Listening to Putin's Speech and Nodding Along (Mostly)
President Putin gave a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the other day. It was a solid performance.
Putin doesn’t get enough credit for being a good orator. If you’re not a Russian speaker, you don’t understand just how poorly many public officials in Russia speak at governmental functions. They swallow their words and slur one word into another, which is a form of Soviet slang that the older generation is particularly affected by.
Putin doesn’t do that and always uses very clear and very understandable Russian. His vocabulary is quite simple and straight-forward and he refuses to use German loan words in his speeches, which are usually associated with bureaucratic terms and various offices of the government. You could learn good Russian just by listening to his speeches and taking notes.
A Quick Summary:
Putin lambasted Western countries and their ridiculous political ruling caste.
He said that radicalism and populism are the future of the West and that huge upheavals are to be expected in the future. The same puppets hand power off to one another, but nothing is actually up for debate and the contradictions in the social consensus are piling up. This is leading to a powder keg situation.
The European elite do what they’re told by others (America, probably), and have squandered their political sovereignty.
Putin said that accusations that Russia detonated the world economy are a cover-up for problems in the global economy. In particular, America’s penchant for running up its debts contributed no small part to the current looming economic crisis. “Putin’s inflation” is a lie that can only convince the stupid and illiterate and is an attempt to turn attention away from the catastrophic mistakes of the managers of the Western economies. They printed huge amounts of money and used the money to buy foreign goods, not caring about the effects that this policy would have on other countries in the world. This printed money, which is worthless, was used to buy up products around the world, leading to deficits. America used to actually produce things, their products were considered high-value. But America doesn’t make anything anymore and imports everything. This is the reason for global inflation - printed American dollars being used to buy up everything, causing a supply crisis.
Many countries are now asking the question: why continue accepting worthless Euros and Dolllars for their products?
Furthermore, the US has now started to confiscate other country’s money. This is a cause for concern, and will lead to a devaluation of the national currency and a global move away from Dollars as the world reserve economy.
Energy prices are soaring. They were going up before Russia started the special operation in Donbass. This has cascading effects on the rest of the economy. Fertilizer has sky-rocketed in price. And because of the sanctions, Russia is unable to supply fertilizer to other countries. This will lead to a global hunger crisis. It will be the fault of the United States, who is, of course, trying to shift blame onto Russia. It would be nice to consider Russia so influential on the entire world, to think that Russia could effect the world economy so much. But this is, again, just a cover-up and an attempt to place blame on Russia by the people who are continuing to loot the world.
Russia is working to start exporting food en masse to the world. The agricultural industry in Russia is growing by leaps and bounds. The Middle-East and Africa will be fed by Russian food going forward. To accomplish this, new logistic chains have to be built. Ukraine mined their own ports and now blame Russia for not being able to export food. De-mine the ports and start sending food out, Russia won’t interfere.
The modern world is going through a massive change. No compromises or agreements with the current ruling elite of the West are impossible. Russia is a sovereign country that has the right to defend itself and the Donbass republics, who were being genocided with the help of the West. They armed Ukraine and sent their military advisors there to agitate the country and use Ukraine to attack Russia.
Russia has its own culture and tradition and history and rejects the current Western ideas that lead to the degradation of people and nations. All of our actions have had one goal: to cement Russia as a sovereign and strong nation.
The sanctions against Russia were built on the fake narrative that Russia was already half-dead and totally helpless to the West. But Russia has changed because of the implemented macroeconomic policies, import-substitution programs, and refinancialization schemes and so on. The sanctions have sped this process along.
A sovereign nation is able to deal with other nations fairly. Russia will simply start working with other nations who are wiling to work with Russia. The West’s attempts to force Russia into autarky and isolation have already failed. The Western elite doesn’t think about the interests of their nations, so Russia will work with those countries where there’s an elite that does.
New ports will be built in the Pacific, in the Arctic, the Caspian and railroad networks will expand. Russia will respect property rights and help private business and investors. Russian business has nothing to worry about from the government going forward and the bureaucracy will stop harassing them as much. New reforms are on the way.
Putin then shared lots of positive statistics about growth and output and money and so on.
He also stressed that business and economic growth should not be focused on maximizing profits, but on improving the lives of the people in the country that use these various goods and services. Russia needs to not replicate the mistakes of the past - there is no need to invest Russian money outside of Russia. Russian money should be used to fund schools, development, culture and so on. It used to be that capitalists gave back to their country by reinvesting their profits. They used to care about their reputation and their legacy.
Russia will fight inflation and takes this problem very seriously. Pensions will keep pace with the inflation.
Russia has a disastrous demographic problem. The government needs to take urgent and cardinal actions to fix this looming problem. Money alone won’t do it. A holistic approach and a raising of the general quality of life through the use of best practices is the only way to address demographics.
The work on Russia’s infrastructure continues. Smaller towns and historic regions will be linked up to the main transport network. The government will invest into Russia’s Far East. Homesteads and farms will receive government support. The regions are going to get a lot more money to encourage people to move there and not sit in large cities. Museums and cultural institutions will be built in rural areas. There has been a growth of interest in Russia among Russian tourists, which means that the national parks have to be treated with care. Lake Baikal needs to be cleaned up and the surrounding areas have to become a premier eco-destination for tourists. Pollution will be cleaned up there, and all over Russia.
Russia needs technological sovereignty. That means that Russia needs its own technological systems. Import-substitution isn’t about simply copying other people’s products, but about creating new Russian products that outcompete others.
The Analysis
The key word here is sovereignty. It came up a lot in Putin’s speech. He said that Russia was committed to achieving political, economic and cultural sovereignty. This can only be understood as a rejection of the globalist world government project. Putin also stressed that Russia will work with other sovereign nations. Translation: Russia will ally with countries that are not going along with the globalist one world government scheme. This is also referred to as building a multi-polar world.
Furthermore, Putin demonstrated an awareness by the Russian ruling elite of the discontent boiling up in the West. Putin did not say that Russia would help Western dissidents in any way, he only commented on the lamentable state of affairs. This means that Russia will continue not engaging in “active measures”. Western dissidents - you’re on your own, for now.
Economic justice came up quite a bit in his speech. Putin stressed that business has to serve the interest of the people and not the other way around. There was no talk about the magic of the invisible hand or the right to keep what you make. Putin was quite clear: he is interested in business development because of the positive effects that it has on the welfare of ordinary people and the country as a whole. I suppose this could be categorized as “socialism” but, frankly, it’s just common sense, and has more to do with levels of assabiyah among the business caste than it does with any particular “ism”. This is what Putin stressed as well, reminding the capitalists who gathered at the forum to remember that they have to serve Russia, not just line their own pockets.
Putin spoke more about the future than he did about the past or the present. He stressed the need to use emerging technology to benefit Russia. I’m all for Russia becoming technologically self-sufficient, but the idea that technology solves any problem without creating 3 more in its place is, I think, a myopic form of thinking. It was disappointing to hear Putin mention global warming and talk as much as he did about tech start-ups and Russia’s silicon valley. This was an address to business people, so that’s understandable, but the number one thing that Russia needs to invest into is the Russian people. Russians need to become stronger and more self-sufficient. Investing Russian minds and capital into the cyber economy strikes me as a terrible waste. Almost all profitable tech-work is oriented around minimizing redundancies i.e., automating people’s jobs away and only a small sliver of highly-intelligent, autistic people in the population can work in the tech sphere. A factory making cars in the past could employ thousand of people and ensure a middle-class existence for the workers. Elon Musk excluded, tech people don’t reproduce, and there aren’t that many trickle-down benefits for other professions when, say, a new app is developed.
If Russia is to build a modern economy around any one industry, the tech sector, while insanely profitable for its investors, won’t be providing the average Russian with the money that he needs to have 4+ kids, a house and a middle-class existence.
Overall, it was an 8/10 speech.
It wasn’t all the different from Putin’s other speeches to the SPIEF. He’s been fairly consistent in his messaging over the years. Furthermore, there wasn’t a single mention of accepting migrants into Russia to benefit the business class. Compare this with the speeches of “conservatives” in the West who feel they have an almost religious obligation to take about all the engineers and doctors and nuclear physicists that they’re going to bring into the country from Somalia. Instead, Putin stressed the need to work with the people that Russia has and to make more Russian people. He didn’t have to address demographics in his speech at an economic forum, but he chose to do so anyway. A very good sign.
I'm glad he addressed the demographic problem and support of social services as opposed to neo-liberal capitalist plundering because those are the most important things Russia needs to get right in order to win in the coming century.
It will help that Russia is so closely allied with China because China has figured out which services to bring into the public domain and which to leave laissez-faire. Russia and China's ability to fix their demographic problems will be the ultimate determinant for how things turn out.
In this era tech has a very specific meaning - IT - but the true definition is much broader. If Russia intends to colonize its inner frontier, I'd expect that will require a high degree of technological innovation involving far more than app development for iTrinkets. Otherwise, it would have happened long ago.
Overall this speech is typical Putin: clear, direct, forward-thinking, and honest. The man has vision and loves his country. That's why western elites hate him so much; his mere presence on the global stage condemns them by comparison.