Don't you just wish you were in Russia? While we in the West are tightening our belts, those devil-may-care Russians are snapping up new Hermes ones for Christmas, throwing them into the back of their Hummers by the boxful!
According to yet another article about Russian nonchalance in the face of global financial meltdown,
“a survey, carried out in Moscow, St. Petersburg and four other large cities, found that Russians plan to spend an average of about 20,000 rubles ($693) this year.
In terms of holiday spending, Russia was on par with France, Belgium and Switzerland and far ahead of Germany and the Netherlands”.
That's right! Over a hundred dollars more than the entire 2007 average Russian monthly wage!
It's not like Russia got off lightly from the credit crunch, either: “Russia has witnessed massive layoffs as big industrial enterprises move to slash production amid plunging demand for metals, construction materials and other industrial goods”
So what could explain such reckless spending? That's right – the crazy Russian mind!! As one interviewee in that Moscow Times article explains,
“In the United States, retailers have to offer good discounts or people won't buy because of the crisis, but in Russia people buy anyway,” said Natalya Smirnova, a retail analyst with UralSib Capital. “Russians don't like saving money.”
Ah, what would journalism be without the joys of reflexive Orientalist stereotyping?
Naturally this very Russian profligacy has nothing at all to do with the fact that the survey looked only at “Moscow, St. Petersburg and four other large cities” and not, say, Rostov, where “the Rostselmash plant has laid off 1,300 of its 11,000 workers as demand for machinery plummets amid growing uncertainty for Russia's agricultural producers”, according to the AP.
It has even less to do with the impeccable white collars of the ‘ordinary Russians’ interviewed in the article, all of whom were the sort of highly paid urban professionals whose counterparts in London and New York are probably also not skipping Christmas:
“Businessman Nikolai Pavlov”, “UralSib Capital analyst Natalya Smirnova”, “Mikhail Kirintyev, a retail analyst at Troika Dialog”, “Yelena Nikitina, a sales manager for a foreign firm”, “Irina Korshunova, a 28-year-old lawyer” and my favourite, “Mikhail Khasin, an economist and president of”…wait for it… “the Neocon consulting company“.
If foreign journalists have trouble locating alternative points of view, perhaps they can ask Putin? The “growing social discontent” has been so strong that it has even reached the ears of the president, who has felt threatened enough by it politically to create an emergency economic crisis body responsible for pensions and unemployment benefits.
In fact, “during a live phone-in with Putin last week, viewers’ questions centered on issues such as wage arrears, unemployment and social benefits ‚ a markedly different tone from previous years”.
That such sentiments were aired on the impeccably staged pieces of political theatre that are Putin phone-ins is a testament to their giant, un-concealable proportions.
Unfortunately, those phone ins remain just about the only time many Western reporters and their hip urban Moscow friends are likely to hear them.
by Vadim Nikitin
