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May 4, 2015 I am enclosed a brief comment on housing conditions in Russia today written by my colleague and fellow editor of New Cold War.org, Renfrey Clarke. Renfrey lived in Russia for ten years during the 1990s and is fluent in Russian. I asked him to comment on Thomas Campbell's commentary on the subject a few days ago. Thomas writes, "There is a lot more (several books could and should be written) on the subject [of housing], but it won't be written by Russian Insider and New Cold War, whose only mission is to whitewash an utterly miserable regime that is getting more miserable by the second. " He refers to the "fly-by-night Putinist sites like New Cold War and Russian Insider". If Thomas could refer me to a few "fly-by-day", websites, ie providing steady and reliable information on Ukraine and Russia in the face of the NATO political and military offensive, then I would happily speak to my colleagues about folding up the New Cold War.org site. Goodness knows it consumes a great many hours each day to publish it. But sites likes New Cold War.org and Russia Insider exist, and are popular, precisely because there was far too little reliable information available one year ago when Kyiv's war began and the supportive imperialist propaganda machine went into high gear. Take, for example, the "fly-by-night" news which we translated from a survey published last month by the Kyiv International Institute for Sociology. It turns out that a stunning 70 per cent of Ukrainians (not including those in rebel Donbas) want a negotiated end to the war (Kyiv's "Anti-Terrorist Operation"). They are prepared to negotiate political autonomy for the east in order to obtain peace. The refusal by Kyiv of that emminently reasonable demand coming from the people of Eastern Ukraine (and from other regions of the country) is the source of the conflict. You won't read all this in the "fly-by-day" New York Times! I am disappointed that no one on this list invites Thomas to tone down his vitriol. It is hardly conducive to fair and open debate, which I assume to be one of the missions of the Marxism listserve. Who would bother (or dare) to venture an opinion when faced with the retort "Putinist!" RA * * * This is a complex topic, but a good summary of the situation with housing in Russia is at http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/hlm/prgm/cph/countries/russia/Chapter%20III.pdf. What this shows is that overall housing availability in Russia has improved markedly during the Putin era, which is what you'd expect since incomes were growing throughout much of this period and housing remains a key focus of demand.Whether the housing conditions of the bulk of the population have improved much is debatable. Contrary to what Alexander Mercouris implies in his article in The Moscow Times, housing in large Russian cities remains phenomenally expensive compared to the incomes most people receive. I suspect the improvement is concentrated heavily at the top end of the income scale. My experience of housing and the housing market in Russia relates to the Yeltsin era rather than times since, but there are various points in the critique [on Marxism] of Mercouris's article that (rhetoric aside) ring true. The construction workforce consists largely of migrants, and is cruelly abused and exploited. Contracting for housing, like most business activity in Russia, involves swimming with sharks. Drawing conclusions about Russian society from the data for housing construction is in any case very ill-advised. There are certainly plenty of corrupt kleptocrats in the place, and as for Putin's Russia being a "social" state - I think the pensioners whose entitlements are under siege would have something to say about that. --Renfrey Clarke _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
