On this website [VKontakte – ed] I earlier in the morning was accused of betraying the Motherland because I “support the criminal power”. The person making the accusation is a young man who, owing to their age, does not remember what things were like in the country before Putin’s arrival to power. Especially for him and for other young patriots, I will describe in what country we lived before Putin. Literally in ten points.
1. Our salaries were not paid for half a year, and sometimes even for a year. To all state employees. Get paid for January in August – a commonplace. This situation was total. Survived on kitchen gardens. Anybody had no savings.
2. About 20 liters of gasoline were given to the emergency services for the vehicles. Once I was in an unconscious state with acute poisoning and came to the ambulance myself, because when I called I was told that they had ran out of gasoline.
3. The country constantly begged for money. The news began with programmes about how our government holds negotiations over the delivery of more credit. And it continued via the war of oligarchs against each other. By the way, Sergey Dorenko, who after his death became nearly a journalism icon, shamelessly trashed on the main TV channel of the country everyone that Berezovsky pointed out to him. And yes, the channel belonged to Berezovsky.
4. The war in Chechnya. Once the military achieved success, the fighting immediately stopped and negotiations started, which nullified the results of all the success. Throughout the whole country people (ordinary citizens, but not rich men) were kidnapped and taken out to Chechnya. The media regularly told harrowing stories about how mothers raise money to release their children from captivity. Those who failed to achieve release were turned into slaves. And in 1999 terrorists from de facto independent Chechnya attacked Dagestan. In the same year an absolute record was set for the number of military service evaders (44% of those on the military registry).
5. The top brass of the governments could be replaced about 2-3 times in a year, which was a consequence of the oligarchs fighting among themselves and their influences on the apparatus decisions that were made by the “family” – a circle of confidants of Boris Yeltsin.
6. There were made-to-order and not so much made-to-order murders regularly. Criminal groups were combatting each other, sending whole gangs into the heavens. School students quite seriously answered the question “who do you want to be” by saying: bandits. In 2000 the country set a record for the number of murders and robberies.
7. Completely depressive moods reigned in society. According to sociological polls, in 1999 79% of the population had a sense of shame and chagrin for their own country.
8. In 2000 the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the country were 12.5 million dollars. There simply wasn’t any money in the country.
9. In 1997 the negative trend of natural losses of the population was created (an approximate average minus of half a million a year), which managed to be countered only in 2009.
10. The number of suicides reached peak values. In 2000 – 39 cases for every 100,000 of the population (now this indicator is around 13% – at the level of the US).
Putin in a literal sense dragged the country from the brink of a precipice because the scenario of its dismantlement was more than real. That is why the senior generation votes for Putin, but not because “they do not understand what happiness would come to the country without him”. The senior generation has a reference point. Go outside at 23:00. What do you see? The road is lit? Twenty years ago the street wasn’t lit up – entrances either. It seems to you that everything that is around was already here. This is not true.
And as thanks for saving the country, Putin receives spittle from young and impudent seedlings. And all because they are completely short-sighted and are not capable of making a comparative analysis. What is big is seen at a distance. Study the recent past of the country and all of you will understand. And yes. If you decide to “dump Putin”, you’ll have to step over my corpse, having pulled away a weapon from my stiffened hands.
Aleksandr Ilyutenko
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