Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation speech today: an overview
Earlier today Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Russia’s bicameral legislature, of which the State Duma is the lower house. In addition to the federal level legislators and administrators, the audience numbering slightly more than 1200 included regional governors, leaders of civil society, i.e. representatives of volunteer organizations having national importance, and a large contingent of active servicemen who have participated in the Special Military Operation.
The speech lasted a little more than two hours. To understand its masterful construction, you had to sit through it to the very end, because in the best rhetorical traditions, Putin came full circle. He opened with a long segment dedicated to those actively fighting on Russia’s behalf in the Donbas and all along the line of contact with the enemy forces, risking their lives every day for the sake of the Motherland. This segment culminated in a moment of silence in memory of those who died in the SMO. And he ended the speech with his vision of how those who have distinguished themselves on the field of battle, those who have led men to heroic feats, will be the new ‘elite’ of Russian society occupying the top positions in government, in business and in other spheres.
The primary audience of the speech was, of course, outside the Gostiny Dvor hall where it was delivered. This was a speech urbi et orbi, with many watching around the world for indications about Russia’s future policies in every imaginable sphere. It was inescapable news even for Russia’s biggest detractors. The BBC, for example, soon afterwards chose to inform its audience about Putin’s remarks with respect to risks of a nuclear war, with respect to Russia’s reaction to the possible introduction in Ukraine of regular army units from Western Europe. Their man in Moscow, Steven Rosenberg, who sat in the special press room outside the main auditorium during the speech, described the address somewhat disparagingly as an electoral campaign speech, given that Russians go to the polls to elect their president in just over two weeks time. More generally, Western analysts will bore down on one or another point in a speech which had a great many points and not convey the feel of the address and what it tells you about Russian society and Russian government today.
That is precisely the mission that I set before myself now: without going into detail on each separate item in Putin’s speech, instead to characterize the priorities of this government today and for the future. And I will not set out the absolute ruble numbers of allocations to this or that ongoing or new national project that Putin detailed. At the present exchange rate of 100 rubles=$1, when Putin speaks of funding a new high priority initiative at 1 trillion rubles, we are talking about $10 billion (small change compared to items in the U.S. federal budget). When he proposes 100 billion rubles for some other worthy cause like renovating rural schools, that translates into a still more paltry $1 billion. Of course, $1 billion in Russia will buy a lot more than $1 billion in the USA, but that is beside the point. What counts is the direction in which his and the government’s feet are pointed.
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The unmistakable take-away of Putin’s speech is that Russia is today a social market economy which is striving to raise the length and quality of life of the population. The well-known Russian state promotion of ‘traditional values’ has at its core encouragement of families with three or more children. This is first and foremost presented as a validation of the family as the essential building block of society. Putin freely admits that Russian wages are very low, too low in fact, and many measures in the social programs he has introduced and is proposing to expand in this speech are aimed at putting money in the pockets of those who create large families through subsidies in cash and in kind.
Let me say in passing that there are no restrictions on which families are being encouraged to multiply. It is no secret that Muslims in Russia, as elsewhere, presently have more children than do blue-eyed Slavs. No matter. Putin insists that every citizen is equally ‘Russian’ whatever his or her religious or ethnic identity and this is borne out by the government’s demographic policies.
In past years, those demographic policies focused greatest attention on maternity. The ‘maternity capital’ rewards for the second and further babies will stay in place to 2030 as will the subsidized mortgage loans to help young and not so young families to move into new construction housing that meets their needs. Putin remarked that last year Russia produced twice as much residential housing (in square meters) as did the Soviet Union in its best year at the end of the 1980s.
I did not hear any mention of nurseries in this year’s speech, though Putin did speak about improving elementary and secondary school buildings, about leveling up the salaries of school teachers and doctors across all regions of the Federation.
From Putin’s recitation of new national projects, it is clear that attention is now also being directed to help those kids who have been born on Putin’s watch and are adolescents today. One new national project is entitled Kadry, a word taken over from the French, meaning ‘staff.’ Perhaps it would be better to understand this project as ‘Human Resources’ because it aims to vastly improve vocational training, to introduce secondary school students to factories and other work places and open their eyes to the real world opportunities before them. Money will be allocated in the next six years of a new presidential term to more than double the number of engineering schools in the country. The objective is to ensure that the million job openings for highly trained professionals in industry will find properly prepared candidates.
It is interesting and telling that Vladimir Putin’s attention to business interests came near the very end of his speech. He called for extending the existing temporary suspension of administrative inspections of businesses for abuses of fiscal and other rules. As we know, such inspections were always onerous and were subject to abuse by bribe seekers. Tax regulations will be reviewed to ease the transition from start-up to full-scale businesses. Measures will be taken to strengthen the role of stock exchanges in raising capital for industrial investments. And business will be assisted by continuing major federal infrastructure investments in highways, high speed railways, renovated airports and an expanded national commercial fleet, including service on the Northern Sea Route.
I will not say more. I found the most impressive part of the speech to be people-centric, not Putin’s reiteration of Russia’s stated position with respect to negotiations with the USA over strategic stability and similar foreign policy issues.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024