Figure of the day: Primakov's U-turn cost the country 100 times more expensive than the long-rumored palace

Political analyst Dmitry Nekrasov wrote about "thieves, bloodsuckers and devastation in their heads" in his next publication:

“One of my favorite topics is the impact of the world's perception of the world on well-being. The last week gave a number of stories on this topic.

Navalny's investigation into the palace angered quite a few representatives of the "deep people". This is evidenced by the 90 million views of the film and the unusually high proportion of protesters in the regions compared to Moscow. Yes, and without any investigation, it was obvious that the socio-anti-corruption agenda is capable of mobilizing more protesters in Russia than the democratic-modernization or pacifist one.

Let's set a certain scale of numbers. Navalny estimated the cost of the palace, which outraged the deep people, at 100 billion rubles. 100 billion is 666 rubles from each citizen of the Russian Federation. Those. less than 2% of the national average (according to Rosstat) salary for one month from each Russian. Or in other words: 100 billion is about 4 days of pension payments of all pensions by the pension fund of the Russian Federation.

Let's take out for now the eagles, the room for dirt, speculations about tastes and the sacramental question of what for, another residence to dozens of existing ones. Let's just remember the scale of the costs.

Now let's take an event that is generally approved by the deepest people. Well, for example, in March 1999, Yevgeny Primakov turned back over the Atlantic in protest against the bombing of Yugoslavia. I pulled this one out of many similar episodes, because with it (unlike, for example, Crimea or Syria) all the results are clear long ago and everything ended long ago. From a foreign policy point of view, this episode did not affect anything at all. From the word at all. Even if we proceed from the delusional presumption that it was in Russia's interest to defend the Milosevic regime, no one could be protected. NATO in 1999 achieved all its goals in the Balkans.

The results of the U-turn over the Atlantic were the momentary joy of millions of patriotic Russians and the domestic political points that Primakov personally scored. This is a plus.

And on the negative side, Primakov flew to negotiations, incl. on debt restructuring to the Paris Club. At that time, it amounted to more than $ 40 billion. We will write off a similar debt to the London Club by 36% at about the same time. Do not start Primakov senselessly blowing his cheeks and making ridiculous maneuvers over the Atlantic, Russia had every reason to (especially against the background of the bombing of Yugoslavia) achieve about the same 40% write-off of debts to the Paris Club. Okay, let's count to a minimum. Let's say it would be possible to achieve not 40%, but 25% of the write-off from which we stupidly refused. This is more than $ 10 billion.

THE WHOLE PFR 1999 budget is $ 9 billion. Those. the U-turn over the Atlantic cost about 14 months of pension payments to Russians in 1999 versus 4 days of pensions in 2020 for the palace. The average monthly salary in 1999 was $ 56, and the U-turn over the Atlantic cost every Russian citizen at least $ 66. Those. 120% of the average monthly salary from each Russian versus 2% of the average salary in 2020 for a palace.

I don't know if Primakov deliberately threw out billions of state dollars for the sake of personal PR, or if he really believed in all this nonsense and believed that he was acting in the interests of the country. More important is the fact that millions of Russians still consider an obvious crime against the state, which should have been judged by Primakov's mind, as almost a heroic deed. (And in 1999 there was no state propaganda for Primakov and “they were fighting.” The population's assessment of the turnaround cannot be attributed to the Soloviyev-Skabeyevs. It came from the deep heads of the deep people).

I will not talk in detail about the Crimea, which only direct costs cost more than 10 palaces, and indirect costs for a hundred palaces. At the same time, many who condemn the palace approve of Crimea. I will not talk about senseless pipelines or a dry superjet. It will take more time for the senselessness of these expenses (each of which is several times larger than the palace) to become as obvious as the senselessness of the costs of Primakov's U-turn is evident today.

One turn over the Atlantic is enough to argue that in a country where the story about the palace outrages millions, and dozens of senselessly burned palaces, the same millions please, in a country where the stolen 2% of the monthly average salary on the nose causes massive indignation, and stupidly senselessly burned 120 % of the salary is a massive exuberant joy, in such a country the main problem is not at all who steals, but in the heads of millions who rejoice at what was burned.

And the most terrible problem is that in order to steal a small change, you have to uselessly burn several times more. The stolen can be called the thief's fault, the pointlessly burned is the exclusive consequence of the madness of the population. Without such ideas in the minds of the population, rational thieves (and these are the best possible rulers in our conditions) would not have to burn so much to steal little things.