+https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/23/russ-j23.html
Quote:By Clara Weiss
23 January 2018
While the Western press is buzzing with stories about the right-wing Russian politician and blogger Alexei Navalny, who has just been barred from participating in the presidential elections in March 2018, there are increasing signs of growing social unrest in the Russian working class, as poverty and social inequality continue to rise. A recent commentary in the Gazeta.Ru warned that the kind of working class unrest that shook Iran might also easily occur in Russia. This concern is no doubt shared by Russia’s oligarchs, including both those grouped around the current president Vladimir Putin, and those financing and supporting the so-called liberal opposition.
Alexei Navalny, a right-wing proponent of the free market and friend of far-right forces, has included several phony populist social demands in his election program. Vladimir Putin, who has long postured as an enemy of the oligarchs, kicked off his election campaign on January 10 by going to the Carriage Works in Tver, which employ some 35,000 workers.
Although Russian GDP has grown a little in 2017 (by 1.7%), after a depression in 2014-2016, which was provoked by the Western economic sanctions and a drop in oil prices, poverty has been on the rise and wages have remained flat. One worker from the Carriage Works told the Washington Post, “Incomes aren’t going up. … After two years of crisis and another year of who-knows-what, people want to buy clothing, automobiles, apartments. A new consumer boom. You need money for that. And there’s no money.”
In many other regions in Russia, inflation has continued to go up significantly in 2017. According to the Center for Economic and Political Reform, between November and December 2017 alone, the prices for basic food staples and services in 12 regions rose by an average of 9.5 percent, three times more than indicated by the official inflation rate. A report by Gazeta.Ru calculated that prices for medication, public transportation and basic food staples will continue to rise significantly in 2018.