© (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights by video conference, at the official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow, Russia, Thursday, December 10, 2020. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
With this title you might think that the adjective I give to the Russian president is the product of my anger, or my indignation at the crime committed against Ukraine. I assure you it is nothing like that. It is not an insult, it is simply the representation of a fact, of something that is true. And not only that, I dare to say that Putin knows what a failure is and that it corrodes his insides.
When you finish reading this column you will realize why I say that.
Let me start by telling you an old story from when Russia was still part of the Soviet empire.
… It is said that one day a Comrade Commissar came to visit a small commune in Tatarstan, in the Volga Valley, to investigate how the potato harvest was doing. The Soviet of People’s Commissars or “Sovnarkom” was in the Soviet communist era, the government institution formed by the Second Congress of the October Revolution of 1917. That figure of political commissar always remained. He was a kind of representative of the Soviet and also a political spy. That is why they were so feared.
The comrade commissioner went straight to see the representative of the “sovjoses” commune, the collective farm to find out how the potato harvest was going. The representative lifting his pants straps when he was asked about his harvest replied… “Wow, Comrade Commissioner, this year our commune has been blessed by Our Eternal Father with a harvest beyond our imagination”
… The Comrade Commissar was bothered by that “the eternal father had blessed”, but he put up with it and kept asking… “And tell me, comrade, how about our product?” Creator has been so kind, that our potatoes are so sweet, that if you bite into them, you will think they are apples. That’s how sweet and juicy our potatoes are.”
The commissioner, already frankly irritated by the mention of “The Creator”, asked dryly… “Well, how much potato is the harvest?” another, they would form a column so high that it would reach heaven, at the very feet of God!”
The Commissar, red with rage, no longer holding back, reproached him bitterly, “listen to me, and you don’t know what this is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and what, here God does not exist!” “Yes, Comrade Commissioner,” the supervisor replied… “I know that God doesn’t exist here, but don’t worry… Potatoes don’t exist either.”
Today, 30 years after communism, the story is the same, in Russia, there are no popes. And that deserves a clarification.
Russia with its territorial extension has had serious ups and downs as a producer of potatoes. The year 2012 was the third largest potato production year in the world, only after China and India. Almost 29.5 million metric tons of potatoes.
But of that production, only 13 percent of the national potatoes were produced by agricultural companies, another 8 percent by private farms, and the remaining 79 percent was produced haphazardly on people’s backyard plots. People grow them to have something to eat and that’s what they call it “backyard production”.
My many trips to Russia taught me to see it and try to understand it from the inside, it’s not easy. It is a very different culture from the western one, but humans are ultimately the same and the mysteries placed on that basis are always capable of clarifying the water no matter how cloudy it gets. Today even to my Russian friends I brag that I have a Russian niece. Milena is a sweet girl, the daughter of a daughter of my sister who, married to a Swiss diplomat, lived in Russia for 3 years, while her husband served at the Swiss embassy in Moscow, and it was during this time that Milena was born. My nephews learned a lot from that adventure, although today they live in another country.
I tell you the above, because it always struck me that other countries that were communist, when they left behind the horrible chains of central planning, they also left behind the poverty of their people. Poland, Hungary, even Romania, all today give their populations a better standard of living than what ordinary Russians have. The people who have never had… and who, without communism, still do not have.
And when you ask the answer is invariable. “Russia has very poor prospects for economic growth.”
Imagine the size of the irony.
The Russian territorial extension includes 11 time zones. Eleven! The continental United States has 4 time zones, Canada has 5. If you were to put the two huge North American territories one after the other, they would still fall short of the Russian extension.
Now visualize that enormous extension of land, and think that 77% of it is virgin and uncultivated, think that all that land is not dedicated to industry, or livestock or to generate electricity from the wind or the sun. And yet, Putin now wants more land with Ukraine, which is about the same size as Texas. For what?
Here, it is appropriate to remember that in Russia since the end of communism there are three power elites, which are constantly in conflict to see who gets the most out of their position. Naturally, Putin spends his time mediating between them. These three clans, the so-called “Nomenclature” is what decides what happens with the money and with the country’s resources.
This mismanagement, favoring only a part of the Russian population, is what most damages the prospects that the Russians will one day have a better standard of living, and overcome the deficiencies that the majority have known all their lives.
When the USSR disintegrated in 1991, the oligarchs arose, what were the people of the party and the government who made sure to take over the large privatized companies, while the communist empire fell apart.
The second of these Russian elites is still today the strongest, the so-called “Silovik”. It is the nomenclature of the armed forces and espionage services. Putin comes from that oligarchy.
The third is a group of leaders in the state bureaucracy. Although in truth these are the junior partners among the three elites ruling Russia today.
Vladimir Putin has been the arbiter of the nomenclature lawsuits, and in his 23 years as Tsar, like all the previous ones, he has failed to lift the Russian people out of poverty.
Officially, 13% of Russians today live in poverty. Nobody actually knows this number. Official government figures contradict each other stating that poverty affects more than 20% of the Russian people. That, like everything the government does in Moscow, is always false.
President Vladimir Putin promised to cut those percentages in half by 2024. But today the economy remains stagnant. In Russia the only thing that grows is the roars of discontent of the people.
Fuel prices, common services, consumption taxes, everything goes up… but a bus driver who works up to 12 hours a day earns the equivalent of $215.00 US dollars in a month.
While the Russian state is still completely dependent on exporting oil and gas.
Russia since 2008 has spent what it does not have on its defense industry. This is why the military grew so large, although as in Soviet times, investment in high-tech military technology has had little economic effect on the civilian sector.
After 23 years of “ruling” Vladimir Putin has not brought poor Russians out of their prostration. That is called failure.
Compare Russia with Norway, a small Nordic country, Norway’s land area is 385,206 square kilometers, Russia’s land area is 16 million 612,839 square kilometers, and even so, the Russian gross domestic product (GDP) is only 3.5 times larger than Norway. China’s GDP is 15 times larger than Russia’s. Germany is 47 times smaller in territory than Russia and its GDP per inhabitant is more than 55 times that of Russia.
Putin in 23 years of tsar continues to produce few potatoes.
one last point
Since 2019, Putin and the elites of Russian power have realized that with the growing discontent, they needed something to unite the Russian nation and thereby remove the discontent and weariness of the people, who daily see from afar the stores of the rich, and the cars, and the excesses, and when those Russians look in, all they keep seeing is small, old, smelly apartments.
Putin and his henchmen, who know how to manipulate Russian patriotism, have increased the poisoned notion that Russia is besieged by enemies. With this they believe they can get another 20 more years of deceiving people.
And you know in that analysis who turned out to be the best possible enemy… Us! The West and NATO.
You see, what better justification to invade Ukraine?
Putin with this very expensive military adventure is closing the door on his fingers. This could be the worst mistake of his life. His two master plans, one for a common market for oil, gas and electricity and the other for the liberalization of the financial sector, are today dead before birth.
With the sanctions that the entire West is imposing on it, it is impossible to think that Russia will not fall into more poverty.
* For nearly three decades, journalist Armando Guzmán has earned recognition in Mexico and the United States for his coverage in Washington. He can follow it on different media and platforms, such as radio, television, print media and the internet.
This article was first published in Los Angeles Times in Spanish.