Representatives of Russian elite began to realize that Russia might not be going through the real period of its history. Under current circumstances, most of the Kremlin's actions are absolutely meaningless: continuing Russian occupation of the Caucasus, plans for expansion and aggression against its neighbors, particularly against Ukraine and Georgia, cheap rhetoric and curses against the West and even "reconstruction" of Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant which was destructed by Mujahedeen recently.
Well-known political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky whose opinion is shared by many other Russian political analysts and representatives of Russian ruling class made speech on upcoming collapse of Russia, Belkovskiy points:
- Model of Russian economy has been exhausted. During last 2 decades, Russia and its ruling elite have not been engaging in modernization. The whole model is based on the exploitation of raw materials, exports of oil and gas and plugging social holes with no whatsoever structural reforms. Today, we see that the production inherited from the Soviet Union, is largely ineffective and has exhausted its resources.
Simply by virtue of the fact it is a very old and noncompetitive production, by the way including the military-industrial complex, which is rapidly losing its positions both in external and domestic markets.
Today we are going to buy warships of France, which until recently was difficult to imagine of. In Russia, there are more than 400 mono-cities that are entirely dependent on ineffective and inefficient production.
The only way to delay the collapse - is constantly giving away money, which will end in 2010 as projected by the Ministry of Finance. And if we consider the forecast of Finance Ministry as being excessively optimistic, probably this will happen in the first half of 2010.
In fact money - is a life-giving elixir and a key substance of the current system. In Russia, everything is built on money, and the current regime I would call "The Power of Money". As long as you give money to someone horizontally and vertically - to a head for the fact that he holds you in a position, to a subordinate because he performs your commands, to partners because they play game by your rules, you live and you rule. As soon as the money dries up, just as the case with exhausted communism 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, this kind of state model becomes no longer self sustaining.
At the same time current government is absolutely lack of understanding that the collapse is inevitable. Keep in mind that the government does not live in the same country that we live in. The role of guards of all kinds of security services, which grew by several orders over the past 10 years, is tied to the fact that the guards not only provide and guarantee the safety of certain individuals.
It stems from the fact that the guards in modern Russia are frontier guards aiming to separate world of the ruling elite from the rest of the Russia. That is why the ruling elite do not understand much of what's happening in the rest of the Russia. Once a time, a former relative of Yeltsin, told me a funny story, as he drove to a family celebration to Yeltsin in Barvikha and was late for 7 minutes. Boris Nikolayevich made to his relative a serious warning, but when the guy referred to the traffic jam, he said: "Which traffic jam? I was driving and I have seen no traffic jams there". This is the standard reaction of Russia's ruling elite to problems existing in Russia. From their point of view, there is no problem.
Besides, do not undermine the overall degradation of the whole apparatus. For more than 10 years the best staff has been trampled. The most loyal stuff was recruited to the ruling class, but not the most capable one - capable and potential stuff was undermined. And simply by virtue of its incompetence, the ruling power is not in a position to assess what is really going on in Russia.
Therefore, the ruling elite or people who make key decisions have no catastrophic level of assessment of what's going on in reality. However their approach to the situation is: «Yes, there are problems, there are difficulties, but soon by some mystery or magic, may be oil shoots up, or something else happens and everything will get into previous order ».
From history we know about the laws and the ways how states originate, form, develop and decline. And we also know that a civilization has its critical age, which is approximately 1200 years, if we take the average date of leading researchers' data on this issue.
It is logical to count the age of Russian civilization starting from the accession and rule of Rurik in Novgorod, where, in fact, the basic principles of formation of the Russian ruling power took their origins. The most important of those principles is the transcendence of power in relation to society.
We are being ruled by invaders. No matter whether they are domestic or foreign, good or bad, this ruling power is completely alienated from people and it is not formed by them. People refer to the ruling power as "Them". We are not ruling power - it is "Them". This had started, actually, with the recognition of Varangians.
Today in Russia all signs of civilization decline are predominant, the most important one of all is complete irresponsibility of elites, total corruption and total cynicism.
Department of Cooperation and Mass-Media,
Kavkaz Center
