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There's nothing flashy about Lyudinovo (pop. 47,000), whose name translates roughly as People's Town. The central square is a traffic island with a Soviet T34 tank on a pedestal, a World War II memorial. Next to it is a farmers' market, where babushkas from nearby villages with woolly hats and dodgy teeth sell homegrown carrots and potatoes for 25¢ per pound. But look closer, and it's clear that even Lyudinovo isn't frozen in time. A shopping emporium that opened a year ago sells South Korean refrigerators, French yogurt and fake Italian pumps. Several houses...
...biggest fallout to date has happened in cities that are wholly dependent on one big industry, especially steel or autos. In the Urals town of Magnitogorsk, a gigantic steelworks has placed 3,000 workers on forced leave. In Novolipetsk, to the east of Lyudinovo, thousands more have been furloughed since Nov. 14, when the steel factory idled two of its blast furnaces. Alexei Mordashov, one of Russia's best known oligarchs, has shelved an $8 billion investment program at his Severstal metals company that was scheduled for 2009-2011. The government now estimates that companies will lay off about...
Lyudinovo is no stranger to unemployment: it suffered a bad bout in the early 1990s, when several of the town's factories closed and 4,000 workers lost their jobs. But by this October, after a run of good years, the number of unemployed people had fallen to just 320. That number doubled in November, and for next year all bets are off. "This is just the beginning," worries editor Pronin...
Challenging the official line is still hazardous. On Nov. 6, the Moscow business newspaper Vedomosti carried an opinion piece by the Academy of Sciences' Gontmakher titled NOVOCHERKASSK - 2009. The headline was a reference to spontaneous strikes by workers in a Russian town in 1962 that ended in bloodshed when troops were called in and opened fire: at least 20 people were killed and three dozen wounded. In his article, Gontmakher drew some parallels between the social tensions back then and the deteriorating economy today. Within days, the newspaper received an official warning from the Kremlin's media watchdog...
Back in Lyudinovo, snow is falling heavily. Andrei Petrov, the biggest retailer in town, owns many of the stores, including the new emporium, and also runs a wholesale distribution business to supply them. Getting in to see him is hard. A security guard wants to know whether we are American spies. Petrov's deputy, Viktor Denisov, nervously locks his office door when he crosses the corridor to see his boss. Petrov is deliberately cagey about business prospects. Yes, an economic crisis is now raging, "but this is not the first time we've had one," he says. Indeed, back...