HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

Secondly, preparation for war and the establishment of a supposedly autonomous military-industrial complex (even one created just for show) is an expensive business, and, what’s more, in a corrupt state it’s an inadmissible luxury even for the strongest budget.

Next, being denied long-term access to global credit markets and trade restrictions because of the imposition of sanctions, is no laughing matter, no matter what they might say on Russian TV’s Channel One. It seems that only those who make the Iskander missiles might find this funny. Everyone else in Russia cried.

Lastly, the most progressive and economically productive part of society began to leave the country en masse : taking out their money and physically departing. Each of us has but one life; and not everyone wants to spend it in an encampment with thugs. A very basic thing happened: incomes fell, and expenses grew sharply. The pie was no longer big enough to feed everyone, and the state had to choose at whose expense they could continue to “raise the country up from its knees”.

So where should a democratically-minded citizen stand on all this? Should they support the right or the left? In fact, the question itself is now wrong. As mentioned above, in the contemporary world the juxtaposition of left and right movements or left and right ideas is insignificant and relative at best. This is especially the case in Russia. Both left and right are now merely tactical moves, not long-term political strategies as they used to be. There is no “left-wing Putin” or “right-wing Trump”. Now it’s all a myth and opportunistic. And, of course, the left and the right in Russia are not at all the same as they are in Europe.

What’s the classic agenda of the right in Europe? It’s the possibility to earn as much as possible and not share it with others, in the first place via taxes that are paid to the state. Therefore both the state and taxes should be small. Another indicator of the right’s agenda is its relationship to over-consumption. Almost everywhere in Europe this is frowned upon, and, in any case, it’s kept within cultural and fiscal boundaries. From this point of view, the Russian government is, in fact, right-wing, because it’s declared a classic right-wing agenda by directly and bluntly having a unique flat tax rate and by the state and society encouraging over-consumption beyond any measure.

We need to speak separately about over-consumption, and its link with the popular topic of anti-corruption. Society doesn’t mind whatever kind of palaces our officials of the state build. Russia isn’t the birthplace of elephants but of special storage facilities for fur coats. And there has to be a surfeit of everything: an Arab scale; African quality; and an elaborate Asian style. And all of it with the pretension to be another Versailles! There are few countries on this planet with such demonstrative over-consumption. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done this with stolen money or your own.

What’s important here is that in any normal society this would be considered vulgar. But in Russia, it’s decent. Our society – in contrast to the West – reacts perfectly calmly both to a flat tax rate and to barbaric over-consumption. People might not like it, but there’s no class hatred. What’s more, many people will react far more harshly to the slightest privilege displayed by a neighbour than they will to the luxury of an unknown wealthy person. An iron-studded neighbour’s door will anger them more than the forged metal fence around Igor Sechin’s dacha. Let me explain.

The answer is not obvious. It’s more thanks to history and philosophy than politics. When it comes to consumption, Russia retains a rudimentary class structure and, accordingly, a scale of social claims. Therefore, Russians’ claims on the authorities when it comes to social policy are still restricted by class.

People don’t ask for much; but they’ll never give up the little they have. They hold tightly to the status quo and their modest social benefits, and do not wish to lose them even when these benefits are merely of a symbolic, practical significance. The privileges of the upper layers of society bother people much less than many think they do.

At first glance, the story with pension reform is completely irrational. People were very upset by the raising of the pensionable age, even though in a practical sense this move by the government would affect most of them only in the distant future. But this was less of a practical issue than something that upset the balance: it mattered less that their future was being taken away than that psychologically this was an important privilege for the lower levels of society.