NYT: Darkness on the Edge of Monotowns

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=469650&f=28&sub=Contributor&p=4

According to the World Bank, this year the number of Russians below the poverty level has grown by 7.5 million to 24.6 million, or 17 percent of the population. An additional 21 percent, or almost 30 million, have incomes less than 50 percent over the poverty level. Together, that's 4 out of 10 Russians. The Federation of Independent Trade Unions predicts that up to 400,000 more Russians may become unemployed in the next three months, while the World Bank projects that the unemployment rate there will reach as high as 13 percent by the end of the year.

There may, in fact, be nothing that can be done to prevent these ticking time bombs from exploding. And as the Iranian protests recently proved, in an age of cellphone cameras and the Internet, one demonstration in one monotown could ignite a wave of nationwide protests that Russia's news media could not cover up, its riot police could not properly contain and its government may not be able to survive.

Certainly, this crisis sends a message of utmost urgency to a country still groggy from the oil-boom intoxication of the past eight years: go back to the decentralization and democratization reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s - or face the political, economic and social calamity of the monotowns on a national scale.

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