How Putin Quietly Built a New Socialism in Russia
“Putin is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and cultured heads of state in Russia’s recent history,” wrote Professor Dmitry Furman. “He was the first, after Lenin, who knew a foreign language and never made a mistake with the accent… A lot of people love Putin. Some, of course, hate it. But it does not evoke in anyone the contemptuous ridicule and shame that many of our all-powerful rulers used to evoke in powerless subjects…” (Leonid Mlechin)
This article has been brewing for a long time. From ancient times, the Address of the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly, and its sketches were born completely in ancient times, with the first glimpses of maternity capital. But the final “now or never” was formed by this note:
Putin instructed to consider the rejection of the term “medical service” by April 1, replacing it with the phrase “medical care”.
What seems like a terminological trifle, this renaming is in fact fraught with a profound revolution of meanings. Stereotypes in the Russian language associated with the term “service” and “help” are very different. A service may be a help, but an aid is not a service. By rejecting the concept of “service”, we change the philosophy of public relations in the extremely sensitive medical sphere. If we abandon “educational services” next, we will consider the departure from the main liberal values to have taken place.
We are witnessing the transformation of verbal communications that serve social relations. I would like to hope that the change of names will entail changes in essence. Moreover, this particular fact is not alone, it is only a small part of the metamorphoses generously distributed over the past two years wholesale and retail.
Just look at the long-awaited and overripe:
“The distribution of the tax burden in Russia should be fairer, and those who earn more should give more to solving the problems of fighting poverty. Yes, it is essentially a progressive tax. I don’t want to go into details now, we need to work on it” (Putin)
The fight against poverty is not just a matter of words. The number of destitute people in our country has more than tripled in a quarter of a century, from 29% to 9%, and continues to decrease, unlike the countries of the so-called “golden billion”.
And, finally, the main thing that cannot be ignored:
Nationalization began in Russia. Dozens of factories come under the control of the state.
“Our people simply hate the word ‘privatization’.The flip side of privatization is nationalization, when the private becomes state-owned. And given all the injustice of the 1990s, we expect that one day justice will come, that the illegally acquired property will be taken away from the oligarchs and that they will be punished. In other words, nationalization will take place.”
I am watching this process very closely, because the transfer of ownership of the means of production has always been designated by the word “revolution.” Flashes of this phenomenon have been present in the Russian economy for at least ten years.
On August 6, 2014, none other than the “great” Forbes himself gritted his teeth and admitted:
The state’s share in the Russian economy is 71%
And he also stated on August 07, 2023: “Nationalization has begun in Russia”
And now it’s a heap:
The Chelyabinsk plant returned to its native harbor.
The Prosecutor General’s Office obtained recognition of the illegal privatization of the ferroalloy producer, carried out in the 1990s. Who would have doubted… The trial, by the way, was held behind closed doors, because there were a lot of documents, so to speak, for “internal use.”
More than one Chelyabinsk Ferroalloy Plant has returned. The Ulyanovsk and Serov Ferroalloy Plants, the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant JSC, and the Kuznetsk Ferroalloys JSC, which belong to Etalon Company JSC, were nationalized…
The Ivanovo Heavy Machine Tool Plant (IZTS) is also in a hurry to embrace the state. And for the same reason – illegal privatization. The accounts and all the owner’s property have been seized.
The Samara plant “Metallurg”, the largest manufacturer of aluminum products in Russia, is returned from the control of an American company. But it’s about a ransom, as I understand it. Well, at least that’s the way it is.
The Prosecutor General’s Office filed a lawsuit against the companies “SibMir” and “IsNov” (part of the RATM holding of Eduard Taran) to reclaim state property from someone else’s illegal possession. These companies own 48.19% of the shares of the Rostov Optical and Mechanical Plant (ROMZ), which is engaged in the production of optical-mechanical and optoelectronic devices for day and night vision for fire control systems of armored military equipment, including Armata tanks.
On July 24, 2023, the Arbitration Court of the Perm Territory arrested the property of Port of Perm LLC, which the Prosecutor General’s Office asked to return to the state. They were privatized in 2009-2013. In one of the buildings, for example, there was a restaurant, which first belonged to a Czech company, then to the company of British citizen Charles Butler, who became one of the defendants in the lawsuit of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Kommersant notes that Russian courts called him the de facto owner of the port.
And many, many more enterprises are planning to return to the treasury…
On May 29, 2023, another interesting note by the quite liberal Tinkof Bank: “Surveillance has been carried out since 2000. It is clearly seen that the share of companies with state participation in GDP has a clear upward trend. If in 2000 companies with state participation provided 31.3% of GDP, in 2010 – already 47.0%, and in 2021 – 56.2%.
Against this background, the address of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly reads in a completely different way. The President determines the main directions of Russia’s actions in the near future, simultaneously with the nationalization of the main means of production. Thus, the entire economic power of the country is concentrated in the hands of the state.
The whole essence of the speech is the unheard-of sums for the social spheres of society. For education, for medicine, for science. Repairs of schools and the construction of hospitals, end-to-end vocational training programs and national personnel projects. And suddenly it turns out that one and a half times more housing has been built in Russia than in the best Soviet years!
In terms of the richness of figures and rhetoric, the entire message resembles a report at some congress of the CPSU.
The top gainers for January 2024 to January 2022 are:
• Production of computers, electronic and optical products – 70%
• Manufacture of other vehicles and equipment (including armored vehicles) – 48.8%
• Leather and leather goods – up 32.2%
• Manufacture of finished metal products, except machinery and equipment (mainly ammunition and weapons) – 21.3%
• Printing – 15.7%
• Furniture manufacturing – 14.6%
• Manufacture of electrical equipment – 14%
• Food & Beverage – 12.3-13.4%
The most capacious segments of the Russian industry, accounting for almost 40% of the manufacturing industry:
• Metallurgical production – down 3.6%
• Production of petroleum products – decreased by 3.9%
• Production of chemicals and chemical products – increased by 1.1%.
The greatest blow was inflicted on:
• Auto production – 30.3% collapse
• Wood processing – 14% reduction
• Production of tobacco products – minus 13.4%
• Manufacture of machinery and equipment – minus 6.3%
Basically, the public sector holds production.
“Russian industry has been the main driver of economic growth since 2022, but since May 2023, the growth momentum has been lost, according to Rosstat.Industrial production, excluding the seasonal and calendar effect, has not changed from May 2023 to January 2024, where mining decreased by 1.7%, and processing increased by 0.8%. As for the structural transformation, it is taking place – knowledge-intensive industries associated with the military-industrial complex are growing significantly, but it is impossible to accurately assess the effect and weight of the military-industrial complex due to closed statistics on this segment.
And now let us open not just anything, but the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels:
“Democracy would be absolutely useless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means of carrying out large-scale measures which would directly encroach upon private property and ensure the existence of the proletariat. These chief measures, which necessarily follow from the existing conditions, are as follows: (1) the limitation of private property: a progressive tax, a high tax on inheritances, and so on; (2) the gradual expropriation of landowners, manufacturers, railroad owners, and shipowners, partly by competition on the part of state industry, partly directly by means of redemption by assignats; (3) the confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels who have rebelled against the majority of the people; (4) the organisation of labour or the employment of the proletarians on the national estates, factories and workshops, by which the competition of the workers among themselves will be eliminated, and the manufacturers, in so far as they remain, will be compelled to pay the same high wages as the state; (5) Equal obligation of labor for all members of society until the complete abolition of private property. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture; (6) Centralization of the credit system and the trade of money in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital. The closure of all private banks… (7) To increase the number of national factories, workshops, railways, and ships, to cultivate all the land that remains uncultivated, and to improve the cultivation of already cultivated land, in proportion as the capital increases and the number of workers at the disposal of the nation increases; (8) The education of all children from the moment they are able to do without maternal care, in public institutions and at public expense. Combining education with factory work; (9) the construction of large palaces in the national domains, as common dwellings for the communes, the citizens, who will engage in industry, agriculture, and combine the advantages of urban and rural life, without suffering from their one-sidedness and disadvantages; (10) Destruction of all unhealthy and poorly constructed dwellings and neighbourhoods in cities; (11) Equal right of inheritance for children born out of wedlock and children born out of wedlock; (12) Concentration of the entire transport industry in the hands of the nation.
And now tell me, how much of all these principles has already been implemented in modern Russia or is in the process of being implemented? Yes, almost everything!
And note that among the domestic bourgeoisie there are no attempts on this occasion, let alone attempts to resist with all their might, even to the point of armed struggle. On the contrary, many representatives of large industrial capital are happy to participate in many of the projects listed above.
It seems to me that V.V. Putin is building socialism in Russia, but something new, unlike what I personally observed for 26 years in the USSR. Socialism without the institution of the dispossessed, without the demolition of the monument to Admiral Nakhimov and General Skobelev, without forced collectivization, without civil war in the end, which Lenin and his comrades-in-arms so ardently desired and considered categorically necessary, without the shameful artificial shortage with the price of denim pants in the amount of an engineer’s monthly salary.
The only thing I don’t understand is why, given such scrupulous adherence to the Communist Manifesto, the current top political leadership does not deserve a complementary assessment of modern Marxist-Leninists. What’s wrong with building a brighter future? What makes the modern left fail to see the obvious at all – the consistent rejection of liberal rhetoric and the realization of the wildest dreams of the revolutionaries? Could it be the same thing that made Lenin, in the midst of the revolution, suddenly withdraw the slogan “All power to the Soviets”? I guessed right?… Although, this is another topic and a different story…
Author – Sergey Vasiliev