collectivization, or even earlier. And 30 percent of those who said they had not personally suffered in this way indicated that members of their families – presumably from older age groups – had.
These results at the very least suggest that the fear of hunger remains a real one for many Russians even though few are suffering from it now. Rakov’s comments will do nothing to calm these fears; instead, they almost certainly will generate new concerns not only in St. Petersburg but elsewhere in the Russian Federation as well.
UPDATE ON JULY 11: The suggestion that St. Petersburg might introduce bread rationing or food stamps of one kind or another proved so explosive that the city government within a few hours of the Fontanka.ru report not only denied it but said it was appealing to the central Russian government to help it cope with rising prices for grain and bread (http://www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=109686&print=Y).
Vienna, July 10 – Dramatically rising prices for bread – up more than 10 percent this month alone -- have led some officials in the northern capital to think about issuing food stamps for the city’s poor or even ration cards to ensure that everyone there will be able to purchase this basic staple, according to a member of the local legislature.
In comments to the Fontanka.ru news agency yesterday, Yuriy Rakov, the first deputy chairman of that body’s Committee on Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, said that “in the immediate future, the introduction of ration cards in Petersburg is possible” (http://www.fontanka.ru/2007/07/09/069/).
But as soon as he said that and indicated that city officials, including Governor Valentina Matvienko, were considering what to do about the rising price of bread, Rakov backed off, saying that “this sounds bad. Perhaps [what he should have said is the introduction of] food stamps like in the United States for less well-off families.”
The reasons for increases in the price of bread are not far to seek: Ukraine stopped exporting grain to the Russian Federation this year. Russian production is stagnant. And processing costs are up. But the kind of step Rakov is talking about highlights just how unequally Russia’s recent economic gains have been distributed.
His remarks are especially striking because they come less than a week after the Public Opinion Foundation published the results of a recent poll on hunger in Russia, who has experienced it and who has not, and when Russians feel hunger was most prevalent in their past (http://www.fom.ru/topics/1969.html).
Only 10 percent of the sample said that they had ever had to go hungry in recent times, compared with 67 percent who said they had never had to do so. But an increasing share said that they feared there could be food shortages in the future – 62 percent this year as compared to 55 percent last.
At the same time, however, many recalled hungry times in the past – during and after the second world war, in the course of collectivization, or even earlier. And 30 percent of those who said they had not personally suffered in this way indicated that members of their families – presumably from older age groups – had.
These results at the very least suggest that the fear of hunger remains a real one for many Russians even though few are suffering from it now. Rakov’s comments will do nothing to calm these fears; instead, they almost certainly will generate new concerns not only in St. Petersburg but elsewhere in the Russian Federation as well.
UPDATE ON JULY 11: The suggestion that St. Petersburg might introduce bread rationing or food stamps of one kind or another proved so explosive that the city government within a few hours of the Fontanka.ru report not only denied it but said it was appealing to the central Russian government to help it cope with rising prices for grain and bread (http://www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=109686&print=Y).
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