Ioffe profiles Russian activists. What to worry about:
The increasingly real threat of economic turmoil is already chipping away at Putin’s power with more effectiveness than any protest movement. There is bound to be a vacuum when the forces of economics prevail. But a movement that is pulled in myriad different directions, that cannot decide on an identity, and yet lacks variety in its leaders cannot fill the void. By crushing the opposition, Putin has all but ensured that, once again, Russia’s history will repeat itself, and only the wrong people will be there to step in—the ultra-nationalists, childlike faddists, and dangerous purists. And Putin’s own story may not end as happily as he imagined.
On this most recent trip to Moscow, I asked one government official what the culmination of Putin’s reign would look like. “We don’t have this tradition of, OK, you served two terms and you leave,” he said. “We have no other tradition but to hold out to the end and leave feet first.” He meant in a coffin.
The Economist breaks down the problems with the Russian economy:
In today’s Russia, oil and gas account for 75% of all exports, compared with 67% in 1980. Although Russia no longer buys grain from America, as it did in the 1980s, 45% of what Russians buy today is imported. Walk around a department store in central Moscow, and it is hard to find anything that is produced locally. The state remains the single largest employer, while its corporations—controlling natural resources, infrastructure, banking and media—dominate the economy.
As Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes, two American economists, have argued, the highly inefficient industrial structure of the old Soviet economy, based on misallocation of both resources and people, remains intact. The oil rent reinforced and perpetuated it: it has bought political stability and the loyalty of the population, but has slowed down modernisation. Inevitably, the result is stagnation.
The Dish 