July 1, Chelyabinsk. Source: Navalny.comNow that the State Duma has passed the first reading of draft legislation reforming Russia’s pension system, we can speak confidently of a serious turn in state-society relations in Russia. For the first time in 15 years, the Russian government is risking a large-scale, unpopular reform.
The government proposes radically raising the retirement age with almost no transition period. If it succeeds, the lives of millions of Russian citizens will be affected as early as next year. Despite the fact the reform is definitely falls in line with the government’s recent social policies, which have focused on reducing the budget deficit and lowering labour costs, it appears to be a clean break with the Putin regime’s established model for maintaining ideological hegemony.
Until recently, passive grassroots support of the regime was underwritten by a conservative notion of Russia’s historic destiny, which united people and power in the face of external threats, while the decline in living standards was explained away as the inevitable consequence of the foreign political and economic pressure on Russia. Thus, even the government’s unpopular moves have been treated as manifestations of the “art of the possible” amidst a fraught international environment. The government’s reactive stance helped maintain the illusion of stability amidst actual economic decline and social degradation.
