Untimely Thoughts About Russia

Abstract

Social problems of contemporary Russia make it difficult to reject the former ideology. The attempts to postulate the so-called national idea and create a civil society have no perspectives while the majority of the population has relatively low incomes. In most cases the authorities do not take into account this circumstance. Only the people who are economically independent from the authorities can think about the real mechanism of the future society. Its principles are reasonable choice, functions assigned to each structure (including households) and execution of laws. All the other ideas in this field must be regarded as an inevitable price for saying “good-bye” to the old dogmas. Topics connected with this and considered in the article are to some extent outdated and are not in keeping with the spirit of the epoch, when they are trying to unite the country, to elaborate the national idea for it and to move towards the bright future rejecting the so-called right and left extremism. It was Maxim Gorkiy who warned about the essential danger of such approaches – let’s recall his “Untimely Thoughts (notes about the revolution and the culture of 1917-1918)», which became very timely seven decades later. This article gives brief answers to the questions, which are eternal for Russia – what is happening with us, what is our future and, finally, what should we do? It is important that liberalism in economy and ideology is doomed without adequate level of incomes of the population, that liberalism in economy and ideology without the control of the measure of labor and the measure of consumption is doomed at least at the initial stage of economic reforms, and that liberalism in economy and ideology is also doomed without a developed system of social protection and support of the level of incomes of those citizens who for any of several reasons have no possibility to secure acceptable living standard for themselves or for the members of their families. Under these conditions brilliant ideas of liberals do not produce an adequate reaction in the society. One may be delighted with the fact that economic reforms in many respects favored millions of people, but when dozens of millions are waiting when it will finally happen, such thinking is of little interest. There is an impression that the authority is ignoring these topics. The instinct of self-preservation forces it to conduct public calming actions. We are talking about force methods of solving the problem, moreover these decisions have no systematic character or logic whatsoever. Expert community supposed that Russian authority was wiser and more self-critical. We thought that it would take upon itself the blame for the contemporary state of Russian society, in which practically every adult citizen committed penal or disciplinary actions in the above-mentioned 1990-es. Concealment of incomes, bribery and passive bribery are perhaps the most common of them. It is very difficult for a worker whose salary is at the living wage level or even at the level of average wages, to take the incomes of oligarchs or officials for granted. In Russia there was formed two-level economy with two-level incomes, and consequently with a two-level system of values and morals. Within the framework of this economy appointment to a position in the system of state administration means, along with getting a rather big official salary, an access to the possibilities of income increase for carrying out this or that function. This phenomenon also took roots in public consciousness: dislike for officialdom has been running in the blood of the Russians since Soviet times. The positive dynamics of economic and social indices, which is typical of Russia in the recent years cannot help pleasing one. On the other hand, one shouldn’t forget the fact that the indices, which characterize the living standard of the absolute majority of the population of the country, began to rise from a rather low basic level. One should not idealize social and economic situation, which was formed in Russia at the border of centuries. One can understand those citizens who talk mainly about their lost savings when they remember about economic reforms. And only an insignificantly small number of people remember about liquid assets, which most families acquired – flats, which were handed over to them as their property free of charge. Still no acceptable answers to a considerable number of questions have been found so far either by the society or the authorities, appointed by its elected representatives. And if there are no such answers in the reasonable field then there is always a temptation to answer the question by means of force methods. Let’s consider the question of poverty for example. One can hardly call the situation when dozens millions of Russian citizens have incomes lower than living wage normal. And the danger is that the number of poor Russians never decreased radically during all the years of reforms. It would be understandable, for example, if there were 10 million of such people, but not 29 million. But even in the favorable economic situation this indicator has not gone down. If the economy is not able to solve the problem of poverty, one may try to reduce its level in the country using fundamentally different, administrative methods. For example one can re-count the value of living wage of the population by withdrawal from the composition of the basket certain goods and services of “secondary” priority. It is possible to provide budget payments to those citizens whose income is lower than the living wage. However this problem may be solved in a different way - relatively insignificant restructuring of the federal budget expenses, reducing them by the total value, sufficient for benefit payments to poor households. Economists are happy with the decrease of tax burden on the employers, the introduction of common income tax rate for physical person. The last decision works for the removal of wages from the shadow. However one may nevertheless raise the tax burden on the high income groups of the population and support households, which are in need of social support. Another even more important question lies in the sphere of ideology. The reduction of the poverty scale by this method is actually the state’s admission of the mistakes, which were made during the period of economic reforms in the 1990-es. This is an inevitable retribution for the fact that the state once deliberately encouraged fast social stratification of the society, for the lack of equal conditions for citizens, integrated in market relations, for serious mistakes in social policy. And one should really admit this circumstance, and the financial expenses, which are necessary for softening its consequences should be charged to the state budget. The author is not against the stratification of the Russians by the level of incomes: talent and labor should be valued many times higher than lack of talent and idleness. But he is against the stratification, which is conditioned only by unequal possibilities of access to economic resources. The financial and economic crisis of 1998 sharply reduced the possibilities of earnings in the economy and negatively had a negative influence on the possibilities of social support of the population. The growth of resources, which were directed to the social support of the Russians, became possible only in the post-crisis period, when the GDP of the country began to rise. At the same time the general amount of social payments was raised in a considerably smaller proportion than the GDP of the country and real wages. It was this situation which forced the Government to accelerate the pension reform, the essence of which from the financial point of view consisted in the following: first of all, the financial liability of the state budget was limited to the payment of only the basic part of the pension, and secondly, there were created incentives for the insurance of labor pensions. The next step was an attempt to change the form of providing social benefits by guaranteeing budget payments of different sizes to the existing categories of recipients. However this problem could be radically solved by means of organizing a system of “account and control” of the actual consumption of social support by the citizens. It requires a suitable institutional preparation – introduction of “social cards” with their acceptance by all the structures, which render social support, regulated by the legislation. Russian society should be involved in such concrete actions instead of fruitless searches of the national idea, of building the civil society and so on. The prerequisites of the future prosperity of Russia are connected with the fact that the population has basically adapted to the changed social and economic conditions, the authorities have got an opportunity not only to extinguish social fires but also to carry out systematic reform of the social sphere, the population has learned not to trust the authorities and to distance themselves from them, the population has learned to laugh – not only at the authorities but also at themselves.