Workers Unite Behind Putin

By Jonah Hull
aljazeera
March 2, 2012

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/europe/2012/03/01/workers-unite-behind-putin

Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HTlXUbpLW4&feature=player_embedded

The wisdom of the pundits, the free-thinking ones,
seems to be that while Vladimir Putin has succeeded in
alienating the big city middle classes in Russia, he
still confidently holds the support of the regional
masses, the workers who make up the electoral majority.

The polls, at time of writing, seem to suggest likewise
having risen sharply in Putin's favour, suggesting he
will win in the first round and avoid a humiliating
run-off.

Having travelled back in real time for days, crossing
time zones from east to west that made each day longer
than the last, I took a step back into history in the
oil town of Tyumen.

I visited a Soviet-era factory to find out if the
pundits were right about the workers.

At the privately-owned Sibneftegasmag, around a hundred
workers take big hunks of steel and turn them into
heavy bits and pieces - like 'preventers', that you'll
all be familiar with - for oil rigs and pipelines.

You can tell it's a Soviet-era factory because
everything in it looks like it was built by hand a
century ago with a hammer, and 'health-and-safety' is
as alien a concept as 'coffee machine' or
'ventilation'.

Access all areas

However, in a break with tradition, we were given
astonishing access to the plant by a kindly Soviet-era
manager, allowed to climb on things, open and close
things, and dangle our camera from things while other
large and hazardous things whirred and thumped and
shuddered nearby.

We were also allowed to ask anyone we liked lots of
questions, political ones, about the past and the
future, about the election and who people would be
voting for.

Most said, 'Putin'.

I didn't get the sense of any corporate coercion, as is
often described in state-run factories and industry.
Some workers said they'd vote Communist, some said they
weren't going to vote at all.

Nor was the Putin support entirely wholehearted,
unquestioning, as perhaps it once was.

Instead, there is the feeling that Putin is the only
viable option. The other candidates are buffoons. He
has experience, they don't. He's shown his ability,
they just talk. He guarantees stability, they are
unknown quantities.

The lack of nuance in these views is matched by a
general lack of enthusiasm.

Putin hailed

Vladimir Putin once excited and inspired the people of
Russia, people like these.

"He brought the country up from its knees," one man
told me.

Under Putin, salaries were actually paid where they
hadn't been in the 90s. They even went up while for
many the cost of living came down. On the back of high
oil prices and new wealth there were improvements to
infrastructure.

And there were promises, lots of promises, of much
more.

The 2000s was a time to be proud again, of being
Russian.

But those times are starting to recede into memory.

For a worker on 1000 bucks a month, much of the glitz
of the new Russia is available for window-shopping
only. Who cares about a new airport if you can't afford
to fly anywhere?

Schools and hospitals remain on the whole in a parlous
state. Prices are on the rise while salaries have
flatlined. And corruption. Don't mention corruption.

So the Putin star has waned.

Why do they still support him, the regional working
class masses, while the educated city folk are on the
streets protesting?

The experts say in part it's because the workers use
the internet for entertainment and the middle class
uses it to broadcast images of ballot fraud captured on
smart phones.

In large part, too, the workers watch state tv.

As factory worker Sergei Ovechkin told me, "I watched
television yesterday and it's a real circus. The others
are not presidential candidates. Putin looks stronger
and more serious."

Exactly as he's meant to.

___________________________________________

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