- Russia warns against 'hasty conclusions' over Iran - Atlanta Journal Constitution February 22, 2012
- Russia threatens to cap EU flights - Financial Times February 22, 2012
- Ukraine Fans Default Risk in Russia Bet as Vote Molds Policy - BusinessWeek February 22, 2012
- Estonians held on allegations of spying for Russia - Boston.com February 22, 2012
- Syrian opposition urges Russia to back aid plan - San Jose Mercury News February 22, 2012
Russia Getting Meatier
There’s a lot of ways to measure the economic health of a country: per capita income, wealth, inequality, employment, poverty level, etc. The list is virtually endless. Another way is by measuring the average amount of meat a person consumes. Yes, meat, that juicy, protein filled delight, the consumption of which is a testament to people literally living off the fat of the land. Sure meat consumption can’t be reduced to wealth. A lot of other factors go into it too–culinary culture, religion, geographic location, climate, to name a few. Still per capita meat consumption statistics do seem to correlate to a population’s economic status.
Slon.ru reports that yearly per capita meat consumption in Russia is 63 kilograms per person. A respectable numbercompared to the rest of the world, but a good 40 to 50 kilos behind other meat-centric peoples like the Americans and Western Europeans. But where Russia’s carnivorousness places in global statistics isn’t the real point. What’s more revealing is how they compare to past Russian consumption.
As Slon.ru notes, the Putin years have witnessed a meat boom. In 1999, Russians consumed an average 41 kilos of flesh a year. That has shot up by 20 kilos in the last ten years. In this sense, whatever one says about Putin, he has brought home the bacon. Nevertheless, there are important regional differences. Assuming that the statistics collected by the Ministry of Health approach an accurate estimate, regional difference can be quite stark. For example, a person devours 99 kilos of meat in Kalmykia, while only 31 kilos in Dagestan. Or while the Ministry of Health says that the normal consumption of meat is 70-75 kilos a year, only 16 Russian provinces meet this norm. Only four regions average more than 80 kilos: Kalmykia, Moscow province, Yakutia, and Sakhalin. Slon.ru has provided a province by province breakdown.
The statistic that I find most interesting, and revealing about post-Soviet Russia is that while meat consumption has increased dramatically over the last ten years, it still falls short of the USSR peak of 69 kilos in 1989. A few other interesting things to note are that meat consumption rose a dramatic 10 kilos from 1985-1989, the perestroika years. Also, there were no statistics between 1989-1995, a sure indicator of the collapse of the Russian state. But when measurement of meat was resumed in 1995, consumption had plummeted to 50 kilos per person. It bottomed out in 1999, after the Russian economy crashed and burned, to around 41 kilos. Finally, meat consumption leveled off in 2008 when the economic crisis hit Russia, but began to rise a year later suggesting a strong recovery on an everyday level.
Why Are Russians Protesting Now?
As a day of protests against Sunday’s Duma election begins in Russia’s Far East, the big question is why are people protesting now? After all, it’s not like this is the first Russian election with shenanigans, fraud, etc, etc. It is, however, the first one when Vladimir Putin and his party, United Russia, are dropping in approval ratings. Still, VVP still garners, according to the last tally, a 67 percent approval rating. And if you buy that the elections were close to the will of the people, United Russia still polled 49.3%. But that is if you buy the results, which many, including myself, don’t.- Still, “why now?” is the question of the day. Svobodnaya Pressa asked Leontii Byzov, a senior sociologist from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences this very question. I thought his answer was worth thinking about.
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Byzov: There are several overlapping factors. First, the rise of a new generation of young people who don’t remember the “trauma of the 1990s”. They are not afraid of change, it is more attractive to them than the “gilded cage” of Putinist stability. Young members of the middle class want social mobility and dream about meteoric careers.
Another factor is the swelling internal opposition within the Russian elite. In the 2000s, Putin served as a certain guarantor of balance between elite groups with completely opposite interests. Such as, for example, the silovikiand liberals in the government. Under President Medvedev this process became unbalanced. One was for Putin, the other for Medvedev. Those who stood with Medvedev felt the taste of power and property. They urged the President to remove Putin from the Premiership and run for a second term. For them, this was a chance that would have called for a struggle against the financial flows Putin’s people control. For control of Gazprom and other state corporations. Therefore, it was hard to presume that these groups would submit to defeat and quietly leave and put aside their plans for the next several years and, perhaps, forever.
I don’t exclude the possibility that now a very large stake has been placed on Putin not being elected. Or, if it happens, to ensure that Putin becomes President in an extremely weak position with minimal support of Russian society and in poor light in the eyes of the West. This will bind his hands.
The parliamentary elections are a pretext for the maximum inflammation of social dissatisfaction and to delegitimize the upcoming Presidential elections in Russia. Hereby at the same time the results of the parliamentary elections interest a few. From this, United Russia more or less gained a mandate, it made no one hotter or colder. These issues are completely irrelevant to our political system.
The falsification of the election results that are now criticized truly have a place but they occurred in 2007 and then even possibly on a greater scale than now. But then it wasn’t an issue for anyone. Today society is incensed and will continue to be deliberately heated up. An outside group interested in the reduction of power and property has global influence, first and foremost Western networks are in this process. In the West, they also very much don’t want Putin to return to the Kremlin and consolidate power around himself. A serious struggle awaits and the main players are not the people in the street, but those who prepare the government elite revolution in the country. And they are looking after their own objectives.
- Are the street protests and public outcry symbolic or part of a larger struggle within the Russian elite? Perhaps. There are deep splits within the Russia elite, fissures that were deepened after Putin’s return was announced. But will Don Putin be able return balance this time? I’m not very confident.