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Page added on September 14, 2012
Russia Faces a Troubled Future
Russia of today is an oil-rich country controlled by corrupt politicians, mafias and wealthy elitists who buy foreign goods and keep their wealth in foreign banks; send their children to Western schools and universities; take vacations abroad; and even seek health care in the Europe and the United States.
Vladimir Putin exemplifies this focus on personal gain. Shlapentokh said the Russian president and his friends have gone so far as to merge Russian companies with foreign corporations for the promise of owning Western stocks. Further, while Putin indulges his personal whims – such as organizing expensive international sporting events – the country suffers from low-quality medical services, inept education, bad housing and many other problems…
…“This desire to secure their wealth abroad stems from the uncertainly that comes with living in a politically unstable country,” Shlapentokh said. _Michigan State University
This corrupt leadership style is similar to what one sees across the third world. While a corrupt leadership thrives on a nation’s natural resources, the masses of people tend to suffer.
One should not be surprised, then to see the significant brain drain and ongoing capital flight out of Russia.
Putin cracks down on any opposition threatening his administration, with the Kremlin routinely suggesting protestors leave or face harassment or even imprisonment. Nearly 1.3 million citizens have left Russia during the past three years. Ultimately, the many problems facing Russia are collectively eroding the cultural beliefs and institutions that make a country united and strong, Shlapentokh says.
“This has put Russia in a weak position for resisting terrorism or potential attacks from her neighbors. In short, Russia is not in a position to be a major global force despite its nuclear arsenal, the size of the country, its natural resources, and its position on the UN Security Council.” _Futurity
Such corrupt, counter-productive, intolerant governing style inevitably creates a society where the masses of people avoid risk, and thus avoid taking chances in search of opportunity. It is an atrophying society, which goes along with the ongoing demographic atrophy of Russia’s core ethnic Russian population.
Any gains seen in Russia’s population are coming from a ballooning Muslim immigrant sub-population. This growing sub-population within the core population is already generating problems with crime, intolerance, and ethnic violence.
Russia’s leadership is living it up as if there would be no tomorrow. And in a significant sense — for the masses of ethnic Russians — they may be right.
3 Comments on "Russia Faces a Troubled Future"
BillT on Fri, 14th Sep 2012 11:29 pm
“(America) of today is an oil-poor country controlled by corrupt politicians, mafias and wealthy elitists who buy foreign goods and keep their wealth in foreign banks…”
More of the Empire’s ranting about how corporate greed in the West is so much better than greed anywhere else. Look at Russia on the map. A land mass many times the size of the US with a population half the size. Do they have problems? Yes. Does the US have bigger problems? Hell yes! And the Empire is jealous. They cannot attack Russia because Russians have thousands of nukes waiting to be used and many still aimed at the US, so they try to make Russia look bad. Too bad those of us outside the American Gulag see the Empire for what it is, failing.
dissident on Sat, 15th Sep 2012 12:54 am
This article trots out all of the fake talking points:
1) emigration, 1.3 million in 3 years according to who? Any statistics on the country show a net migration into the country. Even people who left during the 1990s depression are coming back and for the first time since the collapse of the USSR the birth and death rates are converging.
2) If Putin is so corrupt where is his money? Even Forbes can’t find it. I can claim that Obama eats baby brains for breakfast, but that doesn’t make it true.
2b) Russian wages have gone up from $80 per month in 1998 to almost $1000 per month today. This may have something to do with Putin’s popularity. The noisy 10% neoliberals (Nemtsov, Navalny, etc.) who are the darlings of the western media are the fringe in Russia. They actually claim that Yeltsin’s gangster oligarch kleptocracy of the 1990s was better than today! These people are nutters.
Arthur on Sat, 15th Sep 2012 6:46 am
Very correct, dissident. Putin is the best leader Russia has had for a century, although admittedly, the competition is not very stiff. Russia has returned to it’s true self: authoritarian, strong state, orthodox christianity, nationalist. The decay has stopped, the criminal attempts by the west to undermine this nation once again, by Soros, NED and other NGO’s, after it had been raped by a certain minority in 1917, also financed by Wallstreet (Jacob Schiff). That revolution costed Russia more than 20 million people as well as their complete aristocratic gene pool, turning Russia into the depressing wasteland it is today. It will take Russia centuries to recover from the Bolshevik desaster. Russia and the US, both vast white christian entities that could not resist The Lobby.