Reforms in Russia Spark Public Outcry

Pensioners and war veterans facing major cuts in their Soviet-era social benefits have launched demonstrations across Russia, the most sweeping protests in years and the first significant sign of public discontent with the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.

From rural Siberia to the teeming suburbs of Moscow, aging protesters have blocked highways, marched on street corners and blockaded public buildings in an attempt to thwart welfare reforms that would replace transit, housing, telephone and medicine subsidies with monthly cash payments ranging from $7 to $100.

Russia has about 30 million retirees, about half of whom qualified in the past for free bus travel or subsidized prescriptions. Many faced a sudden cutoff when a new law slashing their benefits took effect Jan. 1.

Aging war veterans have since been ordered off buses, and retirees have bristled at the prospect of paying for services on pensions of less than $75 a month. Their protests appeared to have surprised the government. Federal officials in Moscow blamed cash-strapped regional governments for failing to manage the transition to cash-based benefits for their poorest citizens.

The new law attempts to end a Soviet legacy of in-kind benefits costing billions of dollars that were created ostensibly to benefit the poor. Because the system was underfunded, retirees often couldn’t get the medicines they were entitled to, and public transit networks swamped with millions of nonpaying customers had no money to open new routes or maintain and upgrade equipment, authorities say.

The protests raise doubts about Putin’s ability to carry out other major changes -- in the banking, energy and administrative sectors -- that were to be the hallmarks of his second term.

The highly popular president suddenly faces substantial public skepticism. A poll by the Public Opinion Foundation showed that for the first time since Putin’s election in 2000, the number of Russians who said they were dissatisfied with the situation in the country surpassed those who said they were satisfied. And 49% said they thought the country was headed “down a blind alley.”

“I think it’s headed very steadily and surely toward the abyss,” said Zinaida Volkova, a 73-year-old retiree in Podolsk, a small industrial city southwest of Moscow, where more than 450 angry pensioners gathered this week in front of the local administration building.

A radio call-in show with Andrei Isayev, chairman of the parliament committee responsible for the new legislation, prompted dozens of irate e-mails Friday. “Are you by any chance living on the moon?” asked one listener. Said another: “Andrei Isayev, make a present to your dear country: Die with the entire government. Please.”

The thousands of protesters in more than a dozen cities over the last five days have sparked unusual trepidation in Moscow, especially after the massive demonstrations in neighboring Ukraine that led to a revote in that country’s presidential runoff election.

But Russian authorities said the situation was under control, and dismissed any idea that the protests could coalesce into a major opposition movement.

“There will be no Orange Revolution in Russia in 2005,” Isayev, who heads the labor and social policy committee, said Friday, referring to the protests in Ukraine.

Unlike Ukraine, Russia has no unified opposition and no popular national political figures who could transform the retirees’ fury into a mass movement.

Some of Putin’s biggest critics are liberals who have championed an overhaul of the welfare system, which had cost an estimated $21.5 billion a year.

Still, even many advocates of reform have criticized the government for throwing out the benefits system without a reliable replacement. The budget for new cash benefits is about $9 billion, less than half what was previously spent.

In many areas, regional governments have stepped in during the last few days to continue providing free bus rides for some passengers, at least for the next few months.

“No one actually expected the public outcry against the new law would be so vociferous,” said Valery Gartung, a parliament deputy and chairman of the Party of Pensioners.

“The authorities tricked the public many times with elections, they kept pushing and pushing their luck, believing that the Russian people are ignorant and will always swallow anything. But now it has become hard to keep the people from resorting to such extreme measures as blocking highways.”

This week, hundreds of pensioners and veterans blocked the main highway into Moscow from the suburban town of Krasnogorsk, where thousands of residents who ride the bus into the capital every day for work, doctor visits and shopping faced the prospect of having to pay bus and subway fares.

New protests broke out Friday in St. Petersburg, Penza and Samara.

In Podolsk, pensioners say they would be hit hard by the second phase of the change, which beginning in 2006 will eliminate housing, telephone and electricity subsidies.

The monthly cash stipend for transportation is 200 rubles a month, or about $7.

“This is humiliating. I don’t need those paltry 200 rubles that are thrown to me like a dog,” said retiree Rimma Trunova, 67.

Raisa Grishina, 65, said she spent 30 rubles a day riding the bus to visit her parents. “We’re going to be literally spending our entire pension on what used to be covered by these benefits,” she said.

On a downtown street corner, Raisa Korabelnikova broke into tears as she squatted over a box of garlic, carrots and tomatoes from her garden she was selling to supplement her pension.

“You wouldn’t believe it, but there was a young man here buying cabbage one day who said: ‘When are you going to die? We can’t keep supporting you anymore.’ I told him, ‘Don’t you have a mother?’

“I’m 77 years old. We worked hard all our lives. We dug trenches during the war because we realized how much the motherland needed it. Judging by the input we made, we’re entitled to a cozy life in front of a television set,” she said. “And instead we’re here selling cabbage in the middle of winter. The problem is, there’s no one to defend us. No one wants us.”