Why mobilization?

Opinion article

We are led to believe that the mobilization, with an initial recruitment of 300,000 men only, is for military purposes, but this does not appear to be the case. The main aim is purely economic.

Evacuation Time

If the mobilization had military goals, it would have been carried out in March-April 2022, when it became obvious: the blitzkrieg doctrine had collapsed and a protracted war with Ukraine, with many human casualties and losses, was to come. That is when it should have been carried out, not in a rush and roundup fashion, but calmly, by training and equipping the mobilized, providing them with everything they needed, rather than throwing unprepared people to the perilous front line. Ukraine, for example, immediately declared mobilization and began planned training of military personnel adequate to the new and latest armaments – in England, Poland, the USA and other countries. All the experts unanimously assess the current mobilization campaign as practically useless and ineffective from the military point of view, completely unsupported materially and organizationally, and in some ways even irrational and insane.

The effect of sanctions

The effect of the imposed and increasing economic sanctions, as it was announced, does not come instantly. It is only by autumn that these negative effects have become tangible and noticeable – even from a bunker and through the rose- colored glasses of state TV propaganda:

• Prices have gone up
• The range and quality of many food and especially non-food products and services has sharply declined
• The withdrawal of many businesses has created a real threat of unemployment
• Real incomes of the population are falling and the demand for goods and services, especially expensive ones (cars, housing, foreign tourism, etc.) is decreasing

Rates of GDP and real income decline

For Russia with its anti-human state structure at all times and crises it is characterized by the rate of decline in real incomes of the population, faster than the

Rate of GDP decline: It was so at the junction of 80-90s, in the crisis of 2008, crisis of 2012-14, in the pandemic and now. At the same time, the gap in rates is staggering: in 2022 GDP will decline by 0.7-1.0%, while incomes of the population will decrease by 12-15%, i.e. by an order of magnitude more.

If a normal market economy is characterized by the “Kennedy loop” and outpacing inflation in wages, the domestic economy is steadily lagging in inflation of wages and incomes: prices for goods and services are growing much faster than wages, pensions and other payments.

Mobilization as containment and elimination of unemployment and the unemployed

Mobilization and the panic emigration closely related to it, external (abroad) and internal (transition to an illegal existence) touched different segments of the population. The 300 thousand mobilized were primarily middle-class young people and a little lower, with varying degrees of qualification: office plankton, services, catering and trade, small businesses. The emigration (100 thousand in spring and half a million after September 21) is upper middle class and all rich, mostly highly qualified people. Neither mobilization, nor emigration includes a huge army (4-6 million people) of those who can’t work and don’t like to work: security officers and security guards. They will be the last to be mobilized. They will be the last to dare to emigrate and underground existence. In reality, of course, they are unemployed, that is, they are not of any interest on the labor market, but they are reliably protected both financially and organizationally. Moreover, they are in possession of arms and can therefore be useful at the front, and nobody needs that. Both victory in this war and defeat are dangerous for the political regime – only endless continuation of the war is safe, and if this war ends somehow, another war will begin: with Kazakhstan, Belarus, Baltic states, NATO, China, or even with Antarctic penguins – with anyone, as long as it is a war. Both mobilization and emigration are extremely effective means of combating unemployment and the unemployed: the financial costs are minimal, while the expenditure of human material is maximal. This is even more effective than the Auschwitz crematoria or the Gulag camps, which must be built and guarded, somehow fed and paid for the “labor” of convoy and guard: virtually no expenses for the maintenance and protection of the mobilized, the equipment – at their own expense (uniforms, ammunition, all kinds of devices, kits and gadgets people buy themselves for about 200 thousand rubles, that is the amount of lump sum benefits for families of mobilized). Then all these things like warm socks, thermal underwear, uniforms, bulletproof vests, mine-proof helmets, night vision goggles, heat meters and so on are taken off the killed and wounded, rapidly repaired and given back to the newly mobilized. As to payments to families of the lost, we have already gone through this in 1941-45: instead of funerals there will be received notices. “Disappeared without a trace” which releases the state from unnecessary charges on widows and orphans. Since it is mainly young people who are mobilized, the supply of workers in the labor market will be minimized for decades to come. Of course, their pension contributions to the Pension Fund are small, but they become a legal prey and trophy of the state.

Unemployment and education

Crisis and unemployment is a golden time for education and training/retraining – in the civilized world: people, having lost their jobs, learn new professions and occupations, often radically changing their working life. This is a particularly popular time for various and numerous business incubators, where not only new professions or entrepreneurial skills are acquired, but also new jobs are created. In Russia, with its very strange “market” economy, crisis and unemployment are a powerful blow to the fragile and rickety system of vocational education and training, especially in the context of mobilization: it started when recruitment and the beginning of the school year in universities and colleges have already passed. Teachers and educators are easy prey for the military. The gaps left by mobilization and emigration are filled by the unemployed, of course, with deteriorating qualifications, but at least the army of the unemployed is not growing under the pressure of sanctions and the economic crisis. In addition, the undeclared war and the sanctions response to it have hit university science catastrophically, which has been isolated, much more severely than economic or cultural isolation. It quickly became clear that the Bologna process is not for us, and therefore, university science becomes an unnecessary redundancy, while industry and academic science were defeated earlier. The level of state budgeting of science in Russia has fallen to the level of the most underdeveloped African countries, and there is almost no other budgeting in the country.

Unemployment and deflation

The global experience of economic crises and unemployment teaches: these phenomena are inevitably associated with deflation, a fall in consumer market prices: this, in fact, is the most reliable means of stimulating demand. In Russia with its ruthless economy deflation is not even talked about and not dreamed of, especially since there appeared a means not less powerful than deflation

• Mobilization and emigration associated with it: people are ready to pay any money not to die in Ukraine, credit rates are growing like yeast, industry works not to meet the mass demand, but for military orders: there are no preconditions for price decline.

Unemployment and crime

Not everyone will return from the war. Accustomed and accustomed to looting and violence, they will return with this experience, embittered, embittered, having lost their labour skills and qualifications – not to their jobs, but to their ashes. Russia will face a tsunami of crimes, mostly property crimes: theft, robbery and banditry. Ordinary people who are used to such films as Mesto Vremeny Noi and Liquidation (they have no other, not film memory) will be shocked by the scope of the approaching crimes. But, what is even worse, the police, who are not prepared for this, will be shocked. And mobilization and emigration will go on and on: the state considers it possible to mobilize 30 million people, internal and external emigration will be not less.