In an attempt to improve the Russian government’s public image, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev is looking to cut the figure of a man who can quickly and effectively solve major problems. According to IMR analysts, however, the problems and solutions discussed by Medvedev are often far removed from the actual needs of the situation.
As one of the presidential residences occupies the background setting, the perfectly polished black BMW SUV cruises along; the leather-jacket-wearing man behind the wheel handles his automobile in a cool, confident, and relaxed style. This video clip brought most Russian viewers back to images of criminal bosses of the 1990s, like in the celebrated TV series “The Crew” (“Brigada”). Only in this scenario, the man at the wheel is the head of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev. Such is his chosen approach for a video that talks about measures to combat drunk driving.
A “Black Boomer” is the symbol of the Russian “brothers” – the criminal networks that appeared on a mass scale in the late 1980s and early 1990s, accumulated capital throughout the 90s, and then sought to “civilize” themselves at the end of the decade. If we start from the assumption that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev did not deliberately set out to damage his reputation, it is not too hard to explain why he resorted to this particular image. A failure to understand the feelings of Russians after their most recent period history and the painful scars of the 90s, together with a total disregard of the real state of affairs – these are the reasons for one of the biggest PR mistakes ever made by the press service of the head of the Russian government.
And this is no exception, but more like the norm. Watching the prime minister’s video blog makes it clear that, in actual fact, the set of problems that the head of the cabinet places at the top of his list of priorities is an attempt, firstly, to shift the emphasis away from the real agenda and, secondly, to shuffle off the responsibility for Russia’s most acute problems onto the citizens of Russia.
Medvedev’s blog provides a graphic example of this in the way it addresses the problem of crimes committed on the roads by drunk drivers. In recent months this has been a hot topic in the media following high profile incidents in major Russian cities, where children, old people and students have lost their lives in traffic accidents. All were run over by automobiles with drunk drivers at the wheel. As the subject is a genuinely burning issue on the agenda, it raises questions concerning causes, priorities, and responsibilities. When considering these questions, the indisputable inadequacy of the Russian authorities’ response to the current situation is laid bare.
The literal conclusion that follows from Medvedev’s video clip is that the reason for the large number of deaths on the road is plain, banal drunkenness. Russia certainly does have a reputation abroad as the heaviest-drinking country in the world. And that is what many Russians think too. According to the State Research Center for Prophylactic Medicine, more than 2 million people in Russia suffer from alcohol dependency and 30 million abuse alcohol. Almost 12 percent of premature mortality in Russia is alcohol-related. Data from public opinion polls indicate a majority in favour of tightening up the legislation on drunk driving as far as possible. As president, Medvedev himself was the instigator of one of the most controversial laws – for a zero limit on blood alcohol content (whereas the upper alcohol limit for driving in many countries of Europe is 0.3-0.8 parts per thousand). Yet nobody is answering any of the questions about what people can do if they take medications that contain alcohol, or consume the popular Russian beverages kvass and kefir, which contain 1–3 percent of alcohol. Nor is anybody asking about medical evaluation, when even breathing into a breath analyzing tube without any alcohol in your system will, if traffic cops employ certain cunning procedures, produce a reading of 0.1.
The authorities are telling the population that it should drink less and toughening up the legislation. But then they immediately enact a bundle of laws lobbied for by the vodka producers.
In other words, the authorities are telling the population that it should drink less and toughening up the legislation. But then, at the same time, they immediately enact a bundle of laws lobbied for by the vodka producers, which disadvantage producers of lighter and more expensive alcoholic beverages. In Russia a war of annihilation has broken out between the vodka lobbyists, who stand behind the laws limiting the advertising of alcohol, and other importers and producers, who are trying to develop a cultured attitude towards alcohol in Russia, an appreciation of the variety of alcoholic beverages that exists, and how they are consumed. Above and beyond that, as the experts concede, more than 50 percent of the market in strong liquor is in the shadow economy, benefiting the forces controlling that economy – individuals of high standing in the state apparatus and members of the regional elites. The Russian market in strong liquor is helpful to the bureaucrats in monetizing the vast flow of black market income on which those regional authorities, regulators and lawmakers subsist. “This is a powerful cash market,” says Pavel Tolstykh, senior editor of the portal Lobbying.ru.
The fact is that the Russian authorities are caught in a vice-like grip between the interests of the major vodka lobbyists, on the one hand, and its own dangerously heavy-drinking population, on the other. Not only is it impossible to combat drunkenness in this situation, but the effort is actually counterproductive – the population continues to drink. To complete the picture we should add, for instance, that deaths on the roads are by no means always caused by drunkenness. As urgent are the problems of the illegal sale of drivers' licenses, the corrupt implementation of motor vehicle inspections, corruption in the road maintenance services, the poor condition of the roads and, finally, one of the most powerful social irritants: offenses committed on the roads by vehicles fitted with special flashing beacons. Bureaucrats and members of parliament regularly infringe the traffic regulations. On the roads of major cities spontaneous protests flare up against these flashing signals – drivers express their dissatisfaction with the bureaucrats’ total contempt for the rules by sounding their horns. A powerful “Blue Bucket” movement (named after the form of automobile roof beacons) has appeared in Russia: it thoroughly analyzes and publishes all information concerning offences committed by vehicles with special signals. Why don’t the Russian authorities mention this? Because these are the authorities’ own responsibility, this is a problem of inefficient national administration; there are profound systemic “cracks” that take decades to fix, with minimal dividends on the effort in terms of image.
Drunk-driving and the illegal sale of licenses to unqualified drivers are among the largest contributors to the high mortality on Russia's roads.
The systemic problem is that the laws do not work. Penalties borne by anybody who is responsible for anything can be toughened ad infinitum. But if the law doesn’t work, in the end the only thing affected will be the size of the kickbacks, bribes and the other illegal levies that have flourished so abundantly in the thirteen years of “hands-on management” by Vladimir Putin.
Waging a “war on drunkenness” while at the same time toadying up to the vodka lobbyists is not the only example of the authorities’ ineptness. Several other similar campaigns are currently being rolled out in the Russian media. Two of them stand out in particular – the war on drug-addiction and the war on pedophilia. The fundamental appropriateness of both campaigns is beyond dispute. But the methods and the nature of the policies being pursued by the authorities raise as many questions as Medvedev’s “war on drunkenness”.
Under cover of a campaign against pedophiles, drug-addicts and appeals to suicide, a powerful mechanism has been created to block any websites that the authorities regard as undesirable. The Russian authorities have initiated the law “On the introduction of changes in the Federal Law ‘On protecting children against information harmful to their health and development’ and certain statutes of the Russian Federation concerning the limitation of access to illicit information on the Internet”. The amendments are designed to create a system with a black list for filtering websites on the Internet and blocking forbidden sites, which are against the principles of children’s right to protection. An example of an organisation that does this is the Secure Internet League, established by Konstantin Malofeev, a minority shareholder in Rostelecom, who effectively controls this state company through his close alliance with the top management. Recently searches were conducted at his home – Malofeev is under investigation for the theft of Vneshtorgbank loans worth 200 million Euros. The Secure Internet League was founded as a politically motivated project, intended to pander to the authorities’ phobias in the face of increased socio-political risks. The Kremlin has long been tempted to introduce stringent control of the Internet, and the League’s services could not have been timelier. But then what can be done about the problem of the stolen loans? Following up on their trepidation and dismay at the growth of the protest movement, the authorities find themselves drawing on the services of businessmen with extremely dubious reputations in their efforts to introduce censorship on the Internet. What could more clearly demonstrate the hypocrisy of the war on corruption, pedophilia and drug-addiction? Meanwhile, tremendous uproar is generated in the social networks by the regular cases of over-lenient or merely symbolic punishments handed down to representatives of the authorities for pedophilia.
These decisions are entirely ineffective, and the policy of the current regime is directed toward freezing the existing practice of laws that don’t work.
In speaking of the war on drug addiction, mention must be made of the Russian authorities’ harsh campaign against Evgeny Roizman’s foundation “A City without Drugs” (“Gorod bez narkotikov”). This non-commercial organization in Yekaterinburg has been waging its struggle against drug addiction for more than 10 years, with its own clinics and its own methods and resources for countering the proliferation of narcotics. The foundation essentially assumes the functions of the state, in a situation where the authorities’ own competence is limited. Yet the authorities are waging war against the foundation: information is being planted in the media about patients being forcibly detained in clinics, illegal treatment methods, etc. It is possible to take various views of the methods used by A City without Drugs. But one thing here is obvious – its activities are a black eye for the authorities, when even employees of the State Committee for Combatting Narcotics are regularly caught re-selling narcotic substances and abusing them.
The authorities are thus trying to impose a false agenda on society: the war on drunkenness, pedophilia and drug-addiction is an advantageous topic for public consumption, and within its framework the authorities are trying to take merely peripheral decisions that are high-sounding. These decisions, however, are entirely ineffective, and the policy of the current regime is directed toward freezing the existing practice of laws that don’t work, high levels of corruption and the degradation of the population. Which means that what is happening can only be characterized as a hypocritical ploy by an irresponsible regime, doing what should not be done and avoiding what should have been done a long time ago. And that is a sign of the degeneration of the regime itself, which will not be able to carry on playing this game for very much longer.
