俄羅斯經濟陷入泥潭 普京不是萬能的

PIKALEVO, Russia — The factory meeting room where the Russian leaderVladimir V. Putin browbeat one of Russia’s richest tycoons in front of cameras from state television has become a shrine, hallowed ground where Mr. Putin showed a path out of economic pain for ordinary people and calmed a spasm of worker unrest.

俄羅斯皮卡列沃——弗拉基米爾·V·普京(Vladimir V. Putin)曾在一家工廠的會議室裏，對着官方電視臺的攝像機恫嚇一名財富在俄羅斯排名前列的富豪。此後，這間會議室成了一處聖地，普京在這裏爲普通人指出了一條擺脫經濟陣痛的道路，平息了一系列工人騷亂。

“It all happened here. This is where he solved the future of our factory,” Sergey Lyakhov, a manager at the sprawling plant, said, proudly showing off the tidy third-floor conference room.

“所有事情都是在這裏發生的。在這裏，他解決了我們廠的前途問題，”在這家龐大的工廠擔任經理的謝爾蓋·利亞霍夫(Sergey Lyakhov)自豪地炫耀着這間位於三樓的整潔會議室。

But that was nearly seven years ago, when Mr. Putin, now president, was prime minister. Today, the economic troubles that Mr. Putin came here to make a big show of solving are back, only worse and involving far more intractable problems than just the “trivial greed” of tycoons that Mr. Putin blamed for Pikalevo’s tumult in 2009.

但那已是近七年前的事情了。現在是總統的普京，當時還是總理。如今，普京當年來這裏大張旗鼓地要解決的那些經濟困難又回來了，並且比當年更嚴重。2009年時，普京認爲巨頭們那種“不值一提的貪婪”是皮卡列沃的動盪的罪魁禍首。而如今的經濟困難涉及的問題，遠比那時更棘手。

Pikalevo, about three hours east of St. Petersburg, and the rest of Russia are now mired in the country’s longest recession since Mr. Putin came to power at the end of 1999, with the World bank warning last month that the nation’s poverty rate would increase this year to 14.2 percent of the population, “undoing nearly a decade’s worth of gains.”

現在，聖彼得堡以東約三小時車程處的皮卡列沃和俄羅斯其他地方均陷入了衰退。這是自普京1999年末掌權以來，俄羅斯經歷的最漫長的衰退。上月，世界銀行(World Bank)警告稱，俄羅斯今年的貧困率將升至該國人口的14.2%，“抵消了近十年的進步”。

Russia’s current crisis, though largely caused by market forces beyond the Kremlin’s control, notably a slump in the prices of oil and gas, has pushed Mr. Putin into a corner. After years of taking credit for a booming economy, which also had little to do with his actions, and casting himself as a can-do leader capable of untying the toughest economic and political knots, he faces a crisis that has exposed the stark limits of his power and prowess.

俄羅斯當前的危機主要是由不在克里姆林宮控制範圍內的市場力量，尤其是石油和天然氣價格大跌造成的。儘管如此，這場危機把普京逼進了角落裏。多年來，他一直把和他所採取的行動幾乎毫無關係的經濟繁榮歸爲自己的功勞，並把自己塑造成一位無所不能的領導人，能夠解決最困難的經濟和政治問題。而如今，他面臨的這場危機赤裸裸地暴露出了他的權力和能力的極限。

A recent rebound in oil prices has lifted hopes in the Kremlin that the worst of Russia’s economic storm has passed, but it has also highlighted just how much Mr. Putin’s fortunes depend on unpredictable and uncontrollable outside forces like the energy market or the economic sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States.

最近，石油價格反彈讓克里姆林宮燃起希望，以爲俄羅斯經濟風暴最糟糕的階段已經過去了，但這也突顯了普京的命運嚴重依賴於無法預測、無法控制的外部力量，如能源市場或歐洲和美國實行的經濟制裁。

Mr. Putin’s power, for example, does not touch the torrent of slurry, a muddy sludge used to make cement, that now flows uselessly into an overflowing storage pit. The sludge is a byproduct of alumina production at Pikalevo’s biggest industrial plant, and it used to feed production at an adjacent cement factory. But that factory, hammered by slumping demand as a result of Russia’s recession, has slashed production and takes only 20 percent or less of the brown muck it used to buy.

比如，普京的權力觸及不到洶涌如注的泥漿。如今，用來生產水泥的泥漿只能白白流入一個已經滿溢出來的蓄水坑。它們是皮卡列沃最大的工業工廠生產氧化鋁時的副產品，過去被旁邊一家水泥廠用作生產原料。但因爲經濟衰退導致需求下降，那家水泥廠大幅減產，對這種褐色泥漿的用量僅爲以前的20%甚至更少。

As leader of the world’s biggest country, a nuclear power intent on asserting itself on the world stage, Mr. Putin has far more pressing concerns than Pikalevo’s myriad troubles. But throughout his 16 years in power, whether as president or prime minister, Mr. Putin has presented an image of an omniscient and omnipresent leader interested in and capable of addressing his country’s most microscopic concerns.

俄羅斯是世界上最大的國家，也是一個一心想在世界舞臺上堅持自己主張的核國家。作爲其領導人，普京面臨的問題遠比皮卡列沃的各種困難更緊迫。但在當權的16年裏，不管是擔任總統還是總理，普京呈現出的形象都是一位無所不知、無處不在的領導人，關注自己領導的國家存在的最細微問題，並有能力去應對它們。

“He is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in Russia,” said Maxim Volkov, the chief executive of the Pikalevo factory visited in 2009 by Mr. Putin, the largest of three interdependent but, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, separately owned plants. “This is very good but also very bad.”

“他是俄羅斯發生的一切事情的最終責任人，”普京2009年在皮卡列沃視察的那家工廠的首席執行官馬克西姆·沃爾科夫(Maxim Volkov)說。“這一點非常好，也非常不好。”那家工廠是三家相互依存，但自蘇聯解體後便各歸其主的工廠中規模最大的。

While praising Mr. Putin as a “tough and efficient” leader who ended the drift and decay that characterized the rule of President Boris N. Yeltsin in the 1990s, Mr. Volkov said the concentration of power in the Kremlin had left the president “responsible for all the idiots who work under him” and for solving all the county’s quarrels and problems, no matter how small.

儘管稱讚普京是一位“強硬且高效”的領導人，終結了90年代鮑里斯·N·克利欽(Boris N. Yeltsin)以迷茫和衰落爲特徵的統治，但沃爾科夫稱，權力集中在克里姆林宮導致普京要“爲手下所有的蠢貨負責”，並且要負責解決全國所有的爭吵和問題，無論是多小的問題。

“The government simply cannot resolve every dispute in this country,” he said.

“政府根本無法解決這個國家的所有爭端，”他說。

For 16 years, however, the Kremlin, aided by hagiographic reports on television, has been telling and, to a large degree, convincing Russians that, in the case of their leader, one man could do just about anything and everything.

但16年來，在電視上聖徒列傳式的報道的幫助下，克里姆林宮一直告訴俄羅斯民衆，並在很大程度上讓他們相信，就他們的領袖而言，他幾乎有能力做任何事情，所有事情。

His visit to Pikalevo in 2009 helped construct this image. But the problem he solved then was relatively simple: The three separate private owners of a once-unified industrial combine could not agree on the price of the products they supplied to one another and which each needed to keep going. Starved of vital supplies, they halted production, leaving workers without work and Pikalevo’s 22,000 residents without heat and hot water. Angry residents blocked a nearby federal highway in protest.

那次2009年對皮卡列沃的視察幫助構建了這一形象。但他當時解決的問題相對簡單：一個曾經屬於一體的工業聯合企業分家後，三個相互獨立的私人業主無法就向彼此供貨的價格達成一致。而這些貨品又是他們繼續經營所必需的。必要供給的缺失帶來了停產，導致工人沒有工作，皮卡列沃的2.2萬名居民沒了供暖和熱水。憤怒的民衆堵住了附近的一條聯邦高速公路，以示抗議。

In just a few minutes, during a televised meeting in June 2009 with the owners, including Oleg V. Deripaska, a billionaire aluminum magnate who owns the biggest of the three factories, Mr. Putin put everything right. Describing the owners as “cockroaches,” he accused them of making “thousands of people hostages to your own ambitions, your nonprofessionalism and maybe simply your trivial greed; it is absolutely unacceptable.”

在2009年6月，普京與工廠的所有者召開了一次會議，包括三家工廠中最大的那家的老闆、身爲億萬富翁的鋁業大亨歐柏嘉(Oleg V. Deripaska)。電視臺對會議進行了轉播。會議期間，普京只用了幾分鐘時間便把一切都處理好了。他稱幾家工廠的老闆是“蟑螂”，譴責他們讓“成千上萬的人成了你們的野心、你們的不專業，或許完全就是你們那不值一提的貪婪的人質；這是絕對不能接受的。”

The owners, fearful of losing their assets, swiftly ended their quarrel. Behind the scenes, the Kremlin leaned on Gazprom, the state-controlled gas giant, to cut the price of energy to the Pikalevo plants and on state-owned banks to provide cheap credit.

害怕失去資產的工廠老闆迅速結束爭吵。在幕後，克里姆林宮分別向國有天然氣巨頭俄羅斯天然氣工業股份公司(Gazprom)和國有銀行施壓，要求前者降低面向皮卡列沃幾家工廠的能源供應價格，後者則爲那些工廠提供廉價貸款。

The factory at the center of those troubles, Mr. Deripaska’s alumina plant, is now pumping out its primary product, a chemical compound used in aluminum smelting, as well as hot water for the whole town and a tide of slurry for the adjacent cement factory that no longer wants it.

這些麻煩的中心是歐柏嘉的氧化鋁廠。如今，這家工廠正在不斷出產其主打產品，即熔鍊鋁時要用到的一種化合物，以及供應整個城鎮的熱水和供旁邊那家水泥廠使用的泥漿，但那家水泥廠不再想要這些如潮水般的泥漿了。

And this, in a nutshell, is the Kremlin’s current nightmare: With low global energy prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict crimping Russia’s prospects of recovery, the economy has hit a wall. It simply cannot compete with China, the United States or even the European nations that Russian state media constantly portray as fading has-beens. The easy and popular fixes the Kremlin used in the past to resuscitate the economy — or at least placate the public — have all been exhausted.

簡而言之，這便是克里姆林宮眼前的噩夢：在全球能源價格低迷，西方因烏克蘭衝突而實行的制裁導致俄羅斯復甦前景黯淡的情況下，經濟陷入了泥沼。它根本無法與中國、美國乃至被俄羅斯官方媒體一直稱作正在衰落的、風光不再的歐洲國家競爭。克里姆林宮過去用來重振經濟——或者說至少是用來安撫民衆——的那些簡單卻廣受歡迎的解決辦法，都已經用盡了。