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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (10385)	11/13/2001 12:43:40 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 27666

Putin rides high as shoppers fuel economic boom WHEN Vladimir Putin meets George W. Bush today, he will do so with popularity ratings at least as high as those of the American President. Russians are only too well aware that their country is no longer a superpower, but they are daring to hope that President Putin might have found the formula to make it a great power again. Their optimism is not a result of Russia’s stand in the war against terrorism, about which many Russians feel ambivalent. Indeed, the measures that Mr Putin, an increasingly self-assured former KGB officer, has taken to please the West — active help over Afghanistan, proposed nuclear missile cuts, the closure of Cold War listening posts — have alarmed his conservative critics. He was careful to assure his top generals before leaving for the United States that he would not do anything to endanger Russia’s strategic defences. Instead, 75 per cent of Russians back their President in the area that matters most to them: what they can buy in the shops. Mr Putin leaves behind a Moscow in which Giorgio Armani has just opened a salon close to the Kremlin, the latest sign that the drab Soviet years have been consigned to history. Supermarkets are full and there are chic new restaurants and modern shopping centres. While much of the world is entering recession, Russia is enjoying stability and growth driven by oil revenues and growing consumer confidence. Under President Yeltsin, Mr Putin’s predecessor and mentor, privatisation had favoured "gangsters, mafiosi and the President’s cronies", one Western diplomat said. Now the market system is beginning to spread benefits more widely. Last year Russia recorded unprecedented growth of 8.3 per cent. This year growth is likely to be about 6 per cent, as oil prices fall after the attacks on New York. Mr Putin’s economic advisers say that Russia’s management of its short-term and long-term debts means that it is in a far better position than in 1998, when plummeting oil prices caused financial chaos. "The key to prosperity and stability is the rise of the middle class," Boris Kargalitsky, once a Soviet-era dissident and now a leading sociologist, said. "Many of Russia’s past revolutionary upheavals happened because a middle class failed to develop. It is still not much over one tenth of the population, but it is starting to spend money." Nevertheless, corruption and the mafia are still pervasive, and it is only the business and political elite (and their wives) who can afford the most expensive items. The provinces remain poor and not far from the new Moscow boutiques old women still beg in the Metro. More than 100 people have died of hypothermia in the city’s streets so far this winter. thetimes.co.uk