The 2018 World Cup champion has yet to be determined, but Vladimir Putin’s personal soccer saga is over. With Russia now out of the running, it’s time for him to turn to tough domestic social reforms, which he may find impossible to delay any further.
Russia has broken three records during the 2018 World Cup. First, it got the tournament to be held in Russia. Second, the national team made it to the knockout stage for the first time in post-Soviet Russia’s history. And third, the team advanced to the quarterfinals with a staggering upset against Spain. Despite their being knocked out by Croatia in the next stage, Russia has gone crazy about the soccer team’s miraculous success. Both Putin’s supporters and the opposition called for awarding the top players with the state’s highest honors. Putin’s Spokesman Dmitry Peskov compared the national joy after the match with Spain to the glory of the World War II victory in 1945.
This was not only an accurate comparison; it was also a smart political statement. As in any authoritarian country, national sports victories are always attributed to the leader, while coaches and players are always held responsible for losses. Though technically a loss, the quarterfinal match was counted a huge victory for Russia because few expected the team to even make it through the group stage.
As to the World War II victory, May 9 (Victory Day) has become the main national holiday in Russia, a patriotic extravaganza when Putin throws huge military parades in Red Square alongside invited world leaders. This year’s guest star was Bibi Netanyahu.
Because Vladimir Putin lavishes so much attention on the Victory Day celebrations, Russians reflexively associate the 73-year-old war victory with the current Russian leader. And because Vladimir Putin got FIFA to host the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Russians reflexively associate the team’s success with him too. Neither the fact that Putin failed to show up for the Spain game (apparently not expecting a win) nor the team’s loss to Croatia stopped Russia’s dutiful propagandists from praising the Russian President for the team’s success.
Being a master of propaganda and an intuitive reader of the public mood, Vladimir Putin saved a tough and unpopular pension reform for the World Cup period. On the first day of the tournament, the Russian government announced its plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 years for men and 55 to 63 for women, with a transitional period of ten years, beginning in 2019.
Although in developed countries lifespans have been steadily increasing and it makes little sense to retire at 55 or 60, in Russia this is not the case. The average lifespan is 66 years for men and 76 years for women. In essence, then, the government wants Russian men to work until death and never see the pensions they have paid into their whole working lives. As for women, they would have 13 years after retirement to live their lives. On average, then, a retired Russian would enjoy their retirement for six years.
The Russian pension fund is empty, and there is not enough money even to pay current retirees, as former Finance Minister and now Accounts Chamber head Alexey Kudrin confirmed last year. Political expert Kirill Rogov argues in Novaya Gazeta that Russia could have easily followed the Norwegian model by adopting its own form of sovereign wealth fund, saving extra profits from oil exports for future generations. But Putin’s elites chose another way. When oil prices were high, there was enough money for trickle-down effects and people were not particularly demanding about how elites spent the money. Putin’s oligarchy chose to privatize oil revenues through expensive state-sponsored infrastructure projects (with the World Cup being one of many). When the oil cash flows shrunk, it was time to cut back on social obligations, pensions among them.
Vladimir Putin, that “very smart cookie,” distanced himself from the reform by choosing not to comment on it at all. The honor of breaking the unhappy news went to Prime Minister Medvedev. But neither that tactic nor the World Cup euphoria was enough to placate the public. Right after it became clear the Russians would make the quarterfinals, Russian media broke the news: Vladimir Putin’s approval rating plummeted into a record-breaking fall. In the two weeks after the pension reform announcement, Putin lost 14 points of approval, from 78 percent to 64 percent. The last time Putin’s ratings were that low was in January 2014, right before the Sochi Olympics and the subsequent annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. But never before have Vladimir Putin’s numbers dropped so sharply—even in 2011, when hundreds of thousands protested in Moscow against his planned return to the presidency.
Thirty-eight percent of poll respondents said they trusted Vladimir Putin, down from 47 percent a month before. Eighty percent spoke against the pension reform, and 43 percent expressed their willingness to take part in protests against it.
No less shocking was the source of the polls: the state-owned and government-run VTsIOM. Virtually all public polling in Russia is done to please Putin, including VTsIOM’s polls. The agency’s job for the past six years has mostly been to report record-breaking approval ratings for Putin and ask respondents all the right questions.
How and why VTsIOM conducted and released these latest polls is a separate question. When I once asked an American official whether his Russian counterparts manage to deliver their views to Putin, this person assured me they do, but not directly—because no one in Moscow dares to tell Putin anything that goes against his wishes. But one way to communicate bad news is to cite third-party expertise and public opinion. That may have been what happened this time: Someone within the government or the Kremlin authorized an honest poll to deliver a message to Putin on the perils of pension reform.
Since those polls Putin’s approval ratings have stabilized, but now another troublesome issue has arisen from an unexpected source. Russian regional authorities have stirred up a silent rebellion against the pension reform. Only 11 out of 84 regional governments have openly supported the measure, while almost half have distanced themselves from it in one way or another. Some of the governors have avoided comment on the reform; in other regions the state legislators have gone on summer break without preparing official reviews. The law allows the Russian Duma to pass the reform without any approval from the regions, but the extra measure was demanded by the Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin who apparently wants the federal center to share responsibility with state authorities for such an unpopular measure. But 36 Russian regions face elections in September, and 26 of them are Governors’ elections, including Moscow. The Russian capital was among those who used the summer break as an excuse to not prepare the review. Volodin has officially complained about such behavior.
The data on the regions came from St. Petersburg’s Policies Foundation. Hours later, though, the Russian Labor Minister said that 61 regions have provided positive reviews of the reform.
In the meantime, the protests across the country continue. The main demonstration was supposed to be held by the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who for some reason chose July 1 as the date. This was exactly when Russia played Spain, and even worse for that matter, won. Navalny’s rallies didn’t draw large crowds and remained almost unnoticed by the media due to Russia’s World Cup miracle.
Nevertheless, even on Tuesday protests took place in several Russian cities, including the coal-mining Kemerovo where a few months ago a fire in a shopping mall took 64 lives, including 41 children. And in Saratov Oblast, a Communist Party representative now faces criminal prosecution for extremism after having publicly criticized the pension reform in the regional parliament. In a blistering speech, Nikolay Bondarenko called the reform “anti-people” and said that “half of the oil production money goes to the oligarchs. [ . . . ] 700 billion rubles have been spent on soccer, to show a pretty picture . . . and had we won over Croatia, I assure you, we’d have a serfdom law enacted.” He also called “Medvedev’s liberal government” a “fraud.” The speaker of the Saratov parliament warned the lawmaker that the session was being recorded and might be checked on by “entitled authorities.” After the session the speaker filed a police report against Bondarenko.
All the political experts and commentators predict that, once the World Cup is over, a new wave of people’s protests will come. And the Kremlin will have only two options: either back down, or crack down.
