By PETER GUMBEL
If you want to take the pulse of Russia, as its oil and gas boom of the past few years comes to a sudden and wrenching stop, leave behind the garish consumerism of Moscow and drive 220 miles (354 km) southwest to the small Russian town of Lyudinovo. For the first part of the five-hour trip the road is a smooth four-lane highway that whisks you past gleaming gas stations and a brand new Samsung TV factory. Then everything slows down. The highway turns single-track and becomes progressively rougher. For the last 20 miles, you bump along the ruts, distracted only by the swaying rows of silver-birch trees that flank the road.
There's nothing flashy about Lyudinovo (pop. 47,000), whose name translates roughly as People's Town. The central square is a traffic island with a Soviet T34 tank on a pedestal, a World War II memorial. Next to it is a farmers' market, where babushkas from nearby villages with woolly hats and dodgy teeth sell homegrown carrots and potatoes for 25¢ per pound. But look closer, and it's clear that even Lyudinovo isn't frozen in time. A shopping emporium that opened a year ago sells South Korean refrigerators, French yogurt and fake Italian pumps. Several houses are being built on the outskirts - the first new residential construction in more than a decade. And until recently there was plenty of work for everyone at the five factories that employ the bulk of the townsfolk. (See pictures of Russian aristocracy.)
No longer. Starting in early November, four of the five factories abruptly informed their workers that they were switching to a three-day week. Then the layoffs started. The cast-iron foundry, which pays the best wages, cut 80 of its 1,200 workers, and managers announced that they might have to fire up to 600 more. The cable factory - which just this year started up a new production line - laid off 40 people, and cut pay for those who remained by 15%. At least they're being paid: the machinery factory nearby is two months in arrears. "People woke up one day and everything had changed," says Ivan Pronin, the editor of the local paper, the Lyudinovo Worker. "It's like a hurricane blew through here all of a sudden."
As the world financial crisis buffets country after country, Russia was never going to be spared. It's in much better shape than it was during the last financial crisis, in 1998, when the ruble collapsed and the country defaulted. This time, Russia has $450 billion in foreign reserves left from the $600 billion it had amassed thanks to the soaring energy prices of the past few years. Its biggest banks, all of them state-controlled, appear to have largely avoided the toxic assets that have been the downfall of so many of their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe. Yet Russia has been caught unawares by the domino effect of the financial crisis because of its unhealthy overdependence on oil, gas and metals, which account for more than three-quarters of export earnings. The collapse in energy and commodity prices since this summer is exposing Russia's fragility: the boom, it turns out, was built on expensive oil, and precious little else. Economic growth, which averaged more than 7% for the past five years, has tumbled and may drop below 2% next year. And for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of large-scale unemployment looms. "Money was falling from the sky in the past two to three years," says Maxim Oreshkin, the head of research at private-sector Rosbank in Moscow. "Now it's stopped falling."
This all amounts to the first serious test of "Putinomics" - the domestic policies put in place by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during the two terms of his presidency from 2000 to 2008, and continued by his successor, President Dmitri Medvedev. While oil money was pouring into the state's coffers, the Kremlin was able to dispense largesse to ordinary Russians through generous social spending programs and hefty pay raises awarded by the monolithic state companies that dominate the economy. Jobs were plentiful, and over the past five years, average wages have risen by 25% annually. Even then there was money left over, which the government put into a rainy-day fund - never imagining that it would need to draw on it so soon.
Today, Russia's finances look a lot less robust. The government budget was based on oil at $70 per barrel, way above the current level, and it will consequently swing into deficit next year for the first time since 2001. The stock market has dropped more than 70% in the past year, as the nation's business élite dumped stocks to repay the huge loans they took out to finance acquisitions in Russia and abroad. Capital is fleeing - investors have pulled about $190 billion out of Russia since August - and the ruble is under pressure.
At first, the Kremlin tried to prop up the currency, but after blowing through tens of billions of dollars in September and October, it changed course in mid-November, and has since begun a policy of phased devaluation. That's calling up bad memories of the ruble's collapse in 1998, and prompting nervous talk around kitchen tables about what to do this time around. On Dec. 4, Putin fielded vetted questions from around the nation on a televised call-in show. One of the most poignant was a text message from an unnamed viewer: "What will happen to the ruble, and what is the best currency to keep deposited in the bank?" Putin's hopeful reply: "There will be no sharp fluctuations in the ruble's exchange rate."
Lyudinovo's woes are not exceptional. The markets for the huge exporting firms that are the foundation of Russia's recent prosperity have suddenly dried up, and that's having an immediate effect on machinery makers and other manufacturers. Construction has also seized up in many places. Last month in Moscow, lack of funding stopped work on a Norman Foster - designed skyscraper called the Russia Tower that was going to be the tallest naturally ventilated building in the world. (See pictures of Moscow.)
The biggest fallout to date has happened in cities that are wholly dependent on one big industry, especially steel or autos. In the Urals town of Magnitogorsk, a gigantic steelworks has placed 3,000 workers on forced leave. In Novolipetsk, to the east of Lyudinovo, thousands more have been furloughed since Nov. 14, when the steel factory idled two of its blast furnaces. Alexei Mordashov, one of Russia's best known oligarchs, has shelved an $8 billion investment program at his Severstal metals company that was scheduled for 2009-2011. The government now estimates that companies will lay off about 200,000 workers over December and January, but that's probably an understatement. Yevgeny Gontmakher, an economist who heads the Russian Academy of Sciences' Social Studies Center, expects that Russia's official unemployment rate, long below 6%, will be twice that level in 2009.
Lyudinovo is no stranger to unemployment: it suffered a bad bout in the early 1990s, when several of the town's factories closed and 4,000 workers lost their jobs. But by this October, after a run of good years, the number of unemployed people had fallen to just 320. That number doubled in November, and for next year all bets are off. "This is just the beginning," worries editor Pronin.
The Trouble with Putinomics
It's difficult to get an accurate picture of the economic disruption in Russia, where reliable information and open public discussion remain rare. This is the other side of Putinomics: TV and many major press outlets are firmly under state control, and media outlets that aren't have become nervous about printing the truth. As a result, the very word crisis is only now starting to enter the official vocabulary, and even then in a relatively muted way.
For weeks, as the stock market cratered and some private Russian banks wobbled, the official Kremlin line was: "This is primarily an American issue." Finally, on Nov. 20, Putin admitted that Russia, too, was in trouble. Announcing a $20 billion economic-stimulus package and an increase in unemployment benefits, he said Russians were asking "a fair question" when they wondered about what was happening. His answer: "We will do everything, everything in our power ... so that the collapses of the past years should never be repeated in our country." Says Alexander Kliment, a Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group in New York City: "The Russian leadership turned a blind eye to this crisis until it ended up staring them in the face." (See pictures of Vladimir Putin.)
Since that speech, Putin has begun talking a little more openly about the issue. In his Dec. 4 television appearance, the first question to him came from Dmitry Salnikov from the village of Tirlyansky, near the Urals region of central Russia. "We are a young and currently jobless family," said Salnikov. "Most locals are also unemployed because they used to work for the metallurgical sector. What are we supposed to do in this situation?" Putin's vague answer: "Private and public authorities will have to draft an entire range of measures in an effort to preserve jobs."
Challenging the official line is still hazardous. On Nov. 6, the Moscow business newspaper Vedomosti carried an opinion piece by the Academy of Sciences' Gontmakher titled NOVOCHERKASSK - 2009. The headline was a reference to spontaneous strikes by workers in a Russian town in 1962 that ended in bloodshed when troops were called in and opened fire: at least 20 people were killed and three dozen wounded. In his article, Gontmakher drew some parallels between the social tensions back then and the deteriorating economy today. Within days, the newspaper received an official warning from the Kremlin's media watchdog: Run any more such pieces, Vedomosti was told, and you face criminal charges under a law against inciting extremism.
Yet even if it has to remain buried, anger is not far from the surface. A young woman standing outside the Lyudinovo emporium rocks her infant son's stroller and, looking around nervously, gives vent to her worries. She's still on maternity leave, but had hoped to return to work soon. That's now looking impossible. What's more, prices keep going up, including her rent, she complains, and she's had to pay a $200 bribe to get her son into a local nursery. "You tell that to Putin and Medvedev," she says angrily, and then worries that she'll get into trouble for talking to foreigners.
Don't Dream It's Over
It wasn't meant to turn out this way. The new Russia was supposed to replace poverty and money worries and grumbling mothers with places like Rusfinance, a Moscow call center that transports you from the gritty streets and auto-parts stores outside into a world of cheery beige furnishings, swirling red-and-gold patterns on the walls and easy credit. Here, 450 people - mainly women in their 20s - sit side by side in booths and field calls from Russians wanting to borrow money. Most of the time the answer they give is a resounding yes. Owned by the French bank Société Générale, Rusfinance is aiming to build a massive presence in Russia. Back in Paris, SocGen's chief executive Frédéric Oudéa even talks about Russia becoming the bank's second biggest market after France.
By 10:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, 432 people have called in. Nadezhda Kumyiny is one of them. She's phoning from a small village in the Kursk region, southeast of Lyudinovo. She wants to borrow 30,000 rubles - just over $1,000. The woman taking her call fills in the details on a screen. Experienced call-center workers can process a request and grant pre-approval in under six minutes, but Kumyiny can't remember her zip code, which slows everything down. Watching over the process is deputy operations director Viktoriya Selezneva, who says the economic crisis has yet to arrive. "The volume of calls hasn't decreased for us," she says. But then, the Christmas season - the busiest time for consumer loans - is approaching fast. And should callers have worries, staff have been given a reassuring script to deal with them.
Rusfinance and Société Générale officials say they are working the crisis to their advantage and have increased the company's share of the auto-loan market. "We see this as an opportunity," says Lyudmila Bogushevskaya, director of Rusfinance's regional network department.
Such optimism can be found elsewhere. The Kaluga region to which Lyudinovo belongs continues to draw in foreign investors, including automakers. VW has to date invested about $350 million in an assembly plant, and is producing about 320 cars per day. Peugeot is not far behind. Dietmar Korzekwa, VW's group representative for Russia, says the automaker is continuing with its current growth plans. In part, it's betting that if the Kremlin raises import taxes on autos, as it has suggested it might, it will become more advantageous to manufacture in Russia.
Russia needs foreign companies to plug a huge hole in Putin's economic policies. In his first term as President, Putin introduced modern tax and corporation laws. But he failed to spur the development of a business infrastructure that would enable Russia to diversify away from its over-reliance on energy and metals. Now, as the crisis starts to bite, the Kremlin is reacting by increasing its control over broad swathes of the economy. Through the state-controlled banks, it is bailing out selected business executives who are having trouble paying their debts - including Oleg Deripaska, a metals tycoon who until recently was Russia's richest man. It is also playing an increasingly intrusive role in the private sector. At a meeting in Moscow on Nov. 25, for example, Igor Shuvalov, Putin's First Deputy Prime Minister, told the nation's major retailers that the Kremlin would ensure they gained access to credit on condition that they demonstrated "social responsibility" by not raising prices.
Back in Lyudinovo, snow is falling heavily. Andrei Petrov, the biggest retailer in town, owns many of the stores, including the new emporium, and also runs a wholesale distribution business to supply them. Getting in to see him is hard. A security guard wants to know whether we are American spies. Petrov's deputy, Viktor Denisov, nervously locks his office door when he crosses the corridor to see his boss. Petrov is deliberately cagey about business prospects. Yes, an economic crisis is now raging, "but this is not the first time we've had one," he says. Indeed, back in 1998, Denisov adds mysteriously, "it was a crisis that helped us move a step ahead." Business, both insist, has not been affected. But press Petrov on prospects for next year and he shifts uneasily in his seat. "We will be making some correction," he finally concedes. Putin himself couldn't have put it better. The question is: Just how much pain will Russians have to endure before the government makes the corrections that are so desperately needed?
With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich / Moscow