by RADHIKA DESAI
Radhika Desai sits down with world-renowned sociologist and activist Boris Kagarlitsky to discuss the tectonic shifts taking place in Russian politics—and what Western media gets wrong about Russia.
With so much disinformation floating around, and with so many media outlets filtering their coverage through the geopolitical interests of the West, it’s often difficult for interested audiences to know just what is going on in Russian politics today. From the COVID-19 pandemic to mass protests and the return of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January, who suffered a near-fatal poisoning attack this summer, major political and economic shifts are taking place in Russia. Add to that the public outcry against the imprisonment of Navalny, who is now on a hunger strike from his prison cell just outside of Moscow, and the new sanctions against Russia that U.S. President Joe Biden announced this week, challenges to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power are mounting. But what do these developments mean and look like for people on the ground in Russia?
In this special production of The Real News Network, new contributor Radhika Desai helps audiences in the West navigate these and other thorny questions. Radhika directs the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, teaches at the University of Manitoba, and is known for proposing the Geopolitical Economy framework for understanding world affairs. In this important and timely conversation for The Real News, Radhika speaks with world-renowned Russian sociologist and activist Boris Kagarlitsky about Putin’s power system, Navalny’s return, and the coming tectonic shifts in Russian politics.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
“An accumulation of anger” in Putin’s Russia
Radhika Desai: Boris Kagarlitsky is a very well-known leftist writer, historian, sociologist, and also a political activist in Russia. He has been politically active since the time when the Soviet Union still existed and has continued to do so in Russia, offering a distinctive left perspective on Russian politics. Welcome, Boris, it’s really a great privilege to have you.
This interview has been occasioned by all the discussion about Russian politics in the Western countries with the return of Alexei Navalny to Russia. So, let me start by asking you: What was the political situation in Russia at the time of Navalny’s return in January, 2021?
Boris Kagarlitsky: Let’s start with the COVID crisis (I think this is an essential problem for every major capitalist country now—or every major country on Earth, actually). It is very important to understand that Russia has already experienced about six years of economic stagnation. Sometimes it’s accompanied with very, very modest growth, sometimes economic decline. But anyhow, the economy is stagnating for the seventh year in a row. Then the pandemic started, and in that sense Russia is very special, because in terms of providing economic support for the population, the Russian government has been absolutely specific about following a strategy of no support, ever—the idea being that the population should survive on its own. So, on the one hand, they have closed down quite a few businesses and practices, and lots and lots of people have lost their jobs. Even more people, actually, lost their income.
The actual loss of jobs was not that catastrophic in the long run, because quite a few migrant workers had to be thrown out of Russia. So, while the total loss of jobs was impressive, the actual loss of jobs for Russian citizens was not that catastrophic; a lot of that price had to be paid by people in Central Asia, by the immigrant and migrant workers who lost their jobs. Actually (this is very interesting), it ended up creating a kind of division between those who wanted to remain as immigrants and would do whatever they could to stay over, and those who made the personal decision to leave Russia and had to figure out strategies for getting back home. So, in that sense, I think the immigrant population we have now is mainly composed of people who are really loyal to Russia, at least economically—these are people who decided they have to stay in Russia no matter what.
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