Igor Bolotov of the Russian Ministry for Regional Development said on Wednesday that one trillion rubles (about $33.8 billion) would be required to modernize one hundred of the country’s so-called “monotowns,” small to mid-size Stalin-era establishments almost entirely dependent on a single industry. This dependency has made them particularly prone to the global economic crisis, threatening total economic collapse for the town if just one company goes under.

As opposed to the trillion cited by Bolotov, the government’s 2010 allocation for the struggling provincial outposts is only 25 billion ($846 million) – a number that is itself far below the 100 billion ($3.38 billion) estimated last August for a federal development program.

Additionally, investment programs have only been developed for 27 monotowns, 24 of which are currently being reworked. Only 8 of these programs, Bolotov noted, are focused on creating new industries, and only 11 include proposals for modernization. “But they do not solve the problem of single-industry,” he said.

Bolotov’s comments came ahead of Thursday’s session of a government commission on monotowns in the industrial city of Tolyatti. They also stand in stark contrast to President Dmitri Medvedev’s statement last November that plans for developing monotowns was one of the government’s primary concerns.

In his turn, Vice Prime Minister Aleksandr Zhukov said he was certain that the country’s monotowns could overcome their problems and become “points of growth” for innovative economics in the post-crisis period.

Monotowns became a widely discussed topic in the Russian media last May, when residents of the town of Pikalevo blocked a federal highway to gain attention to their desperate economic situation. Workers had been left with long unpaid wages after the town’s three aluminum plants shut down without warning, and the situation was only rectified after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin staged a personal intervention to ensure that the factories were reopened.

See also: • Darkness on the Edge of Monotown, New York Times

Update 1/26/10: Excavators resumed house demolitions Tuesday morning, reneging on a statement on Monday that residents would be given several days to voluntarily leave their homes and for recent subzero temperatures to subside. Authorities say that as a court had ordered the demolitions, continuing to halt the demolitions would be in violation of judicial authority.

Meanwhile, residents have largely run out of food and fuel, and fear that they will not be allowed back into their homes if they leave to purchase more. They have additionally sent a delegation to the German and American embassies with a request to be taken in as refugees.

Also on Tuesday, Sergei Udaltsov, an activist leader supporting the residents, was arrested in Rechnik on unclear charges of extremism.

Residents of Rechnik, a small village on the outskirts of Moscow, have pledged “to stand until death” in the face of a city order to demolish their homes, reports Gazeta.ru.

At a meeting on Saturday between residents, activists, police, and government deputies, residents of the small village demanded that authorities put a moratorium on the demolition of their homes, which began Thursday night and is due to continue on Monday morning after a weekend break, as well as create a conciliation committee. They also voiced concern that police were not allowing ambulances through to the village.

On Thursday night, two Rechnik residents were hospitalized and about 25 detained after attempting to stop workers from bulldozing their homes. On Friday, home owners barricaded themselves inside one of several building slated to be razed, but were unable to hinder workers from continuing to demolish other homes. As of Sunday night, altogether six had been taken down.

Moscow city authorities brought the village to court after an environmental watchdog investigated Rechnik in 2006, concluding that the houses had been illegally built on land that had been set aside for collective gardens during Soviet times. Despite being illegal when they were built at the end of the 1950s, the houses in Rechnik were never torn down. Residents say that while other similar villages have long since been legalized through a “dacha amnesty” program, Rechnik had simply been forgotten. Moreover, they say, the village had not been notified of the court’s decision to tear down their homes and had not been invited to contest it.

“The village Vodnik and other similar garden associations also exist in rural Moscow, and it was a difficult situation, but they all fell under the amnesty,” said one resident. “But it’s as if we’re the only ones.” Despite promises that the houses would be replaced with a park, numerous residents expressed certainty that they would be replaced with “some kind of elite housing.”

Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political organization and present at Saturday’s meeting in support of the protesters, said that the residents must necessarily be granted a moratorium until Moscow’s recent subzero temperatures subside. “This is simply inhumane – to kick people out into the streets in such cold,” he said.

Rechnik residents promised to use any means possible to stop police from evicting them, including blocking entrances to buildings by pouring water over the walkways, rendering them too icy to walk on. Additionally, one resident veteran threatened to set himself on fire, and another resident said that he would employ his pet leopard against police if necessary.

“We’re going to stand until death,” said Sergei Bobyshev, the leopard’s owner. “Yes, the leopard Cleopatra lives in my house, a very affectionate pet cat with the manners of a dog – she’s already four years old,” he said, adding that he had all the necessary legal documents for the unusual pet.

The village has additionally issued an appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to personally intervene in the situation, apparently following the example of the town of Pikalevo, where residents successfully appealed to the prime minister in May after being denied long unpaid wages.

Vladimir Vasiliev, head of the State Duma commission on safety, urged residents to bring him all of the home ownership documents that they could find. Owners of the demolished buildings promptly handed him a large packet of papers. Public Chamber representative Anatoly Kuchern promised to investigate whether or not Rechnik was eligible for dacha amnesty.

Despite the weekend moratorium on demolitions, police had blocked off one of the only two roads to Rechnik on Sunday night, preventing residents from returning to their homes. Police claimed that they were blocking the road because a nearby nature preserve was closed.

Russia’s Prosecutor General and Internal Ministry are meanwhile investigating accusations of police misconduct during the demolitions on Thursday and Friday.

The measure was introduced as an amendment to current Russian legislation that governs demonstrations and other public gatherings.

Legislators explained the measure in an explanatory note, saying that solo protesters sometimes set themselves on fire or, alternatively, come under attack by other people. Under current legislation, the note continues, local police receive no notification that a protest is planned and therefore are unable to properly respond when such a situation breaks out.

Until now, solitary demonstrations were the only legal means of protest for Russian citizens that did not require any type of official sanction. Opposition protesters have frequently been forced to utilize this provision after being denied sanction for larger gatherings.

Russian rights activists and opposition leaders reacted strongly to Friday’s announcement that their last remaining means of legal protest would soon be effectively banned, rejecting the idea that the measure was for their own safety.

Denis Bilunov, executive director of the opposition movement Solidarity, said that the initiative “directly contradicts” federal law.

Roman Dobrokhotov, leader of the opposition movement We, said that the initiative was no surprise given the Ministry of Transport’s recent move to stiffen penalties for protesters who blocked roads or highways.

The new penalties were introduced to the Russian State Duma at the end of December, with fines rising from 2,500 rubles ($84) to 100,000 rubles ($3,340), and the maximum prison sentence rising from 15 days to two years.

Blocking highways has become a growing means of protest in Russia for older citizens and pensioners who have failed to affect change through other means. Residents in the devastated industrial town of Pikalevo were able to receive long unpaid wages only after gaining nationwide media attention by blocking a federal highway last June.

According to Dobrokhotov, both pieces of legislation will backfire if adopted.

“We will block the roads and hold solo protests out of principle, to fight for our rights,” he said. “Moreover, we will hold such demonstrations more often than before.”

Dobrokhotov added, however, that essentially “nothing is changing” since police have often interrupted solitary demonstrations regardless of the fact that they are legal.

In November, Solidarity leaders obtained an internal police memo that ordered officers to illegally disrupt a series of solo demonstrations. The movement plans to use the document in a lawsuit against the Russian Internal Ministry’s notorious Center for Extremism Prevention, which, according to the document, ordered the illegal detentions.

Ilya Yashin, a Solidarity member who posted the police memo on his blog, agreed that there was nothing surprising about the newest government initiative. “The authorities consider this type of demonstration to be a menace, since it’s the only measure that the opposition can still use relatively effectively,” he said.

Approximately 50 protesters took to the streets in Moscow on Saturday in response to both pieces of legislation. Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political organization, said that activists would protest outside of the Kremlin when the amendments come up for deliberation.

“The year is beginning badly,” Udaltsov said. “The government’s initiatives attest to the fact that they are expecting a second wave for the crisis and, consequently, a rise in protests.”

Police officers subjected people attempting to join the protest to a thorough search, banning some from taking part on the basis of unspecified written material that the people in question were carrying.

Prominent human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev said that the amendment to strip citizens of the unconditional right to solitary protests would be harmful for citizen society at large. “If a person is connected with a political group, he knows how to submit applications for demonstrations and rallies. An ordinary person only knows that at any moment he can go outside to hold a solitary demonstration and nobody will arrest him,” Ponomarev said.

During the highly choreographed production, the prime minister told the country not to hold its breath for his departure from politics, expressed interest in running for president again in 2012, accused jailed Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky of murder, blamed the United States for preventing Russia’s inception into the World Trade Organization, and expounded upon the subtleties of understanding Stalin, among other things.

The Crisis

Even before Putin began to speak, host Maria Sittel took the floor and exalted the government for its handling of the economic crisis. “We all know perfectly well how the year of the crisis began: millions of Russian citizens feared poverty; tens of thousands expected to be fired; business calculated future losses,” she said. But instead of throwing its citizens to the “mercy of fate,” she continued, the government “laboriously, step by step…scrutinized the affairs of individual companies, made agreements with businesses, and helped our national manufacturers.”

Putin himself turned out to be pleased with his work on the crisis. He assured viewers that “the peak of the crisis has been overcome,” although “turbulent phenomena in the world economy, and consequently also in Russia, do remain.”

Despite a nearly 9 percent fall in GDP, a 13 percent fall in industry, and growing inflation, Putin listed a 0.5 percent growth in agriculture and a rising birth rate as commendable compared to the government response to the economic crisis in 1998.

Putin on Terrorism

In the wake of last week’s bombing of the Nevsky Express luxury train, which authorities are calling a terrorist attack, Putin addressed the problem of terrorism in Russia on the whole. “We’ve done a lot to ‘break the spine’ of terrorism, but the menace has not yet been eliminated.”

“It raises the question,” he said, “can we prevent crimes of this type? Our country is enormous, our territory is large, and there is a lot of infrastructure. Nevertheless, we need to work effectively. We need to be on the advance.”

Putin Saves Pikalevo, Again

Among sites chosen to host camera teams to field questions live to the prime minister was Pikalevo, one of Russia’s so-called “mono-towns” dependent on a sole industry – in this case, aluminum. The majority of the town’s 21,000 residents lost their jobs when all three plants were shut down last winter, and the city shut off all heat and hot water in May. A massive protest erupted when the long-unpaid citizens blocked off a nearby federal highway and demanded Putin’s personal intervention. The Prime Minister responded with an embarrassing public chastisement of Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch owner of the largest of the three plants, and ordered him to negotiate a decision that would reopen the factories.

During the broadcast, a manager of the largest of the plants asked the prime minister whether he would return to the town. The reason that this might be necessary, he said, was that the promised negotiations had not yet been signed.

In response, Putin promised that he would travel to any place in Russia where he was needed. “If the situation demands it, I will go to you again, or to any other place at any different point in the Russian Federation – that is my duty,” That aside, Putin said he currently saw “no such necessity.” He promised, however, that the government had control of the situation and an agreement would soon be written.

Indeed, even before the end of the broadcast, reports came in that the agreement between Pikalevo and the company had been signed.

The United States and the WTO

At one point, host Ernest Matskyavichyus told the audience that many questions had come in regarding Russia’s inception into the WTO. In response, Putin abruptly pounced on the United States, blaming it for not annulling the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a piece of Cold War-era legislation intended to help Soviet dissidents and religious minorities emigrate to America. Russia now criticizes the amendment as anachronistic and harmful for trade relations.

Putin said the amendment is used by “representatives of various lobbies in the United States Congress” for “decisions of rather narrow and selfish sectoral economic problems.”

“Entry into the WTO remains our strategic goal, but we get the impression that, due to motives that we are aware of, several countries – including the United States – are hindering our entry into the WTO,” he concluded rather sharply.

Love for Belarus

One question focused on recent angry remarks that the totalitarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had aimed at Putin. “You were harshly criticized by Belarusian President Lukashenko. You don’t answer him. Why?” a viewer asked.

“Maybe it’s love?” Putin replied.

The prime minister added that he has very kind, warm feelings for the Belarusian people, and especially for its government. The Russian government, he said, imports nearly all Belarusian agricultural products and has given the country 3.5 billion dollars over the past two years.

Putin Clarifies his Relationship with Tymoshenko

The prime minister’s position on upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine turned out to be less ambiguous than four years ago, when the Kremlin supported Viktor Yanukovych.

“Why do you support Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential elections in Ukraine?” one viewer asked.

“I do not support Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential elections in Ukraine,” Putin replied. “I am cooperating with Yulia Vladimirovna Tymoshenko as the prime minister of the Ukrainian government,” stressing his role as a “humble servant” while also misstating his Ukrainian counterpart’s patronymic (which is actually Volodymyrivna).

Recent agreements concerning Russia’s sale to Ukraine of natural gas have raised speculation that the Kremlin would back Tymoshenko in the upcoming Ukrainian elections.

The Police

A recent slew of high-profile incidents has brought a renewed wave of criticism on Russia’s police forces, and one of the key questions in Thursday’s broadcast reflected this concern.

“The police are now out of favor, and every day there are reports of police attacks on citizens…Maybe, [we should] just dissolve them and create a police force from scratch?”

Putin began his response by saying that no police reform would occur in Russia as has occurred in Georgia and Ukraine.

“In Ukraine, our neighbors and friends have already had this experience. They dissolved what we call the GAI, the road services – nothing good came from this. Bribes increased, and there came to be less order on the roads,” elaborating no further on the situation in Georgia.

In general, Putin said, the police should not be excessively slandered. “I consider it unnecessary to smear all police officers with red paint,” he said, but noted that the reaction to police offenses should be “especially critical, fast, and severe.”

Media attention to problems with the police, which have long plagued Russia, was renewed in April when police chief Denis Yevsyukov killed three people and wounded six in a Moscow supermarket while drunk. Novorossiysky Major Aleksei Dymovsky drew unprecedented media attention in November when he posted two YouTube videos of himself discussing corruption that he had seen in the police force.

Khodorkovsky and Murder

For the first time since the 2005 arrest of oligarch and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin allowed himself to comment on the controversial case. Khodorkovsky’s trial, in which he was sentenced to eight years in prison for oil embezzlement in the sum of 900 billion rubles (approx. $31 billion), is criticized as highly flawed and politically motivated. Until Thursday, no questions on the subject had been posed during a live broadcast.

“When will Khodorkovsky be released?” a viewer asked via text message.

“This well-known figure is in prison by the sentencing of the court. And the problem is not when he will be released,” Putin stressed, “but so that crimes of this type are never repeated among us,” referring to economic crimes.

The prime minister went on to say that the money resulting from the case went a housing and communal services reform fund that has helped 10 million Russian citizens. “If at some point this money was stolen from the people, it needs to be returned to those same people,” he asserted.

In an unexpected additionally commentary, Putin went on to accuse Khodorkovsky of murder.

Referring to chief Yukos security official Alexey Pichugin, currently serving a life sentence for conspiracy in several murders, Putin remarked that “nobody remembers, unfortunately, that one of the leaders of the security services of the Yukos company is in prison. What, you think that he acted on his own discretion, at his own peril and risk? He had no concrete interests. He is not the main shareholder in the company. It is clear that he acted in the interests and by the instructions of his bosses,” implying that Khodorkovsky had ordered the murders.

Putin for President, Again

Two questions were posed in regards to speculation that Putin might run for a third term as president in 2012.

“Don’t you feel like leaving politics with all its problems and live for yourself, your children, your family, and finally rest?” one viewer asked. “If that’s it, I’ll take your place, just give me a call.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” the prime minister replied.

The second question was from a St. Petersburg student, who directly asked whether Putin was planning to participate in the 2012 presidential elections.

“I’ll think about it,” replied Putin. “There’s plenty of time.”

Approximately an hour after this statement, an Italian reporter asked Russian President Dmitri Medvedev whether it was possible that both he and Putin would run for president in 2012.

“Prime Minister Putin said that he isn’t ruling out this possibility, and I’m also not ruling out this possibility,” replied Medvedev, who was at a press conference in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“We can agree in what way not to elbow each other, and make a rational decision for our country,” he asserted.

Putin and Stalin

At the end of the program, Putin answered a number of questions that he said he had chosen himself. One of these turned out to concern Stalin.

“Do you consider the activities of Stalin on the whole to be positive or negative?” the question asked.

Saying that he understood the “subtlety” of the question, Putin qualified his answer by saying that there were both positive and negative qualities to the dictator’s reign. “One cannot, in my view, make a judgment on the whole,” said Putin. He praised Stalin for successfully changing the country’s focus from agriculture to industry, and said that victory in World War II was Stalin’s achievement.

At the same time, he continued, these positives “were nevertheless reached at an unacceptable price.”

Putin called Stalin’s repressions, which killed an estimated 30 million people, “a fact,” saying that “millions of our fellow citizens suffered from them. Such a means of managing the government to achieve a result is not acceptable.”

“Here, Thank God, There Aren’t Any Elections”

Putin’s most significant slip of the tongue came the prime minister was asked whether his recent appearance in the hip-hop contest “Battle for Respect” was motivated by his falling ratings.

“Ratings have absolutely nothing to do with it. Here, thank God, there aren’t any elections,” he responded.

Elections in Russia are notoriously fraudulent. Regional elections on October 11 delivered sweeping wins for Putin’s leading United Russia party across Russia, continuing the political monopoly it has held since its conception in 2001. Observers noted massive electoral violations, including ballot stuffing and multiple voting with the same absentee ballot, much of which has been statistically documented. Medvedev himself has admitted that the elections were flawed and chastised United Russia for “backwardness.”

Compiled from reports by Gazeta.ru.

After a series of economic protests in the small industrial town of Pikalevo, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rushed in to try to resolve the situation on June 4th.  Residents had taken to the streets after the town’s major employers closed their doors, failing to pay some $1.5 million in back wages and even shutting off communal services.

The St. Petersburg branch of the Solidarity democratic opposition movement earlier contended that the Russian government had not taken enough steps to combat the economic crisis, and was complicit in the situation in Pikalevo.

“The events in Pikalevo once again show that the so-called anti-crisis measures of the Russian authorities don’t intend to provide actual support for those who have suffered as result of the crisis,” a statement by the group said.  “The problems of Pikalevo’s residents, just like millions of other Russian citizens, cannot be solved without a fundamental change to the political regime which has formed in today’s Russia.”

—

Journalist Mikhail Rostovsky comments on the importance of the visit in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.  Since Putin’s visit and Rostovsky’s article, workers have received their back pay and the town’s employers have pledged to re-open their factories.

Read more about Pikalevo from the New York Times.

How Many Putins Does It Take To Save Russia?
Stability throughout Russia depends on the premier’s performance in Pikalevo.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
Mikhail Rostovsky
June 5, 2009

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin made the most important trip of the year, perhaps, of his whole premiership. The premier visited Pikalevo near St.Petersburg, symbol of riots in Russia these last several days. It will be no exaggeration to say that stability throughout the whole country depends on Putin’s decisions yesterday. There is a hundred Pikalevos in Russia, may be more. Should the signal Putin sent yesterday prove incorrect, protests may cover all of Russia before long.

Given certain conditions, a nationwide revolt might be provoked by protests in a single township. Pikalevo, whose existence had been absolutely unknown to 99% Russians, found itself balancing on the verge of transformation into such a political fuse.

The story of Pikalevo, a sleepy hick town, is simple to the point of being banal. The few enterprises in it, ones employing practically all locals, came to a screeching halt. The population found itself left with nothing to live on. Pikalevo drew the attention of the whole society for a single reason. Its residents were the first to put into motion the apocalyptical scenario Yevgeny Gontmakher (an authority on social problems) had come up with last year: revolt in a township with stalled industry, attack on the municipal administration building, pickets on a federal highway fomenting a colossal jam (colossal indeed – 400 kilometers long).

At first sight, the task Putin found himself facing in Pikalevo yesterday was fairly simple. The federal center has sufficient money to buy a golden toilet bowl for every resident of Pikalevo. Ensuring decent living conditions in the township will be even easier. Particularly as the servile Duma has already suggested nationalization as a means that will restore order again and cool down tempers. Lawmakers’ reasoning was as follows: if Barack Obama in America all but made General Motors an asset of the US Administration, then it will certainly be all right for us to follow suit in Russia.

As a matter of fact, Putin’s visit to Pikalevo was like a stroll down a political minefield. What the Duma suggested in the meantime amounted to the offer to deliver a kick at the largest mine.

Procurement of factories in Pikalevo with budget funds in order to revive them again is going to solve no problems, nationwide. This nationalization will rather be a message to the rest of the crisis territories in Russia: you fed up with being semi-starved? Mutiny is the ticket. Overrun the local administration, throw officials out the nearest window, and cut off the railroad or whatever you have close by. It will certainly bring Putin himself rushing to you with a huge federal wallet… Hard to imagine a worst scenario for Russia. Bare weeks later, not even a hundred Putins will be able to cope with the swelling wave of riots.

And if nationalization is out, then what? Prosecute “inefficient owners” who brought this all to pass in townships centered around a single enterprise (or two or even three enterprises)? Prosecution will make unemployed residents of these towns happy but it is not being happy that they are really after.

Wrong moment to be saying that starving townships with idle enterprises in them are what Russia is paying for the arrogance with which its authorities neglected structural problems of economy. There is no more work somewhere? In America, people get into their car, put their belongings into the trailer, and move to wherever jobs are still available. In Russia, however, the so called territorial mobility of the population is thoroughly under developed. Telling the population of Pikalevo to move on is like advising the starved lacking bread to try living on cookies.

There is no saying at this point exactly what Putin is going to tell residents of Pikalevo. Telling them the truth would have been probably the best. And what is it? That the situation is extremely tricky. That the government does not have a single solution for all Pikalevos in the country (cannot have one, actually) so that every analogous case ought to be handled individually. This is a task of staggering proportions, of course, but there are no alternatives to it.

The protestors, who were anxiously awaiting the result of the meeting, eventually rushed the building, pushing past militsiya officers and barging through the session’s closed doors.  After speaking out concerns about unemployment and withheld wages, the group peacefully left the building and continued to wait outside.

Pikalevo has seen sweeping unemployment as result of Russia’s economic crisis.  Three mainstay employers in town – Basel Cement, Pikalevsky Glinozem and Metakhim – have shut down, and smaller companies have also reduced their workforces.  The local heat and power station cut hot water and heat to the town a week ago, citing unpaid debts accrued by Basel Cement.

Officially, 1500 people have been laid off, although another 2500 people are either on unpaid leave, or have had their work-week shortened.  In a town of 22,000, around 50 percent of the working-age population is now without work.

Svetlana Antropova, a trade union leader from the Basel Cement-Pikalevo factory, earlier described how locals had started foraging for food – cooking soup from green nettles, making salads from dandelions and chickweed, and even eating stray dogs.

Locals also described a skyrocketing crime rate that made is dangerous to be outside at night.

Valery Serdyukov, the governor of the Leningrad Oblast, has meanwhile downplayed the situation in Pikalevo as hysteria created by trade unions and the media.  Serdyukov is expected to meet with city officials in the near future.

“There is no hot water there in Pikalevo,” Serdyukov said.  “Well, it happens.  And not just there.  It happens even in Moscow and St. Petersburg, that the water is turned of for a couple months.  There is no tragedy here.  As for heat, well, I don’t think it’s needed so much during the summer.”