MOSCOW -- The Russian government has stepped up its efforts to keep social unrest in check as the financial crisis rages on across the country.
Russia's economy has been among the hardest hit globally, with the unemployment rate reaching the 10 percent threshold in March, its highest rate in the last nine years. Both government officials and critics in Russia and abroad have expressed public doubts about the economy's ability to bounce back in such an adverse economic climate. The International Monetary Fund forecasts a 6 percent contraction in 2009.
With the confidence of the oil-boom years a casualty of the country's sharply deteriorating financial outlook, Russians have shed their traditional reluctance to participate in the political process. The official polling agency, VTSIOM, found that 48 percent of respondents are ready to mobilize and be more politically active, with the number trending upwards.
"There is a rollback of many of the achievements of the early 2000s," said Valery Federov, head of VTSIOM, at an April 29 press briefing.
For now, willingness to join mass protests is not as high as in neighboring Ukraine and Belarus. But the uncertain economic climate and growing ranks of the unemployed are significant enough to keep the Kremlin on its toes.
The government has responded to rising unemployment, rising inflation and the growing volume of personal debt by launching social programs across the country to keep social unrest in check. The Moscow city government launched a grant program for small business owners, while regional governments are also launching programs to tackle unemployment. In Vologda, the local government is giving out discounted lumber for the unemployed to build their own houses.
United Russia party officials have also been working hard to maintain the party's dominant position regionally. The Kremlin appointed Nikita Belykh, a former opposition leader, as governor of the industrial Kirov region in an attempt to keep a closer watch on tightening regional budgets and growing political unrest. "It is easier to change a governor than to strengthen outside governance," Belykh has said.
Vladislav Surkov, a Kremlin strategist, defended the regime earlier this year by citing United Russia's wins across the regions. "The system is working," he said at the "Strategy 2020" forum in March.
At the same time, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made a series of seemingly liberal moves. On April 13, Medvedev met with the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, in a gesture many perceived as a sign of an imminent political thaw. More recently, Medvedev launched a new blog to reach out to Russia's growing base of Internet users. The president uses the blog format as a virtual complaint hotline, responding to citizens' requests to, for instance, improve public health standards and conditions of hospitals across the regions.
The early release of Svetlana Bahmina, a former lawyer for the embattled Yukos company, was another encouraging sign.
But political commentator Viktor Shendorovich says Bahmina's release on April 21 does not signal significant change. "The release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be a sign of real changes in government policies," he said. Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, are in the midst of a second trial for embezzling more than $25 billion worth of oil, which, should he be convicted, would add 22 years to the sentence the former oligarch is serving for fraud and tax evasion.
The recent high-stakes election in the southern resort town of Sochi is another example of the disparity between government spin and reality. In his interview with Novaya Gazeta, Medvedev called the voting a "full-fledged political battle." But critics have claimed the election was nothing but a mock campaign. Anatoly Pahomov, the ruling party candidate, won an overwhelming majority of the votes on April 26 without holding a single press conference and while keeping the whereabouts of his headquarters a secret.
Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition candidate, said the race was never equal. "It never was and it never will be," he told a handful of journalists at his apartment headquarters in Moscow.
"These are phantoms of liberalization," says Evgeny Gontmaher, head of the Institute of Modern Development in Moscow, which recently hosted President Medvedev. "There is no basis for asserting that the political regime constructed by Vladimir Putin in the last 8 years is being taken apart," he said in a radio interview to Echo Moskvy. "But it does not mean that it may not occur."
For Labor Day celebrations on May 1, regional governments have been rounding up students and workers for demonstrations in support of United Russia. The massive demonstrations planned in Archangelsk, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Volgograd may be the biggest public mobilizations since the Soviet era.
In Volgograd alone, the United Russia party is boasting that it will mobilize more than 20,000 marchers. Meanwhile, regional union leaders refused requests by the Communist Party -- the leading opposition group in many regions -- to address the crowds.
Daria Solovieva is a freelance journalist based in Moscow.
Photo: President Dmitry Medvedev at the World Economic Forum prior to his presidency, Davos, Switzerland, 2007 (WEF photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License).
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