I find myself agreeing with most of this article. But it leaves two significant questions for me that are as yet unanswered:
- Have food prices stabilized under Putin - and if so what impact does that have on the overall perception of "stability"
- Has the government of Russia really changed in any significant functional structure in the last 5 hundred years?
I ask about the latter because from my perspective (coming from a heritage and ancestry of eastern european serfs), Rodina has perhaps changed the color of her stripes, but she has largely been an oligarchical autocracy with a centrally ordered economy for some 500 years. Sure the level of control and how the oligarchs and their autocreatic leader are selected has changed somewhat in form - but I would argue it has not changed in structure.
This leads me to question what the Russian people want. And from the various "man on the street" interviews I've heard and read, and from the comments of my friends and relatives in Latvia, it seem to me that the Russian people are most comfortable with their government when it doesn't require a lot of input from them and in return provides them with a SENSE of security and stability. I'd be interested in what the author thinks of this viewpoint.
As to the former question of food price stability - this I would suggest, is a large part of what contributes to the SENSE of security and stability for most of the russian population. I would suggest that if one were to look at when the greatest level of political instability occured in russia (and elsewhere in the world) it was associated with periods of dramatic food price instability. Inflation of college tuition and luxory goods - while a damper on a middle class's aspirations, doesn't threaten to drag them into poverty.
Food price inflation OTOH does. And once the middle class feels insecure, you've lost control of the population.
I would argue that Putin has focussed on stabilizing food and energy prices within Russia, and it is from THAT stability that the SENSE of security and stability derives for the average russian. Thus the more objective measures of security as suggested by the author, will never accurately measuer the citizens SENSE of security.
