16.03.2019, Moscow.
Increasing the retirement age has not only become political suicide of the Russian authorities, but it has also endangered national stability and security, concluded the participants of a roundtable discussion “The pension reform and the new perestroika,” which took place at the Moscow Pedagogical State University (MPSU) on March 14, a correspondent of the Rossa Primavera News Agency reports.
The discussion of the pension reform gathered members of social organizations, leaders of patriotic clubs, MPSU students and professors, and simply concerned citizens. The event was part of an all-Russian marathon for the discussion of the pension reform organized by the Essence of Time movement.
The roundtable discussion placed special focus on “the new perestroika” and its relation to the political and economic processes that took place in the USSR in 1985-1991, when disastrous decisions were deliberately made under the guise of benevolent slogans.
“If we compare the policy of the Russian authorities today with the perestroika period, we will clearly see that the pension reform is similar to some of Mikhail Gorbachev’s initiatives such as combating privileges and the anti-alcohol campaign, which had catastrophic consequences for the budget of the Soviet Union, or the so called Co-operation Act, which totally disorganized the national economy,” one of the participants said at the roundtable discussion.
The participants also noted that the government’s arguments in support of the pension reform do not stand up to open criticism. The adoption of this act did not only result in an unprecedented drop in current authorities’ polls, but it also undermined the public’s faith in the state, thus paving the way to the destabilization of the country.
Already at the phase of discussion, Russian society reacted very negatively to the initiative of increasing the retirement age. Over one million signatures against this act were collected over a short time; and on September 25, 2018, the Essence of Time movement submitted the collected signatures to the Presidential Executive Office.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
