[Marxism] Fwd: Russia: The End of the Illusion? by Amy Knight | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
Louis Proyect
lnp3 at panix.com
Wed Feb 24 07:23:10 MST 2016
Faced with a growing budget deficit—$38.6 billion this fiscal year—the
Kremlin has been racing to cut costs and raise revenue. But it has met
with stiff resistance. Long-distance truckers, an essential part of the
Russian economy, began protests against a new road tax in November. In
early December they tied up traffic in Moscow, but were pushed back by
police and have camped out ever since in improvised shelters outside the
city. Now a major, ten-day strike of truckers from forty of the
country’s regions is about to begin, and it is sure to cause major
chaos. Significantly, the truckers have broadened their protests to
include a range of economic issues. As one trucker put it: “For the
outside, [Putin] is great for many … he’s sticking his nose into
everything — Syria, Turkey — so good, so powerful, but in his own
country, he can’t even talk to the people.”
full: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/02/23/russia-end-of-illusion/
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