AM I AFRAID?

PEOPLE OFTEN TELL ME I AM A PESSIMIST; THAT I DO NOT BElieve in the strength of the Russian people; that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that.

I see everything, and that is the whole problem. I see both what is good and what is bad. I see that people would like life to change for the better but are incapable of making that happen, and that in order to conceal this truth they concentrate on the positive and pretend the negative isn't there.

To my way of thinking, a mushroom growing under a large leaf can't just hope to sit it out. Almost certainly someone is going to spot it, cut it out and devour it. If you were born a human being, you cannot behave like a mushroom.

I cannot reconcile myself to the official demographic forecast from the state statistical committee covering the period to 2016. By 2016 many of my generation may no longer be around, but our children will be alive, as will our grandchildren. Do we really not care what kind of life they will have, or even whether they will have a life at all?

Many seem not to care. If we continue with the same political and economic policies, the Russian population will fall by 6.4 million people. That is the optimistic forecast: that by 2016 Russia will have a population of 138.8 million people.

The pessimistic forecast is not so easy to come by, but you can dig it out if you are sufficiently persistent, and it makes you want to do something about changing the situation in Russia right now. The pessimistic forecast is that we will be down to 128.7 million people. Millions of the poor, unable to afford privatized medical services, will die. Young people will continue to be killed in droves in the army. In wars and also outside of wars, all those who are “not on our side” will be shot or sent to rot and die in prisons.

That is if everything remains as it is now. If in a fundamental manner, we do not tackle poverty. If the disgraceful neglect of health care provision and our environment persists. If we do not embark on a determined national campaign against alcoholism and drug addiction. If the war in the North Caucasus is not ended. If a humiliating social welfare system is not changed that allows a person barely to survive with no prospect of living a fulfilled and dignified life, eating well, resting properly, enjoying sports.

So far there is no sign of change. The state authorities remain deaf to all warnings from the people. They live their own life, their faces permanently twisted by greed and by irritation that anybody should try to prevent them from getting even richer. In order to head off that possibility, their priority is to cripple civil society. On a daily basis they try to convince the Russian people that civil society and the opposition are funded by the CIA, the British, Israel, and, for all anyone knows, Martian intelligence services, plus of course the worldwide spider's web of al-Qaeda.

Our state authorities today are only interested in making money. That is literally all they are interested in.

If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the “optimistic” forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is also a death sentence for our grandchildren.