There is no sadder story in the world than fairy tales about travel and ticket

A simple question: who should build pedestrian crossings over the railway? The answer seems obvious – the railroad.

However, this is obvious to everyone, except for the head of Russian Railways, Oleg Belozerov. In his opinion, the railway can, from the generosity of the soul, provide windows in motion at its own expense and shift communications in the withdrawal zone for the construction of an underground tunnel under the tracks or an open bridge over the contact network. And the city should build, since pedestrian crossings are usually in cities.

In a mutual butting for money, they killed a lot of people while crawling under the cars between the wheelsets. There were many similar issues around the railway in Soviet times.

Twenty years ago, the strengthened new elite of the country completed the process of wild privatization of the nineties in a compromise version of very strange forms of ownership. The precedent was the model of the leader of the post-Soviet transformation, Anatoly Chubais, in the form of a Russian joint-stock company for the development of the Unified Energy System.

The RAO format was planned to be cloned for forests, railways and highways. The goal of harnessing the gigantic funds from public investment and free-flying tariffs dominated. In particular, it was supposed to make all roads in Russia toll.

Separately, plans for the development of the Russian Post were swarming. Napoleonic plans were corrected by the RAO High-Speed ​​Lines scam, which hardly anyone will remember today. The war for the Soviet legacy was accompanied by a search for ownership formats, fierce competition and a series of mysterious deaths. In particular, the future head of Russian highways died in an accident on the Nevsky Express. It was a competitor of “Sapsan”.

As a result of complex processes, the Russian elite settled on such compromise forms of ownership that allow any mediation and remove the holding’s financial processes from the control of the Accounts Chamber.

Nominally state property and strategic facilities, one can raise the issue of protection by the National Guard against terrorism.

By this historical moment, the full cycle of transformation of the Soviet mass consciousness was completed. Chubais created the basis for the property transformation of large property. It was he who ruled out attempts to limit the growth of tariffs and introduced the practice of using citizens’ payments for investment in infrastructure without giving the payers the right to own property.

Today, the conventional position sounds quite natural: if you want the development of infrastructure, put up with an increase in tariffs. If you want to keep tariffs down, give us budget money.

In the struggle for the Soviet legacy, the history of Russian Railways looks relatively humane. Now there are even more questions for Russian Railways than there were in Soviet times for the Ministry of Railways. Why don’t fish from the Far East reach Moscow? Why is coal not exported from Khakassia? When will saltpeter and metal be exported from Kuzbass? Is it possible to use the empty premises of the clogged stations of the Kuban to accommodate passengers? When will we return to the Northern Latitudinal Movement? When will the Lastochka go between Novosibirsk and Tomsk? The region badly needs a mobile workforce.

At the 542nd plenary meeting of the Federation Council on March 29, the issue “On the prospects for the development of railway transport” was discussed in the format of a government hour. Oleg Belozyorov, Director General – Chairman of the Board of JSC Russian Railways, answered the senators’ questions.

Its main goal was not to answer questions at all, but to present the successes of Russian Railways.

Such events as part of the plenary meeting of the Federation Council begin with the demonstration of a promotional video to the glory of corporate governance and are accompanied by an exhibition in the foyer around the plenary hall. It’s a tradition, you can’t go back.

Oleg Belozerov spoke about the growth in cargo and passenger traffic. He assured that the passenger is the main thing for Russian Railways. When landing, you do not need to present a travel document, a passport is enough. He thanked the legislators for exempting food from VAT.

Following the results of the parliamentary event, the Chairman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, stated that the dialogue had taken place.

The speaker carried out the processing of the chamber in several stages. First, he chose a policy of communicating with senators in an offensive manner. I started the day before with a warm-up at a meeting of the Federation Council committee on economic policy. The chairman of the committee, Andrey Kutepov, was unpleasantly surprised – in fact, we should give you instructions, and I have already written a page of your instructions. In response to each question of the senators, the head of Russian Railways fired his own questions. Moreover, in such formulations, as if the senators personally stole containers, wagons and sleepers with rails into the private property of some irresponsible intermediaries. And Russian Railways has nothing to do with it, its tariffs are fixed, the containers for fish are aliens and the share of Russian Railways in transportation is negligible.

The senators listened and clearly did not believe, but they did not get involved in disputes.

The issue of dynamic pricing was not raised; even before the covid, the head of the FAS himself suffered for it.

There is a classic question that has been eternal since Soviet times, which escalated during the epidemic of the liquidation of commuter trains in the country. The question sounds like this: why is transportation by rail much more expensive than road transport, although the cost is quite the opposite?

It is useless to listen to RZD reports without an answer to this question. If Russian Railways cannot decide, then it is necessary to change the form of ownership and the format of management. But even this is useless, the result is summarized by the entire post-Soviet system with a deficit of sovereignty.

In Russia, the situation is much better than other countries who expected to live at the expense of Russia. And definitely better than expected. Therefore, I categorically do not support placing all the blame on a specific person, Chubais or Belozerov.

Don’t shoot the pianist, he plays the best he can. Russian Railways can be understood, the company wants money for investments, but does not want to lose property under concessions.

Senator Ivan Abramov literally demanded to decide which development path RZD would choose – its own investment programs or concessions. Belozerov answered evasively.

Having warmed up at the committee, the head of Russian Railways turned down the offensive intensity for the plenary session. However, the senators did not give up, it began with the same thing – pedestrian crossings. The problem of building pedestrian overpasses across the railway was raised outside the RZD report by Irek Yalalov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy.

In the warm-up mode (senators’ statements on topical issues), Senator Yalalov presented brief information on the problem.

Over the past ten years, more than 12,000 people have died in Russia and 20,000 have been injured in violation of the rules for crossing railways. Now, together with the Ministry of Transport and Russian Railways, deputies of the State Duma are preparing a bill for the delimitation of powers. It does not introduce new responsibilities.

Currently, regions and municipalities have proposed to build 147 pedestrian bridges and tunnels, 120 of which are for residents to pass through the railway infrastructure from one part of the settlement to another.

From the perspective of the lack of duties, the statement of Senator Yalalov was agreed with Russian Railways and reflected the position of Belozerov.

The strategic issue of removing the railway from dense urban development in modern Russia is under embargo. In the spatial development of the country, the tasks of regional depression of sparsely populated territories and an increase in fatal injuries in densely populated areas are visible.

For two days of debating walking in a circle, I got a little tired of the subject of Russian Railways. If not for the courage of individual senators, there would be nothing to write. The current moment is similar to the nineties, radically different from them in terms of rhetoric, composition of players and stakes in the game. Those admitted to the game are in a hurry to declare their successes in order to strengthen the achieved positions, but at the same time they try not to frighten their expectations from changes.

At the next, 543rd meeting of the Federation Council on April 12, two government hours are expected – the planned one of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov and the postponed head of Sberbank German Gref.

The last parliamentarian who spoke about the need for dechubaization, that is, to remove intermediaries, was deputy Ivan Grachev. He was removed from the post of chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy in the sixth convocation. Ivan Grachev built an energy dialogue with the EU countries and thus actively interfered with Europe’s preparations for the “after Merkel” format. After deputy Grachev, metastases of the problems he identified pop up in the most unexpected places like boils. In Europe, there is a collapse of alternative renewable energy. In Russia, the gasification program has broken down on intermediaries in low-pressure networks. The same problem in electrical networks and the system of hydraulic structures.

The commonality of heterogeneous topics is in the uncontrollable growth of costs. There are too many weak links, and it is impossible to fill them with money. We need cardinal managerial decisions, and for them the restructuring of mass consciousness. This is not about Putin or Mishustin, the country is not ready. Not mature.

An example of a belated attempt to simulate the fight against the consequences took place at the same 542nd meeting of the Federation Council.

A statement was adopted in connection with the facts of violation of the rights of believers in Ukraine.

The statement is not too long, I will quote the text in full:

“The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation strongly condemns the gross violation of the rights of believers in Ukraine, which are the result of the policy of religious intolerance pursued by the Kyiv regime.

The Ukrainian authorities are actually trying to impose on the people of Ukraine as the official church a near-political structure created with the support of the West, calling itself the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”. At the same time, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being persecuted: its churches are seized, communities are illegally liquidated, clergy are deprived of citizenship and repressed. The recent decision of the Ukrainian authorities to deprive the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of one of its main shrines, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, has become egregious.

A new outrageous act was the desecration of the sacred book for Muslims around the world – the Koran. This act of vandalism is a direct consequence of the policy of discrimination pursued by official Kiev against representatives of ethnic and religious communities living in Ukraine.

Such a policy of the Ukrainian authorities grossly violates the right of every person to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, guaranteed by the fundamental international documents of the United Nations: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or beliefs.

What is happening causes anger and rejection among all citizens of the Russian Federation.

The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation calls on the parliaments of foreign states, international parliamentary organizations to take a principled position and demand that official Kiev return Ukraine to comply with its international obligations, stop the policy of discrimination against believers and desecration of religious shrines.

It’s written in the application.

And here’s what’s interesting. The 542nd meeting of the Federation Council began with a speech by the Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Mabel Chinomona.

The view from the Senate of Zimbabwe completely overturns ideas about Russia, which does not separate from the Soviet Union and forms a single positive whole with it with a unique historical role in the struggle for peace on Earth. The speech ended with a standing ovation from the Russian senators for the Zimbabwean colleague.

Matvienko said, here is the performance of real friends who do not need to explain anything. They understand everything. This opportunity must be taken advantage of.

There was another moment of truth in our parliament, when it is not shameful to show one’s true face. At the events of the chambers of the Federal Assembly, gratitude to Russia can be heard from a variety of sources.

Lev Moskovkin.

Photo by Olga Davydova