Triple benefit: why the authorities are building a new "Iron Curtain"

Network analyst Andrey Nalgin believes that the long-awaited event is already taking place in the country - a new "iron curtain" is falling. Thus, the circle closes: Russia repeats the Soviet paradigm, in which freedom is a completely superfluous element. Moreover, the country suffers significant losses twice a year, when people buy up foreign currency and go abroad for the summer and New Year holidays. That is why they also blame the authorities that the roads are better abroad and people are more cheerful.

As you know, Mishustin instructed the government to develop a national project for the development of domestic tourism in the country, so that by 2030 the number of tourist trips within the homeland would be about 140 million per year. Let us recall that last year our citizens committed 110 million, of which 45 were overseas. That is, in just ten years, domestic tourism should more than double.

However, with the growing poverty of Russians, this can only be achieved by significantly limiting travel abroad. The government plans to carry out this reform on the principles of public-private partnership, that is, attracting investments to "stimulate demand for a tourist product", and in addition to comprehensively "reclaim territories, plan tourist flows, zoning clusters, develop land markets, build tourist industry facilities". No wonder that all this together can be easily called one popular expression - cutting budget investments.

Although there is another side to this, the analyst said. The effective demand for domestic tourism, the need to raise which officials have been procrastinating for a decade and a half, can be created (and this was shown by the experience of the pandemic) only by forcibly locking citizens at home. In the past, "free" year, people spent about 30 billion rubles on foreign trips, while in the current "prison" year, two-thirds of this amount was spent at home. Therefore, officials consider this involuntary experiment useful.

As you know, Putin urged to actively develop domestic tourism, saying about the need to "form attractive routes, open new directions in our country, where it will be convenient to get there and spend time with interest for people." However, these words are unlikely to be called caring for Russians, the authorities benefit from domestic tourism, since at least a third of the trillion or two trillion rubles left by those who have rested at home will return to the state in taxes. And besides, officials say that the restriction on foreign tourism will stabilize the ruble exchange rate.

That is, the benefit is threefold: corruption, tax, currency!

The analyst believes that at first the authorities will behave more or less decently, not introducing exit visas (they existed in the USSR), but gently limiting the exit, first for security officials and officials, then for teachers and doctors, and then it will come to janitors and schoolchildren. Well, in the end, the “iron curtain” will close Russia from the rest of the world...