12.01.09

Russia is greeting the New Year in an atmosphere of intensifying socioeconomic crisis. The fall in the living standard, the growth of unemployment -- all of this carries the risk of flareups of public dissatisfaction on the model of the events in Novocherkassk in 1962 (when rising food prices led to riots, demonstrators were fired on by the authorities, many were killed, and many arrested). What path will the workers' movement take? What will the authorities do? Here are the opinions of Mikhail Delyagin, Yevgeniy Gontmakher, Sergey Udaltsov, Aleksey Etmanov, Rostislav Kapelyushnikov, and Marina Krasilnikova.

Yevgeniy Gontmakher, Head of the Social Policy Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Economics:

What I wrote in my article "Scenario: Novocherkassk-2009" is still the mildest version of the development of events. Nothing has changed since the 1990s. According to the law of history, the biggest upheavals begin at the stage where people have something to lose. In the 1990s people were worried about their survival. They did not have time for rioting. But in the past few years people have acquired things -- wages have risen, some people have been to Turkey (on vacation), some people have bought cars or other things, and now they are feeling the pain. And this is when people develop very strong feelings of protest.

Certain leaders will act as a consolidating factor. Of course the trade unions have no significance, except perhaps for some individual alternative trade unions where there may be leaders -- not the FNPR (Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia), of course. They have undergone a process of negative cadre selection, and there are no such people there anymore. Most likely these will be informal leaders whom you and I do not know but who will suddenly emerge -- they have charisma. It is possible in the space of a month to acquire the kind of popularity that we cannot even dream of. I do not think there are any potential leaders among the existing politicians. The Communists have long since faded, they are not capable of leading a real protest.

From the opposition, who is there? Nemtsov? Unfortunately, he is no leader. Borya (diminutive of Boris; Nemtsov), Kasparov -- these are people who are incapable of reaching agreements, even between themselves. The entire history of the opposition movement shows this. They spend their whole lives saying that it is necessary to unite, but they simply cannot unite, because each of them is suddenly overtaken by personal ambitions of some kind. Therefore they have no chance. There are some people whom you and I do not know. They are people at local level, in X city there is some student leader -- for the sake of argument-- or small businessman who will suddenly say the right things, do the right things, and people will follow him.

All of this is predictable -- precisely because we do not have a normal political system, whereby when people are dissatisfied they vote them out, others come in, and at first people are satisfied with them, then they are dissatisfied again, they vote them out again, and the previous ones come back. After all, this works everywhere, right? But we have a system that inevitably leads to certain suspicions, certain conspiracies loom, and therefore the people who may come to the forefront will be absolute outsiders, not leaders within the system.

Mikhail Delyagin, Scientific Leader of the Institute of Problems of Globalization:

Of course there will be an activation of the workers' movement, an activation of protests, a growth in social tension, because there will be mass dismissals, including in the "mono-cities" (cities dependent on a single large company or industry). There will be a fall in wages to below subsistence level, because business will take advantage of people's dire situation and the shortage of jobs.

That is on the one hand. On the other hand, as to the idea that there will be shooting, I have strong doubts. Because in actual fact people react to two things: the switching off of the heating in the winter and stoppages of transportation in the city. Anything else does not provoke mass protests. In a number of cases the organizing element of the dissatisfaction will actually be the local authorities -- and then there will certainly be protests. But in such cases there will be no real possibility of the use of force. Therefore I am not expecting any shooting.

Demonstrations can only be dispersed by an OMON (special-purpose police detachment) from another city, because it is by no means certain that the local OMON will be impartial. But an OMON from another city can only be brought into big cities, while for smaller cities nobody is going to bother sending in the OMON from neighboring regions. Therefore I do not think we will see large-scale dispersals of demonstrations.

Alternatives to the official trade unions are springing up among the masses and will continue to do so, but this will be self-defense by the workers, defensive rather than offensive work. Although in certain cities, of course, the occupation of enterprises by workers is probable.

The most explosive situation currently is in the civil machine building sphere. In contrast to the textile industry, which died out back in the 1990s, here they have retained large collectives, but now the situation is very grave: The Ulyanovsk Machine Building Plant, for instance, has gone over to a two-day working week. So flareups of dissatisfaction are most probable in this industry.

Mass protests are hardly likely to be typical of Moscow or Leningrad Oblast, where people have somewhere to run to. At the moment this problem could arise first and foremost in the southern Urals and in Kemerovo Oblast. Abolishing registration in order to facilitate migration in search of work could alleviate the situation only to an insignificant degree.

Sergey Udaltsov, Leader of the Red Youth Vanguard:

According to all the predictions the beginning of next year (2009) promises to be very serious in terms of infringements of labor rights, dismissals, cutbacks, and reductions to a shortened working week. Even government analysts agree with this. Therefore this period will be a testing time for the existing trade unions -- both official and independent. This is a good time to set up new worker organizations. These could be not only trade unions but also other forms of self-management by workers' collectives. The state, no matter how much it may currently try to say that it has the potential to stabilize these conflicts, will not, in my view, be able to handle the situation. We will certainly do everything to support the activation of the workers' movement and its self-organization. I think there is a good chance that an effective, viable workers' movement will finally be formed in Russia.

As far as the "Novocherkassk scenario" is concerned, it will all depend on the activeness of the workers who are cut and dismissed and who will experience other infringements of labor legislation. We recently heard how in Chicago dismissed workers occupied their plant and demanded that the administration fulfill a number of conditions. I think that if the administration and owners of enterprises do not meet the workers' demands, this is a very good example for us.

But if the authorities lose their heads completely, a repetition of the events in Novocherkassk and other unfortunate events is possible. But then the authorities will be signing their own death warrant.

About the trade unions. At the moment, apart from the FNPR, there are several nationwide trade union organizations -- Sotsprof (Association of Socialist Trade Unions), the All-Russia Labor Confederation, the Defense (Zashchita) Union. In my view, the time has now come for them to pool their efforts and form a single organization. The leaders' names are "on everyone's lips" -- there is Aleksey Etmanov, there is Aleksandr Zakharkin from Surgut, leader of the AvtoVAZ trade union. The most important thing is that they should not argue among themselves now but should find a way to rally in the conditions of the crisis and thereby create this alternative workers' organization. That would be the optimum scenario for the workers' movement.

The most difficult situation at the moment is in metallurgy, and the automotive industry and a number of processing sectors are threatened, plus, of course, there is a very difficult situation in the mono-cities that have one or two key enterprises. At the moment the situation is very strained in Magnitogorsk and Baykalsk, where because of the crisis the key enterprises are either on the brink of closure or are drastically cutting the volume of production. We could be talking about a humanitarian disaster, because people simply have nowhere to turn to and no way to feed themselves. These are the trends. Therefore, as I said, both for the workers' movement and for the politicians who talk a lot about helping the workers, now is the time to show in practice what they are worth.

Aleksey Etmanov, Leader of the Ford Motor Company Trade Union:

I can tell you that far more people are now beginning to think and to uphold their own opinion. Only recently it seemed that everything was fine in our lives. Most likely, people simply did not yet realize what is happening now. But anytime now the mass cuts will begin -- for instance, in contract agencies: Because of the stoppage of the conveyor belts, plant administrations will abandon the services of contract agencies that supply hired labor, and these people will be thrown out onto the streets.

Who can rally the workers' movement now? We can. In actual fact we are currently pondering the creation of a sociopolitical movement in defense of working people's rights and interests, and we will most likely announce this in the near future. It will not be a party, but a movement, so that people can really rally and defend their own interests. We are working on this.

Marina Krasilnikova, Head of the Department for the Study of Incomes and Consumption at the Yuriy Levada Analysis Center:

We have been studying public opinion about strikes for nearly 20 years now. These are the options for answering the question: A strike is a) the only way to achieve the satisfaction of the working people's demands; b) a normal means of resolving one's problems; c) an extreme measure that cannot be avoided; d) a useless action that cannot achieve anything. This year there has been no noticeable increase in the proportion of those who consider a strike to be an appropriate way of resolving problems. It cannot be said that there is currently a threat of a mass strike movement. The most mass-scale of the protest actions known in recent history was the events of 2005, when pensioners took to the streets because of the law on the monetization of benefits. It appears that the most traditionalist and socially weakest section of the population -- pensioners -- is in a sense the most organized. And this situation persists.

As far as the trade unions are concerned, although there are trade unions that are known for their activeness, this is the exception rather than the rule. As a rule, labor collectives are in no way organized by the trade unions. In general, a mood of protest is not very widespread at present. Yet in other parameters, first and foremost in evaluations of the living standard, in the past six weeks the situation has begun to change rapidly. But it is not yet possible to speak of a growth in the mood of protest in connection with the deterioration that has been observed in the level of well-being and first and foremost the situation on the labor market.

Rostislav Kapelyushnikov, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Economics Labor Research Center:

My view is this: The activation of the workers' movement in the context of a profound crisis is less likely than in the context of stable, rapid growth. It seems to me that the Russian labor market is structured in a special way: It extinguishes severe shocks of any kind, so that they do not lead to social cataclysms. It can be assumed that in the course of this crisis the likelihood of social conflicts in our country will be substantially less than in many other countries. Everything is organized differently there. Over there, when serious difficulties are encountered they immediately start firing people, but here that is the last resort. In our country people adapt to shocks on the labor market in a different way -- a whole arsenal of unconventional adaptation mechanisms has developed (leave without pay, wage cuts, and so forth). In Russia, unlike the West, it is possible to reduce the price of labor.

As for the sociologists, political experts, and economists who are predicting horrors, back in the 1990s when there was much more reason to expect such horrors I opposed these catastrophic predictions, and I have no reason now to go back on what I said then. Why everything should change dramatically now, I do not really understand -- at least for the time being. Yevgeniy Gontmakher's sensational "Novocherkassk" article offers no explanation as to why in the 1990s, when the situation was more catastrophic by several times, there was nothing like what he describes, whereas now, all of a sudden, this will happen. If he had explained what has changed in eight or nine years of economic growth, then it would be possible to have some kind of discussion. As things stand, this simply remains a kind of subjective cri de coeur.

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Source: Grani.ru