Where the booze can kill, and Putin is a ‘good czar’
The New York Times
IRKUTSK, Russia — The overworked cleaning woman realized that her grown son was not just sleeping off his habitual hangover in the Siberian city of Irkutsk when she discovered that he had quietly gone blind.
Even as his speech slurred and his condition steadily deteriorated, the man, Renat V. Mukhamadeyev, 31, dissuaded his widowed mother from summoning an ambulance until about midnight. Wheeled into the emergency room at nearby Hospital No. 8, he fell into a coma and expired within a day, one of at least 76 victims of a mass alcohol poisoning.
To many outsiders, including President Donald Trump and his inner circle of advisers, Russia is riding high today. It wields its clout both openly, by sending its military into Ukraine and Syria, and surreptitiously, warping politics in Europe and America through a sustained campaign of propaganda and cyberwarfare.
Yet, at home, the picture is decidedly bleaker.
Since oil prices plunged in 2014 and the West imposed economic sanctions over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russia has been mired in a grinding recession that has lowered living standards throughout the country. For many people, this has meant exhausting savings, cutting back on expensive items like meat and fish, growing their own vegetables and buying cheap vodka substitutes.
The working-class neighborhood of Novo-Lenino, where the bulk of the victims lived, is in many ways a snapshot of the growing poverty in Russia.
It was not supposed to be this way. Over the 16 years that Vladimir Putin has served as either president or prime minister of Russia, the standard of living had inched upward in the neighborhood, even as it soared in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
As he imposed order on the economy and cut back press and political freedoms, Mr. Putin promised in return better lives for all Russians, laying out a series of targets for 2020.
At least 60 percent and maybe even 70 percent of Russia’s 143 million population would join the middle class. Average salaries would rise to 40,000 rubles a month (more than $1,000 then; less than $700 at current exchange rates). Russians would live far longer, with life expectancy for both men and women reaching 75.
During the recession, those and other benchmarks have receded.
Nationwide, the ranks of people who consider themselves middle class has dropped to around 50 percent. The average wage of 36,703 rubles would have to be 55,000 in 2017 rubles to equal Mr. Putin’s target. In the Irkutsk region, the number of people living below the poverty line — officially 10,000 rubles per month, about $170 — has grown to about 20 percent from 17 percent before the crisis.
Even before the poisonings, market vendors in Novo-Lenino had noticed that residents were getting poorer. That mirrors changes nationwide. But until the vodka tragedy, nobody protested the economic plight.
Asked about the poisonings at a news conference, Mr. Putin criticized “supervisory bodies” for failing to prevent the tragedy, but ultimately blamed unidentified foreigners. Given that experts estimate the bootleg trade represents 20 percent of the national alcohol market, nobody expects it to disappear soon.
Describing their protest later, a small knot of women grew agitated. “Let people see how Putin really manages this country, see how poor people really live!” yelled one.
Tatyana, 58, a fishmonger, said she lived on a pension of about $133 a month. She ate normally one week every month, she said, then subsisted on bread and butter.
In a curiously Russian dynamic, they avoided blaming Mr. Putin personally.
Mr. Putin is expected to win a fourth term as president in 2018, ensuring him another six years in office. His unmet pledges on issues like life expectancy do not enter the calculus of most voters, analysts said.
Older Russians in particular remain grateful to Mr. Putin for ending the chaos and lawlessness of the 1990s, while over all he has made Russians feel better about themselves and their country’s standing in the world.
“I like Putin. He is a good czar, and Russia needs a czar,” said Andrei Kolganov, who spurned a Moscow career to become a clown in Novo-Lenino, stressing that he wanted to avoid excessive criticism or praise.