As Russia replayed its glorious WWII past in Red Square, a darker history repeated itself just miles away.
“The Russian Prime Minister has called for tougher safety measures after one of the country’s worst mine accidents in a generation” reads the lead paragraph of a BBC article entitled “Russia’s Mine Safety Woes.
The article appears to be about this weekend’s mine disaster in which over 50 miners died (and many more presumed dead, including 18 rescue workers) near Moscow. Except it is from 2007, when a similar explosion killed over 100 in the very same town of Kemerevo.
In the wake of the Ulyanovskaya mine disaster, Putin’s government had pledged to overhaul the notoriously lax safety standards. Yet three years on, the same tragedy repeated itself.
Russia and especially Ukraine had terrible mine safety records following 1991 due to economic collapse and mismanagement. This was further exacerbated by mine privatisation, which loosened regulations on mine owners.
But over a decade into Putin’s term, it is no longer even remotely acceptable to blame such catastrophes on the 1990s.
The truth is that a government whose chief (and perhaps only) selling point was law and order and ‘cleaning up the mess’ has completely failed to deliver on some of the public’s most pressing priorities: Mine safety, fire safety, corruption and police force reform. And despite highfalutin talk, the transition to a professional army is also yet to take place.
At the same time, despite curtailing commercial freedom, it has done nothing to curtail the nefarious influence of commerce on safety and corruption issues. Permits and inspectors are still routinely bought, privatisation of the mines has not been reviewed, and exploitation of workers remains rife.
For example, as Ellen Barry reports;
Miners, on Internet forums and in interviews with Russian newspapers, offered a more prosaic explanation: that by covering methane sensors with wet rags or quilted work coats, they could continue working, increasing production — and their potential earnings — even as methane levels crept up.
And for all of Putin’s authoritarianism, the old Russian way of doing things: laxity, procrastination, corruption, laziness, fatalistic disregard for life and safety, and relying on avos’ – leaving things to chance – continues unabated.
The worst of all possible worlds.
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