Job Discussion Forums

[ricefigaro]

So what is the deal with the bad press Russia has been getting lately? For instance, I've read this quote in about a half a dozen news postings in the past week:

"Unless we are able to consolidate our elites, Russia as a single state may disappear," Kremlin chief of staff Dmitri Medvedev said in an unusually blunt interview last week in the business magazine Expert. "Whole empires have been wiped off the face of the earth when their elites lost their unity and engaged in deadly battles.... The breakup of the Soviet Union will look like child's play compared to a government collapse in modern Russia."

Is the modern russian government going to collapse? As someone considering taking up an english teaching post for October 2005 - May 2006 should this be worrying me?

[expatella_girl]

Russia has been getting bad press for the last 80 or 90 years. It's been Russia for 1,000 years. It's not going anywhere.

The government is not in danger of collapse. Wishful thinking on the part of the western press. Pay no attention. Putin is definately here to stay. And anybody who disagrees with that is liable to have a very large automatic weapon shoved up his/her nose.

As a foreigner teaching here, your biggest government problem would be keeping up with the constantly changing rules and regulations regarding your status and residency. It's a boondoggle like you've never seen.

Living in Russia gives you a whole new perspective on the western news media. I think they make half of everything up and distort the rest.

[maruss]

In deference to expatella,I am sorry to say almost anything is possible in Russia.Despite local and foreign optimism at the beginning of Putins second term, his support is now waning from the elite bureaucracy who effectively control most things in the country to serve their own interests!The place is now becoming effectively almost a new version of the former Soviet Union from this viewpoint, but without the communist label and propaganda and a kind of state capitalism runs the economy, while people can travel abroad and have more freedom of access to information than they did in the old times.I don't write this out of spite,because I know the place well and have some of my closest friends there.Even they are getting worrried, not just about the state of the economy and what will happen next week etc. but even more about just who and what will replace the present regime!!Unlike other east european countries, Russia has no tradition of democracy or civil society to revert to and went from Csarism to Communism !! this is not just biased western media hype hype-try reading Putins Russia by Anna Politikovskaya-it's scary, but also very accurate, unfortunately!

[expatella_girl]

maruss, I wouldn't argue that you are wrong by any stretch. Yes, I think that the government is tightening up. Yes, they have no history of democracy in this country.

But that isn't what he asked. He asked if we thought that Russia was going to break up. I would give that a resounding NO. He asked if the government was in danger of self destructing. Again, I woulds give that another resounding NO.

I'm assuming that the poster is largely referring to the western press coverage of the demonstrations against the pension reforms and the pollster reports of a fall in Putin's approval rating. And the Yukos affair. All have been loudly trumpeted in the west as indicators that Russia is in a state of discombobulation. With the possibility of some kind of uprising/demolition/takeover on the horizon.

Again I will say that the western press prints what it wants people to read and believe. And I think that the conclusions they would like thier readers to reach is that Russia is currently in a shaky state of governance. They're trying to create the impression of some kind of Yeltsin style uprising. Not happening. That's just pure wishful thinking.

I'll say it again--Russia ain't going nowhere. Putin will be here for quite a while, and things will trudge along in this country as they always have.

[ilugru]

Expatella, I can't quite agree with you. Ukraine also didn't expect things which happened last winter, they came right out of the blue. Unfortunately, in Russia the revolution, uprising, call it whatever you like, is likely to have a different colour, more brownish, and I understand why the friends of maruss are worried pretty well.

[expatella_girl]

Don't confuse the two. Russia is NOT the Ukraine. The Ukraine has a totally different history. It's in the middle of everywhere and has been overrun by it's various neighbors for all it's history.

Brownish?

[GabeKessel]

What might happen is that areas populated by various Muslim ethnic groups in the Caucasus may break away but it may take a hundred years or so.

Russia was not really Russia for 1000 years but a thousand years ago it was the size of Switzerland and called the Duchy of Muscovy. Only Peter the Great gave it the name Russia.

In some 12th century, they started absorbing all these other city states around them and all went fine as long as these were Slavic Christian people of the same ethnic group who looked and talked the same.

The smaller Finno Ugric groups were kind of absorbed as well.

Now, once you get to people like the Ta(r)tars and then the Dagestanis these are clearly non-Russians- they are racially and cuturally different. They will never be absorbed or assimilated. So, we may see Chechnya go sooner or later and then Ingushetia and all of those.

In Siberia 90% of the population is still "Russki". The Asian tribes are not numerous enough to break away and most do not want to. Most are quitely tending to their reindeer herds. They will not get support from the outside world mostly because no one knows about them and they are ineffectual, kind like the Tibetans are ineffectual when it comes to dealing with China.

Ukraine did have a revolution but it did not break up, did it? and that is what the topic of this post is.

[ricefigaro]

At the heart of my first post were questions on the nature of the stability (instability?) of the russian government. Regardless of what new information I come across on this topic, I will still arrive in St. Petersburg for a year long teaching engagement - It would just be nice to know some educated opinions on the matter before then.

[maruss]

Thanks for all of your postings-exchanging opinions is always a good idea and thank God,it's still permitted!
Russias malaise is due to many factors:historical, economic,political etc.
Because it's part of Europe until the Urals, most people expect to find some kind of Slavic version of somewhere like Holland,Germany etc. but of course the reality is very different!If you look under the 'europe' articles on the independent.co.uk website today for example, you can read about Harvey Nichols, the London elite stores plans to open in Moscow because super rich Russian women have become top customers at their shops etc.The truth is that Russia is still a third world country in many ways,with a very small minority spending enormous amounts of money in a provocative and disgusting way while millions of others, among whom are decent and educated [people live in grinding poverty,or at best are struggling to get by on low incomes, even in Moscow.How many super-rich are there -probably less than 100.000 out of the approx 11 million who live in or around the capital, but their money, much of which is of questionable origin keeps these businesses turning over!
And people like Harvey Nichols are just as guilty as all the international firms who pander to those at the head of the evil regime which runs Russia today!
The place needs urgently a peaceful revolution, but definitely not by anyone of any shades of brown, black in their beliefs etc!

[maruss]

The vist of Condoleeza Rice has been hardly mentioned so far by the Russian media, no doubt because her views on democracy in Russia and the question of what Putin is really doing are annoying to the government, to say the least!Don't get me wrong,I'm no suppoprter of Bush either, but just believe in the principle of transparency and open debate and discussion!It will be very interesting to see whether Khodorkovsky is released to co-incide with the May 9th celebrations, as is already being widely speculated-but then isn't he supposed to be a crook and a swindler, just like all the other oligarchs??Why not arrest Chubais and Potanin instead, or are they both 'snow-white??'

[ilugru]

expatella, I meant that the people who are most likely to take over Putin are those who thrive on the growing discontent of the poorly educated and confused majority, and it tends to look for enemies, and finds them usually among other nations/nationalities. I'm afraid the next Russian government will be nationalistic, hopefully not in an extreme way, but even mild nationalism is explosive, in Russia especially. And Putin's environment will easily become Russian Nazis in order to save their belongings, plus they often ARE Pan-Slavonic deep inside.

As for the break-up, I believe that Moscow has very little to offer now to the so called "donor" regions, which are very remote and have seen nothing but the greedy hands of the misers from Moscow for a long time. As soon as they come to think that they can do on their own or ther's someone who can offer them something better, they'll be on the run. And the saddest thing is that the ways of Moscow are unlikely to change.

[maruss]

Russia is so enormous that it's difficult to appreciaite just how far it from Moscow to Vladivostok etc!Like one Russian told me'everything begins and ends in Moscow as far as the ruling elite are concermed' and this says it all!
The amount of money in circulation there among the hands of a lucky minority and which they brazenly flaunt, is not only awsome, but also provocative and an affront to millions of decent people in Russia who despair of ever finding decency and honesty in their country!And that's without mentioning the BILLIONS of dollars which leaves the country every week to be invested abroad by these kind of people,who are afraid that the day of reckoning, which they know will arrive, could leave them with nothing except possibly a grimy bunk in a stinking, sweaty cell !!

[zaneth]

There are huge numbers of migrant workers in the Moscow area from those potential breakaway republics. Evidently Moscow has something to offer.

[maruss]

Like it or not, honey pots attract wasps and flies and Moscow is one of the few places in Russia where there are jobs available that don't pay a pittance, especially in construction etc!