RUSSIA: Facing an Uncertain Future as it Celebrates its National Day

. WASHINGTON DC / The Jamestown Foundation / Eurasia Daily Monitor / June 16, 2009 By Pavel K. Baev Russia's national day had all the necessary flags in the streets and a reception in the Kremlin, but few Russians see the point in celebrating the "Declaration on State Sovereignty" approved by the Congress of People's Deputies on June 12, 1990. That act delivered a major blow to the crumbling USSR and opened the prospect of liberation from the all-penetrating control of the despised Soviet nomenklatura, but the joy of gaining freedom is long gone, while nostalgia about lost stability and ambitions to restore Russia's "greatness" go hand in hand (www.grani.ru, Ezhednevny Zhurnal, June 12). Disappointed illusions have been replaced with opportunism and consumerism, so Yevgeny Yasin, the doyen of Russian liberal economists, admits: "We are a European nation without its values, and it is not clear how to get out of this trap" (New York Times, May 18). An elderly Russian woman begs for money in central Moscow on June 11, 2009 while standing underneath a sign advertising the June 12 Russia Day holiday. Much like the Soviet Union in its autumnal months, Russia is now sinking into a devastating economic crisis, which generates discontent in the elites and awakens the dispossessed from their habitual passivity. The latest official forecast for the gross domestic product (GDP) decline in 2009 is 9.8 percent, but government "optimists," such as Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, insist that the worst phase is already over, since "the situation develops in a positive direction" (www.newsru.com, June 11). [rc] Click here to read more © 2008 The Jamestown Foundation