漫長經濟衰退毫無起色 普京時代走向沒落1

A few things in Yaroslav’s apartment still bear witness to the life he had: the well-fed orange cat, his daughter’s high chair in the kitchen and the oak laminate flooring he laid a year ago.

在雅羅斯拉夫(Yaroslav)的公寓裏，還有幾樣東西能夠證明他曾經擁有過的生活：一隻餵養得很好的橙色貓咪、廚房裏他女兒用過的高腳椅，以及他一年前鋪裝的橡木複合地板。

Everything else is gone. When the 35-year-old engineer lost his job at a Lada dealership in Togliatti last summer, money ran out quickly.

其他一切都消失了。這名35歲的工程師去年夏天失去了他在陶里亞蒂(Togliatti)一家拉達(Lada)經銷店的工作後，錢很快就用光了。

He sold the games console, then the TV. After his wife — pregnant with twins — left him in December, taking their two-year-old with her, he even got rid of the bed. “What’s left is the stuff the pawnshop won’t take,” he says, banging another bottle of cheap white wine on the windowsill. Peeling at shreds of wallpaper left from his unfinished renovation, he adds: “It feels like the 1990s again.”

雅羅斯拉夫賣掉了遊戲主機，然後是電視機。懷着一對雙胞胎的妻子帶着他們兩歲的女兒在12月離開他之後，他甚至把牀也脫手了。“剩下的是當鋪不要的東西，”他一邊說一邊用一瓶廉價的白酒敲打着窗臺。牆壁的翻新沒有完成，他把剩下的破碎的牆紙撕下來，補充道：“感覺又回到了上世紀90年代。”

In the grip of its longest recession in 20 years, Russians seem resigned to the loss of the growth and prosperity they had come to see as the hallmark of President Vladimir Putin’s rule. Although few are seeing their lives unravel as completely as Yaroslav, many fear a return of an era they had hoped to have left behind: the decade of recession, economic shocks and poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

深陷20年來最漫長經濟衰退的俄羅斯人似乎只好接受一個現實：他們曾經視爲弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)總統掌權標誌的增長和繁榮正在消失。儘管像雅羅斯拉夫這樣生活徹底分崩離析的人很少，但很多人擔心他們曾經希望已經遠離的一個時代正在捲土重來：1991年蘇聯解體後持續10年的衰退、經濟衝擊和貧困。

“Russians have come to highly appreciate the social wellbeing achieved since 2000, and therefore it will be extremely painful to let that go. Now that we’ve had two years of crisis there’s no prospect of growth, people [are] reminded of the 1990s,” says Tatyana Maleva, director of the Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Ranepa for short.

“俄羅斯人已變得非常珍視2000年以來實現的社會福利，因此要放棄它是極其痛苦的。在經歷了2年危機之後的今天，我們仍看不到增長的前景，這讓人們想起了上世紀90年代，”俄羅斯總統國民經濟和公共管理學院(RANEPA)社會分析和預測研究所(Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting)所長塔季揚娜•馬列娃(Tatyana Maleva)說。

“We are forced to acknowledge that the social consequences of this crisis will be like the 1990s because we are looking at an extended, lingering, grinding stagnation,” she says.

“我們不得不承認，這場危機的社會後果會和上世紀90年代一樣，因爲我們看到了漫長、揮之不去和沒完沒了的停滯，”她說。

Striking a bargain

與人民達成“交易”

Economic growth had slowed sharply even before nosediving crude oil prices and the impact of western sanctions, imposed over its role in the war in Ukraine, hit Russia in 2014. Even if the recession ends next year, growth is unlikely to be much more than flat after years of shrinking investment and falling household incomes.

即使在2014年原油價格開始暴跌、同時西方針對俄羅斯在烏克蘭戰爭中的角色而制裁俄羅斯之前，俄羅斯的經濟增速就已經大幅放緩。即使明年俄羅斯的衰退結束，在多年的投資縮水和家庭收入下降後，俄羅斯的經濟也不太可能顯著增長。

Most Russians believe that the worst of the economic hardship is still to come, according to the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM), a pollster frequently used by the Kremlin, in a sign that despite Mr Putin’s stubbornly high popularity ratings, the trust in his ability to deliver a better future is gone.

根據克里姆林宮經常使用的民調機構俄羅斯社會輿論民調中心(VCIOM)的調查，大多數俄羅斯人相信，經濟困境最艱難的階段尚未到來。這個跡象表明，儘管普京的民意支持率居高不下，但俄羅斯人對他有能力帶來更美好未來的信任已經不復存在。

Mr Putin first became president on New Year’s Eve 1999, the moment a steep and extended climb in oil prices gathered pace. It would continue for 14 years with only a brief interruption during the global crisis of 2008-09.

普京初次當上總統是在1999年新年前夕，適逢油價開啓一段大幅且持續的攀升。除了在2008-09年全球金融危機期間短暫中斷以外，這個過程持續了14年。

In what many observers call Mr Putin’s bargain with the Russian people, the country put up with growing restrictions on political freedoms gained after the collapse of the Soviet Union in exchange for economic wellbeing and stability. Growth during the Putin era lifted large parts of society out of poverty, helped Russians become healthier and live longer, and created a taste for the spoils of middle-class life such as overseas travel.

用很多觀察家的話來說，普京和俄羅斯民衆達成了一筆“交易”：全國人民忍受蘇聯解體後獲得的政治自由逐漸受到限制，以換取經濟福祉和穩定。普京時代的增長讓俄羅斯社會中的許多人羣擺脫了貧困，幫助俄羅斯人變得更健康，壽命更長，還讓俄羅斯人產生了對中產階級享受的嗜好，比如境外旅遊。

By 2014, Russia’s per capita gross domestic product, based on purchasing power parity, had more than doubled compared with 2000. Child mortality had halved, life expectancy increased by 12 per cent and the proportion of young people enrolled in tertiary education soared from half to three-quarters.

到2014年，按購買力平價(PPP)計算，俄羅斯人均國內生產總值(GDP)相比2000年增加了一倍以上。兒童死亡率減半，國民預期壽命提高了12%，接受高等教育的年輕人的比例從一半激增至四分之三。

So far, only a small part of these social gains, widely seen by Russian society as Mr Putin’s main achievements, has been undone. “Indicators such as income levels and poverty levels [suggest] we have been thrown back by six years — to where we were at the peak of the last economic crisis in 2009,” says Ms Maleva. “Wages dropped by 10 per cent last year rather than by three times, as they did in the 1990s.”

俄羅斯社會廣泛將這些社會收益視爲普京的主要成就。迄今這些福利中只有一小部分消失了。“收入水平和貧困水平等指標（表明）我們倒退了6年，回到了2009年上一場經濟危機的頂峯時期，”馬列娃表示，“去年薪資水平下跌了10%，而上世紀90年代薪資下降到了那之前的三分之一，”

Many people, however, feel that they are taking a much larger step back: a perception fuelled by the drawn-out nature of the current crisis. Although 2015 was the first full year of economic contraction, incomes started falling the year before and continue to do so. In February, real household income decreased by 7 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier, the fastest drop since December 2014.

然而，許多人感覺他們倒退的步子比這大得多：當前這場曠日持久的危機加強了這種認知。儘管2015年是俄羅斯首次出現全年經濟收縮，但人們的收入在之前一年就開始下滑，並且至今仍在下滑。今年2月，俄羅斯家庭實際收入比去年同期下降7%，是自2014年12月以來最大的同比跌幅。

“The increase in incomes had given people the option to get better healthcare, better education, some foreign travel, on their own expenditure,” says Birgit Hansl, the World Bank’s lead economist for Russia. “This allowance for some extras was the real benefit of transformation but this extended slide in incomes increases people’s reliance on legacy infrastructure again, and they realise how bad this legacy infrastructure still is.”

“收入增加曾經讓人們可以選擇自費獲得更好的醫療服務、更好的教育，還有一些國外旅行，”世界銀行(World Bank)首席俄羅斯經濟學家比吉特•漢斯爾(Birgit Hansl)表示，“這種可以投入額外享受的‘津貼’是改革的真正效益，但是此輪收入長期下滑再次加大了人們對遺留基礎設施的依賴，而他們意識到，這些遺留下來的基礎設施仍然非常糟糕。”

While Russians paid three-quarters of private health costs out of their own pockets in 2000, that proportion had risen to more than 90 per cent by 2014.

2000年，有四分之三的個人醫療費用是俄羅斯人自掏腰包買單的，而到2014年，這個比例上升到了90%以上。

“People had been avoiding public hospitals like the plague.” says Ms Hansl. “Now that they have to go back there to save money, they may feel like they’re going back to the 1990s.”

“人們曾經像躲避瘟疫般躲避公立醫院，”漢斯爾表示，“如今，爲了省錢，他們不得不回到那裏，他們可能感覺自己回到了上世紀90年代。”

Many try not to. According to data collected by Russian newspaper RBC, 44 per cent of urban middle-class families spend as much on healthcare as they used to, a larger percentage than on any other item. Spending cuts on food, clothing and alcohol by far outstrip those on medicine.

很多人試圖不這麼做。根據俄羅斯報紙RBC收集的數據，44%的俄羅斯城市中產階級家庭的醫療開銷與過去大致相同，這一比例超過其他任何支出。在食品、服裝和烈酒方面的支出削減幅度遠遠超過藥品。

To avoid state hospitals and still stay within their budgets, Muscovites have become savvy. “Patients have started avoiding expensive procedures such as arthroplasty [joint surgery],” says Muslim Muslimov, a doctor and owner of Clinic No 1, a midsize private clinic in Moscow. “They are also getting second opinions from other doctors more often. If in the past, five out of 10 patients who came for a consultation would get some kind of treatment afterwards, now it’s only two or three.”

爲了既躲避公立醫院又守住自己的預算，莫斯科人變得精明起來。“患者開始迴避昂貴的手術，例如關節置換，”莫斯科中型私立診所Clinic No 1老闆、穆斯利姆•穆斯利莫夫(Muslim Muslimov)醫生表示，“他們還更多地向其他醫生徵求第二意見。過去，在10名來這裏諮詢的患者中，有5名會在諮詢後接受某種治療，如今只有2、3人這麼做。”