As one would expect, Timothy Frye raises excellent questions. Although there are fewer strikes in Russia than one might expect, when the authorities appease striking workers, why hasn’t that encouraged workers elsewhere to follow suit? One answer is that in contrast to the typical experience in the advanced capitalist world—where strikes tend to happen when workers have some leverage, say, when there is increased demand for labor given tight labor markets—most labor protests in Russia take place out of desperation; for example, when wages go unpaid. Without redress, workers will escalate to try to gain media attention, perhaps on the local or regional level, something that private owners and political officials seek desperately to avoid. Most protests remain localized both because they respond to different conditions in firms and communities and their demands (and potential rewards) are given scant attention.
The absence of effective trade unions is a major reason why protests are not better coordinated: most in Russia are indeed “wildcat.” When protests do spread it is almost always a response to actions by the state that affect otherwise isolated individuals and groups as a single category. A simple increase in taxes for load-bearing trucks, for example, instantly united truck drivers from Dagestan to Chita in opposition.
Although protests can lead to carrots— “appeasement” is the correct term here—protesters themselves, especially ringleaders, can be met with sticks. Whereas the large FNPR labor federation, a “legacy” union left from the Communist period, has long been co-opted, new and alternative unions, often quite militant, are typically repressed. To return to the truckers’ example, their protests gained some concessions, but leaders were dealt with harshly, especially once their demands became overtly political.
Yet repression is not a sufficient explanation. The Belarus protests illustrate why that is so. Belarus under Lukashenko has been even more brutally autocratic than Putin’s Russia—and independent trade unions there have been driven even deeper underground. Yet workers in as many 80 enterprises and workplaces joined the demonstrations against Lukashenko’s clearly fraudulent reelection. Further, imagine the dilemma for the police and militia: it is one thing to be told to use your truncheon against college students said to be infected with Western ideals, but another to be ordered to beat workers in factory uniforms. Arguably, without Russia acting as a backstop, security force defections would likely have cascaded, leading Lukashenko to flee the country.
Frye is certainly correct in pointing to other factors than the fear of labor protest in explaining why Russia remains stuck in the middle-income trap. How one might gauge the relative weight of those factors is a challenging question. The central point I make, as Frye rightly points out, is that Russian labor makes a sizable but overlooked part of any such explanation.
A final point is worth mentioning. Even if, somehow, the Belarus scenario did play out in Russia, with workers joining liberal oppositionists to bring about a “Russia without Putin,” the labor dilemma would remain. Given Russia’s sizable working-class communities, a truly democratic Russia will be difficult to reconcile with the deep economic restructuring some liberal economists envision. Hence, despite the book’s title, the dilemma is Russia’s.
