Over the past year Putin was kept busy with his widespread international activities and had few chances for relaxation, which he prefers to enjoy at one of his many presidential dachas in the beautiful city of Sochi on the Black Sea coast.
In an effort to split the United States from its friends and allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, Putin has worked very hard during his foreign trips to create new military alliances and coalitions of power with countries having traditional anti-American sentiments.
In addition, Putin and his envoys have been lobbying members of OPEC and other oil and gas producers to keep the price for their natural resources very high and increase it as much as possible.
Using extra money earned from oil and gas exports, Moscow has been able to continue its one-and-a-half-year-long bloody war in Chechnya, to develop its military-industrial complex, and to continue to surprise the world with its new weapons systems.
Under Putin, Moscow sells arms to anybody who is willing to pay, and doesn’t care into whose hands Russian weapons are going. Last month Moscow overhauled its arms-export policies in an effort to boost revenue in the fiercely competitive weapons markets.
As the Russian press reported on Nov. 23, Kremlin officials dismissed Washington’s threats to impose new sanctions on its arms sales to Iran and said Moscow alone would choose its trading partners. The government-controlled media called the move a victory for Russia’s weapons producers, because Iran could become a major importer of Russian arms, behind only Red China and India.
According to the Moscow press, at stake are frozen contracts and expansion into big new deals with Iran. In particular, the press said, Tehran is interesting in assembling Russian hardware, such as the MiG-29 fighter and T-72 main battle tank, under license.
Domestically, the Russian president is doing everything to consolidate all state power in his hands and continuing his drive toward personal dictatorship. His special security services are working very hard to dig up the very weak roots of democracy in a country where it did not, and still does not, exist.
Socially and economically, Putin actually is doing nothing and has put all the responsibility over those areas on the shoulders of his Cabinet, which relies on high international oil prices to fuel the economy and does not care about people.
Currently Russia has a Third World economy and little prospect of any near-term improvement. And this is happening in a country with so much still-untapped mineral wealth and natural resources, and inhabited by a highly literate population and an achieving elite in the arts and sciences.
But this population, according to any standards, is living in deep poverty.
According to Moscow’s official estimate, more than one-third of all Russians live below the official poverty line. Some 46.3 million Russians, or 31.8 percent of the population, receive monthly salaries that are less than the official subsistence level of $45 a month, a special government report said.
The government says that it has been unable to pay Russia’s retirees what it says they need to survive. Official monthly pensions for the elderly were increased to $29 earlier last month, but that is still far below subsistence levels. Of course, this is an official government estimate, but in reality the life of ordinary Russians is much worse, and this tragic trend continues.
Demographically, in the mid-1990s, the population of Russia was more than 148 million. During the first six months of this year, the Russian population was reduced by 425,400 people and today, according the U.N. estimate, the total number of Russians is down to about 145 million.
Experts believe that by 2010 the Russian population will be less than 137 million, and by 2015 it will decrease to about 131 million. Present statistics and projections on fertility rates could see a Russian population of only 80 million by 2050.
In 1987 the average lifetime for Russians was 69.9 years, but in the next seven years dropped to 65.9 years. The most tragic reduction in average lifetime is among Russian males, which was only 59 years in 1996 (in Japan it was 79; in Canada and France, 77; in the U.S. and Great Britain, 77 years). Experts believe that by 2005 Russian males will live an average of only 53 years.
The demographic crisis affects mostly Russians – the Russian population implosion doesn’t affect non-Russian people inside the Russian Federation, for example in Muslim areas. Two other Slavic former Soviet republics – Ukraine and Byelorussia – are experiencing the same demographic problems but not so drastic as in Russia itself.
In his recent address to the Parliament, Putin had no other choice but to recognize this dangerous domestic trend. In his words, every year the Russian population is getting smaller, and in the next 15 years could be reduced by 22 million people.
The major reason for the problem arises from the wretched condition of the Russian economy, in which ordinary people cannot afford to have children, who could never look forward to having any kind of a future in their lifetimes. How can a population increase in a country where people have no idea about what will happen to them tomorrow?
The degradation of Russian society is reflected in the extremely high levels of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, crime, divorce, domestic abuse, and other such negative factors. For example, out of the 520,800 adults who died in 1998, more than 202,000 were murdered, committed suicide, died from accidents, poisoning, or wounds. This is 60,000 more that in the previous year.
Ordinary and honest Russians cannot find their place and opportunities in their country’s totally corrupt economic system, which has nothing in common with a free-market system. Dominated by Mafia-type criminal syndicates and their "soldiers" (the "new Russians"), this economy represses any creative initiative by potential businessmen and destroys any future for economic prosperity.
Corruption in the economy under Boris Yeltsin and now under President Putin seems to be unstoppable and has penetrated practically all areas of this country’s establishment. In a country without a true rule of law and respect for business and contracts, corruption becomes endemic and plays a dominant role in all developments of Russian society.
In this situation nobody but the Russian people themselves can help Russia find a way out of the looming catastrophe. However, the new team coming into the White House has a great opportunity to finally take the steps needed to promote democracy and a free-market economy in the Russian Federation.
To do so, it is necessary, first of all, to avoid the mistakes made by the Clinton-Gore administration, and secondly, to stop supporting the totalitarian regime in Moscow and cancel the unconditional flow of money from American taxpayers to the corrupt Russian elite.
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