Because of my work, I am obliged to read closely, watch attentively and listen carefully whenever Russian politicians and officials talk about the economy.

Lately, after working my way through the government’s budget forecast stretching all the way to 2042, listening to Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina explain a modest 50-basis-point cut to the key interest rate and watching President Vladimir Putin’s annual call-in show, I was struck by a profound sense of déjà vu.

I have seen this before. I heard these words, these explanations, in the second half of the 1980s. The question now is not whether the parallels are real — they clearly are — but whether the story will end the same way, or whether Russia is headed for a different kind of finale.

I approached Putin’s “Direct Line” broadcast with genuine curiosity. For years, the president has opened public appearances by boasting of GDP growth above 4%.

But this year, GDP growth through the third quarter amounted to just 0.6%, and even that was driven almost entirely by state-funded sectors, above all defense.

Putin found a way around the problem.

“GDP growth is 1%,” he conceded. But then came the pivot: if one looks at the past three years as a whole, he argued, total growth comes to 9.7% compared with just 3.1% in the Eurozone.

I could not help recalling the late Soviet habit of comparing contemporary economic performance with 1913.

No matter how empty the shelves or how long the lines, official statistics invariably proved that citizens were living better and happier lives than ever before. Few believed that then, and few believe it now.

Today, many Russians, including economists, distrust official inflation figures, but the technique has evolved.

Instead of comparing the present with the pre-sanctions past, the authorities now add together several years of data beginning in 2023, when what might be called “military Keynesianism” took hold.

With enough creative arithmetic, even an economy sliding steadily downward can be made to look respectable for quite some........

© The Moscow Times