A good year for Russia
Marina Shakina Russian Information Agency Novosti Moscow
"We can say with certainty that the year 2001 was a good year for Russia," said Russian President Vladimir Putin in a call-in aired live on TV on Dec. 24.
Indeed: with the 2001 economic advance projected at 4 percent, the actual economic advance reached 5.5 percent; industrial production grew by 5.2 percent and agriculture "did even better," as the president put it; the crop yield amounted to 83.7 million tons, which may count as a record high, considering that it was only 44 million tons some 3 years ago; what's even more important, the yield level per hectare turned out the highest in the entire history of Russia.
The gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank grew too. Despite the problems with international prices for oil, which is Russia's key export product, the 2001 state budget assignment was fulfilled 100 percent and the targeted surplus reached.
Tax collection grew by one third as compared to the previous year. Foreign debts were partially settled and one of the debts under one of the IMF credits extinguished ahead of time.
The real income of the population grew by 6.5 percent, with the increase of average wages and pensions amounting to 20 percent and 23 percent respectively. The number of the unemployed dropped from 11.1 percent to 8.9 percent. The birth rate increased. And, even though the life standard of the population remains low (according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, it is still short of the pre-crisis level of 1998), the dynamics is very good indeed.
The country's political life was generally characterized by stability and a near-lack of the usual nerve-racking struggle between different political forces. The influence of the leftist opposition, which dominated the Russian parliament for years, somewhat lessened due to the popularity of President Putin's policy.
More unification processes were taking place in party life, with a large bloc of pro-presidential centrist forces -- the party Unity and Fatherland -- eventually emerging in the parliament and society. Two rightist parties, the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, finally took shape. President Putin's popularity rate lingered somewhere at 70 percent throughout the year.
The parliament, according to Putin's expression, "worked like a horse." In 2001, deputies passed two exceptionally important laws, the Land Code and the Labour Code, introduced amendments to the tax legislation, to the Criminal Code and to the Code of Criminal Procedure, and did much to perfect legal procedure.
Despite pessimistic expectations and gloomy forecasts about the situation in Chechnya, things kept getting better for this North Caucasian republic. Although the mine war continues unabated and local pro-Moscow officials are still in danger of being attacked or murdered, the number of attacks on federal troops diminished almost fivefold as compared to last year, and so did the number of terrorist acts. The republic began setting up its own law enforcement authorities staffed with locally recruited personnel. Next year, the newly created republican police are expected to assume full control of the republic's law and order.
Federal security services carried on with their effort to track down and seize Chechen militant leaders, which was more or less successful, although the most odious warlords, Shamil Basayev and Khattab, are still on the loose.
And yet, the year 2001 did yield certain results in this respect. Dagestan, one of Russia's North Caucasian republics neighboring on Chechnya, has just witnessed the trial of the field commander Salman Raduyev, who was captured in Chechnya early this year. Notorious for his January 1996 raid on the Dagestani town of Kizlyar, which was originally aimed at local military installations but ended with Raduyev's gang capturing a hospital and seizing women and child patients as hostages, Raduyev was responsible for the death of 78 policemen and civilians during the Kizlyar "campaign." The verdict, which envisages a life sentence for Raduyev and up to 15 years in prison for his accomplices, was pronounced in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala on Dec. 25.
While all this was going on, Chechnya continued its effort to restore its war-devastated economy. For the first time in 10 years, the republic harvested a crop sufficient enough to satisfy its needs and is now busy restoring its energy system, telephone communications, plants, schools and higher educational establishments.
Yet there still remains the problem of refugees, who won't leave their camps in Ingushetia and return to Chechnya for safety reasons, and so does the old problem of providing housing for those who do return. But with all the work done in this direction, Chechnya's administration head Akhmad Kadyrov hopes the negative tendency will abate by the spring of 2002 to give way to rapid improvement.
On the whole, specialists say the outlook is optimistic and Russia needs not fear for its future. So far, it looks like the year 2002 is not going to be worse than the good year 2001. Moscow, Dec. 27.