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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia: A Freeloader's Heaven |
| 2005-04-11 |
| It's springtime in Russia. And that means the Emergency Ministry's choppers will be flying to rescue unlucky ice fishermen carried off on ice-floes. Of course, a few will inevitably drown, but the rest will be saved (sometimes heroically and always at the expense of the taxpayer) and live not just to remember this as an exiting adventure but to actually repeat it the following year. Now, in Russia, this happens every — I repeat, every — year. And, when asked by some TV news crew whether they would return the next winter, despite their recent near-death experience, some weather-beaten, vodka-high, potato-faced fool always grins stupidly and says, "You bet! Wouldn't miss it for the world!" Some see this as a manifestation of the famed Russian spirit, others — as sheer idiocy. In fact, it is neither. What this actually is, is a classic example of 'freeloader mentality', the Russians' undying confidence in some benevolent force (be it God, luck or the government) always being there to pull them out of the shit they got themselves into. In the particular case of ice fishermen, what we are witnessing is a total lack of personal responsibility mixed with an ever-present reliance on "another guy" to solve their problems for them: it doesn't even enter their thick skulls that it's their fellow citizens who are forced to pay for their stupidity. A freeloading attitude seems to be firmly placed at the core of the present-day Russian mentality, in generations both young and old alike. But whereas the older folks rely on the previously plentiful state welfare benefits, the younger indulge themselves in pirated music, movies and software. In the end, it all comes down to the same thing: most Russians see it as their God-given moral right to receive a lot of something while giving absolutely nothing in return. Basically, there's no real difference between the fact that over 70 percent of Russia's citizens receive (or were used to receiving until the recent "monetization" reforms) some kind of state benefits and that about the same percentage of cheap bootleg CDs and DVDs on the Russian market. In a way, communism is still alive and well. Not that communism wasn't repeatedly proven to be an unworkable and inwardly corrupt system in the last 80 years or so. Even so, there are always those who would still defend it in thought and deed while laying the blame for its failings on its executors, be it Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Brezhnev. But however ruthless or corrupt these and other Communist leaders of the years past may have been, their ultimate role in the greater scheme of things is that of a bunch of dim-witted stooges trying to harness forces far beyond their control. The U.S.S.R., in particular, fell not because Brezhnev or Gorbachev failed to grasp the "true meaning of Communism", but because it was based on a system which in reality was little more than thinly concealed slavery, with the state arbitrarily deciding who gets what. The abolition of private property eventually led to a situation where those who actually did all the work were rewarded only by miserable wages (mostly useless since the shops were all empty of goods anyway) while the fruits of their labor were redistributed at the will of the ruling elite: partly for the Soviet military-industrial complex, partly for the so-called state benefits, partly for the comfort of the elite itself. In return, a kind of passive revolt or sabotage became commonplace; as the popular joke of the Brezhnev-era went, "they pretend to pay us while we pretend to work". And so, the only way to get any reward in this life is to stop working, and live on state handouts. The free-rider problem truly manifests itself when the number of people being supported by handouts sufficiently outweighs the number of those who are giving the state the means to make such handouts, inevitably leading to the collapse of the system itself. Now, almost 14 years after the fall of communism, any traveler from the West caring enough to notice, will be appalled at some of the things he or she might witness in Russia: the dying-out villages, an abundance of beggars, street urchins and homeless people in the cities, the flaunting arrogance and corruption of police and government officials. But, of course, there are always plenty of cheap pirated CDs, DVDs, and software to buy, while contributing not only to mass copyright violations but to the gradual collapse of Russia as well. For, continuing with the cowardly encouragement of social parasitism as it presently does, the Russian government will inevitably go the same way the old Soviet one did. But while things stand that way, one may just enjoy the freeloader heaven Russia has become. At least, for the time being. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #1 Sounds like they need a Stupid |
| Posted by: jackal 2005-04-11 9:38:27 PM |