The Russian Cabinet’s decision to de facto devalue the ruble will without doubt go down in post-Soviet history, and not only because this devaluation means lost hopes for a quick stabilization of the Russian national currency, but also because it means that most Russian citizens are finally and irreversibly disillusioned about their government struggling to prove it can still defend their vital interests.
Moreover, this devaluation shows that nothing has actually changed in Russia by way of democratic reform. Sergei Kirienko’s allegedly democratic Cabinet addresses the populace using good old Soviet command system terminology. Everyone realizes what is actually happening. Devaluation. This is clear to Russian and foreign journalists, as well as to people standing in lines to get their money’s worth at banks and currency exchange offices. Everyone understands this except the powers that be. Mr. Kirienko and his entourage insist that this is just another turn in the national economic course. Panic? Chaos? Macabre forecasts? What are you talking about? Something may be happening in Moscow streets, but not in its White House. Never. There everything is in perfect order. And of course the Capital Saving Bank automated teller machines (installed there so that Russian dignitaries can get their wages timely and quickly) are kept ticking, rather than flashing the sorry-no-cash-available-now notices elsewhere in Moscow...
Russia has fallen a few years back, so far in terms of the economy, but similar regress in the political domain will take place before long, to be sure. Of course, one can be optimistic and say that the Russians have been taught a lesson and will take a more realistic approach to their own capacities from now on. A pessimist will counter that the Russian political elite, inherently unable to execute genuine market economy reforms is trying, as usual, to recover their losses by politicking. So the ruble is down, so what? But we are still making rockets fly in space and building things on the Yenisei River (as an old Soviet song has it). An old spiel, which people of the older generation know only too well, and they saw what was actually happening. Now devaluation is a very unpleasant thing, but if it can stay purely economic it means that not all of the efforts exerted over the past decade were wasted.






