Russia’s Authoritarianism as Nigerian Railways

In the week of the Icelandic ash I found myself stuck in St. Petersburg. Being a volcano exile in Russia proved to be an enlightening experience—my local Russian contacts were friendly, but little capable of dealing with the extraordinary situation. And no wonder—their transportation system was pure hell. When I figured out that I could fly from St. Petersburg to Sofia via Moscow, I was shocked to learn that in the era of electronic air-ticketing it was impossible to get my Moscow-Sofia ticket at the airport in St. Petersburg—I had to purchase it at the Sheremetjevo airport in Moscow, with the risk of missing the only connection that could bring me home.

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What was even more surprising was that Russians themselves were not scandalized by the unfriendliness and inefficiency of their transportation system. They seemed rather used to it. Here came my enlightenment—it struck me that if we can understand why Russians were not outraged, why they do nothing to change the existing rules of transportation, which make them waste their time in senseless queues, we can gain insight into the sources of the stability of Putin’s regime.

Almost 40 years ago the economist Albert Hirschman (one of my intellectual heroes) in his little and brilliant book Exit, Voice and Loyalty explained why Nigerian railways had performed so poorly in the face of competition from trucks and buses. In his interpretation,

The presence of a ready alternative to rail transport makes it less, rather than more, likely that the weaknesses of the railways will be fought rather than indulged. With truck and bus transportation available, a deterioration in the truck service is not so serious a matter as if the railways held a monopoly for long distance transport­—it can be lived with for a long time without arousing strong public pressures for . . . reforms in administration and management that are required. This may be the reason public enterprise has strangely been at its weakest in sectors such as transport and education where it is a subject of competition: instead of stimulating improved performance, the presence of ready and satisfactory substitutes for the services public enterprise offers merely deprives it of a precious feedback mechanism that operates at its best when the customers are securely locked in. For the management of the public enterprise, always fairly confident that it will not be let down by the national treasury, may be less sensitive to the loss of revenue due to the switch of customers to a competing mode than to the protests of an aroused public that has a vital stake in the service, has no alternative, and will therefore “raise hell.”

Hirschman’s explanation for why Nigerian railways had performed so poorly in the face of competition from trucks and buses made me understand the failure of reforms and the resulting loss of reform spirit in Russia. Paradoxically, it is the opening of the borders and the opportunity to live and work abroad that has led to the decline of political reformism.

People who are most concerned about the decline of the quality of governance in Russia are the ones who are most ready to leave the country. For them, changing the country in which they live is easier than reforming it. Why try to turn Russia into Germany, when firstly there is no guarantee that a lifetime is enough for that mission, and moreover, you can simply move to work in Germany. The opinion polls demonstrate that Russia’s middle class prefers to work abroad and to come to Russia during the holidays to see their friends and relatives.

Comparing the outburst of reformist energy in the 1980s with the lack of such energy now makes me believe that while it was the sealing of the borders that destroyed Soviet communism, it is the openness of its borders that helps the new Russian authoritarianism to survive. The Soviet system locked its citizens in—changing the system was the only way to change your life. Today’s Russia very much resembles the Nigerian railways—it will remain inefficient as long as there is enough oil money to compensate for the inefficiency. And the major reason why people there do not protest is not fear, it is the fact that the people who cared most have already left the country or have decided to do that in the near future, so there is no critical mass of people demanding change.