Publications
Partners
Walking in the streets of Moscow in summertime, one sees scores of pretty young girls wearing make-up and trendy hairstyles, in jeans, shorts or miniskirts. Among the elderly there are babushkas who still look like they belong in Soviet times, but even middle-aged women tend to dress stylishly.
The men, too, look like they belong in the 21st century, although I (being a heterosexual male chauvinist pig) of course mainly watched the women.
Another difference is the traffic. I wouldn’t say that the streets were empty in 1990 and 1993, but they were definitely not as busy as – say – Johannesburg, Pretoria or Cape Town at the time.
Since then, however, traffic has grown, so it seems, a thousandfold. During the week Moscow is one gigantic permanent traffic jam. One of my hosts told me, not entirely as a joke, that Muscovites nowadays do not measure the distance between point A and B in kilometres, but in time.
It often takes hours to worm yourself through the traffic jams.
One thing that has not changed, of course, is the extremely efficient metro system. The underground was started by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, and many of the earlier stations still look like socialist palaces – works of art to glorify the Soviet system, it is true, but impressive nevertheless.
What is even more impressive is the transport system itself. Even on a Sunday morning, trains pull into a station every three or four minutes. And, I was told, during peak times it is every 20 to 30 seconds.
To keep such an extremely complex system flowing without a hitch requires superb organisation. One can but doff one's hat to those responsible, and Muscovites are, with good reason, very proud of their metro system.
Compared to New York, Washington, London, Paris and Berlin – all cities I have visited – Moscow’s underground train system really stands out.
Another difference is the shops. When I visited the shopping mall GUM on Red Square for the first time in 1990, the shops lining the ornate passageways were all but empty. At one shop, there was a long line of drably clad people. When I asked what was going on, I was told that the shop had received a consignment of shoes.
So, whether you actually needed shoes or not, when there were shoes for sale you queued without question. You didn’t know when shoes might be sold again. And besides, you could always sell them to others for a profit.
That was the Soviet Union. In 1993, not long after the collapse of the USSR, the shops had more goods, but this was in a time of hyper-inflation, and few people could afford whatever was being offered.
Now, GUM looks even better than Menlyn Park or Tyger Valley. And, just to make me feel at home, one jewellery shop even sports display signs advertising South African diamond giant De Beers (see photo).
Outside Moscow it is a different sight. There, Russia looks as much Third World as ever. The roads are scruffy, the shops alongside the road look dilapitated, and many houses in a state of disrepair. (Although some are very new and smart; one can immediately see that they belong to rich people.)
And this is indeed one of Russia’s biggest present socio-economic problems. Some people have profited hugely from the country’s switch to capitalism; others have visibly lost out.
Russia’s Gini coefficient – a statistical method to express a country’s equality or lack thereof – stood at 4.0 out of 10 in 2012, which places it globally in the middle rank, but much worse than previously. (Comparatively, South Africa scores a considerably worse 6.3).
Also, the Russian economy is rather fragile, partly because of the uncertainty generated by President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimea and his aggressive stance towards Ukraine.
Recently, the Russian central bank lifted the benchmark borrowing interest rate from 7% to 7.5% in order to strengthen the ruble and stem the flight of capital from the country. During the first quarter of this year, there was an outflow of $50bn, and some reckon the total for the year may reach $200bn.
Credit rating bureau Standard & Poor’s cut the country’s debt rating to just one notch above junk status.
Therefore, one asks oneself whether the affluence seen on Moscow streets is part of a bubble which may explode soon.
One hopes not. I have made several good friends while in Russia, good people with warm hearts. I would not like them to suffer because of their president’s political gambles.
- Fin24
* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.
