On a recent day, only one of six kilns at the cement plant was operating. Managers at the plant, owned by a Russian building materials group called Eurocement, declined to be interviewed. Mr. Volkov, who runs the alumina plant, said the cement factory’s antiquated equipment and plummeting demand for its products left it no hope of recovery.

“There is no solution,” he said. “Even if they get their materials for free, they still could not compete.”

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 to placate the public — have all been exhausted.

There are few signs, however, that Russians will take to the streets in protest or flock to the banner of a divided and feeble opposition. Svetlana Antropova, a local trade union leader who helped organize the highway blockade in 2009, cursed what she called the “torture” inflicted on Pikalevo workers, but she said she saw no point in street protests and has instead filed a raft of lawsuits over alleged violations of the labor code. She also quit Mr. Putin’s political party, United Russia.

She said she had received a call recently from a trade union colleague in Moscow who asked about setting up a Pikalevo branch of Yabloko, a pro-Western liberal party critical of the Kremlin. She said she told him not to bother even trying.

Asked who is at fault for Russia’s economic troubles, she shrugged and said: “The world market? The Chinese? The Europeans? Frankly, I don’t know.” All she knows for sure, she said, is that ordinary people are suffering.