The (digital) ration cards of Putin's Russia

Debit cards and various kinds of talony, the ‘coupons’ for the lean years as in Gorbachev's perestroika, are becoming increasingly widespread and widespread in today's Russia. But with a thousand roubles charged per month, it's not much to cope with the economic crisis. And there are those who are once again calling for the prices of basic necessities to be regulated from above in the typically Soviet way.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - In Soviet times it was customary to go shopping with the rule of ‘no more than a kilo per hand’, and the return to a similar economic system determined by the wars in today's Russia has also brought back the use of ration cards and the rationing of purchases.

They are no longer real cards, but in the form of debit card surrogates and various kinds of talony, the ‘coupons’ of the lean years as in Gorbachev's perestroika, the system is becoming increasingly widespread and widespread.

It is difficult to understand how this fits in with Putin's proclamations of the ‘rapid growth of the well-being’ of the Russians, but a real marathon is now underway among the hundred regions of the Russian Federation to come up with the most presentable methods for the limited distribution of food and everyday consumer goods.

Central and local authorities are coming up with the most appealing names to try and disguise the true meaning of these procedures, such as the governor of the Ulyanovsk region, Aleksey Russkikh, who signed an agreement with the commercial holding company X5 Group to create so-called ‘electronic certificates’.

These will be used to obtain state subsidies for the part of the population that finds itself in ‘difficult living conditions’, to make purchases in the main shopping centres, with large discounts on milk, meat, fruit and vegetables.

In reality, as some journalists have noted, the help provided by these ‘certificates’ is relative, as only a thousand roubles, 11 dollars at the current exchange rate, are loaded onto the card every month, to be taken in the ironic spirit of the Russian saying ‘and let nothing be lacking’.

In the Kaliningrad region too, ‘social food cards’ are being distributed, devised by the governor Aleksej Bezprozvannikh for people on low incomes, above all the elderly on the minimum pension, and similar solutions are already underway in the Siberian and Far Eastern regions, such as Amur and Kamchatka.

It seems clear that these imaginative measures are linked to the economic crisis in which Russia is increasingly slipping, following the folly of the war that generated international sanctions, and converted industrial production increasingly for the needs of the war.

Now the solutions appear improvised and hasty, when in reality they had already been talked about for years, such as when in 2018 the Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov announced a ‘citizenship income’ programme, which was never implemented.

However, it can no longer be postponed, and the symbolic concessions of one thousand to two thousand roubles a month certainly cannot solve the problem for a huge section of the Russian population.

Rather than giving out small sums of money, some members of parliament are proposing to give those with ration cards the chance to buy products at ‘social prices’, in effect starting to regulate the market for meat, fish, milk, eggs, flour, bread and other basic foodstuffs from the top down in a typically Soviet way.

This is the so-called ‘price corridor’ presented by the party ‘Fair Russia - For the Truth’, asking the central authorities to intervene in the face of sudden increases in the prices of ‘socially significant foodstuffs’, not only for the most needy, but for all retail sales.

For the moment there has been no particularly negative reaction from the population, and the propagandists insist on the idea that ‘cards and talony are a good thing, in the USA they have always used them to help the poorest’.

Some, however, are beginning to openly criticise the programme, such as the ‘Cremlinologist’ Pavel Moskovskij, who claims that the system is ‘extremely corrupt and ineffective’, and that it would be better to simply allow low-income people to choose the products they need most, whether food or not. Instead, as in the days of the pandemic, Putin continues his policy of ‘don't give money to the people, just give them five roubles before the elections’.