The analysis of the economist Vladislav Inozemtsev. Power considers citizens as farm animals. Thousands of families will be left without income. Retail trade dies in large areas of the country. The economy is heading towards -10% GDP growth. Between 3 and 4 million people will disappear from the labor market.
Moscow () – One of Russia’s most renowned economists, Vladislav Inozemtsev, published on theins.ru an assessment of the impact that the military mobilization of these days will have on the Russian economy, which he considers “the final balance of the era of Putin”. Director of the Research Center on the Post-Industrial Society in Moscow, the economist starts from the general feeling that exists throughout Russia at the moment, that “we have woken up in a different country”.
The new Constitution that allows the re-election of the dictator of the Kremlin, the imprisonment of Alexei Navalnyj, the recognition of the independence of Donbass and the invasion of Ukraine, according to Inozemtsev, have created the “apocalyptic” effect that Russian history starts all over again zero. In his opinion, however, “none of these events is comparable in its effects to the mobilization, the true turning point that marks a before and after in our recent history.”
The problem is not even the moral aspect of the matter, the “genocide of the Russian people on the Ukrainian front”, nor is it worth delving into the labyrinth of history by comparing the current call to arms with those of the past. Limiting himself to the economic aspect, the specialist believes that “this time the decision will make itself felt in the life of every Russian citizen”, exponentially accelerating the crisis that began with the invasion and the consequent sanctions.
The discrepancies in the information on the mobilization show that the amount of the affected population is much greater than that which should be formally involved, and could even exceed one million people. As the numerous stories of these days testify, people of all ages and social conditions have been summoned, with massive enlistments of “valid” men on the streets and in homes, subway stations and university classrooms, accentuating the feeling of widespread catastrophe in Russian society.
In a country where there are officially more than 3 million unemployed, there are many other categories that Inozemtsev calls “no economic utility.” At least 700,000 bodyguards, more than 100,000 private drivers and 80,000 deputies from various administrative levels describe the weight of the post-Soviet bureaucracy, as do, for example, the almost 800,000 railway employees, as many as in the rest of Europe.
The economist believes that “the mobilization makes it clear that power considers citizens as farm animals, and the more it goes to the provinces and the countryside, the more military recruitment destroys social reality”, as the cases of the Far East, Buryatia or Jacuzia, where the mobilization affects more than half of the male population. Thousands of families will be left without any income, retail trade is dying in large parts of the country and “GDP, which was destined to fall 4-5%, is now heading towards -10%”.
The Russian economy has long been concentrated in the big cities and major companies, an “oligarchic economy” in which 20% of the country’s GDP belongs to Moscow alone. Except that, unlike the people in the countryside, the inhabitants of the big cities have no intention of going to “shovel up Ukraine’s bloody garbage”, and tens of thousands of them flee Russia or try to hide away from the place where they live so as not to receive the communication of the call. City centers are emptying out and so is the leading sector of the Russian economy.
In a few days the mobilization will no longer be organized according to the place of residence but according to the place of work, and this will be “the coup de grâce for the economy: millions of people will prefer to lose their jobs rather than end up in the ranks of the army” . According to some calculations, between 3 and 4 million people will disappear from the world of work, and in fact it will be the disintegration of the Russia of the last decades, leaving a void that is extremely difficult to fill.
