Zlenko+Alexander

Poverty in Russia

The richest slice of Russian society has doubled its wealth in the past 20 years, while almost two-thirds of the population is no better off and the poor are barely half as wealthy as they were when the Soviet Union fell, according to researchers. Experts at Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE) found that the purchasing power of the average Russian has grown by 45% since the early 1990s, but income disparity is widening by the year. The report reinforces a widely held view that oligarchs got rich quick by snapping up the country's choicest assets in the turbulent post-Soviet period. Yevgeny Yasin, scientific director of HSE and a former economics minister, said: "The principal issue for Russia's economy and society today is the level of inequality. Only the best-off 20% of the population is successfully participating in the rise in prosperity which became possible as the result of creating a market economy." But most Russians can only stare in envy at the super-wealthy with their Bentleys and dachas. According to the report, income inequality between the mid-1980s and the mid-2000s has increased eight times more than in Hungary, and five times more than in the Czech Republic.

The huge gap between rich and poor "largely negates the economic and social achievements of recent years," the HSE report said Yasin added that the study indicated there were "two Russians". The wealthiest fifth of the population received a pay cheque equivalent to 198% of its value in 1991, while the poorest fifth made only 55% in real terms. In total, 60% of the population has the same real income or less than the average 20 years ago. The number of impoverished people in Russia has increased by 2.3 million and made up 22.9 million in one year, the Russian Federal Statistics Agency said. Many experts believe that official statistics does not reflect the real state of affairs and is very often undervalued. Therefore, it means that the number of the poor in the country grows much faster. According to official statistics, an impoverished individual is a person, whose income is lower than the living wage. The level of the living wage is calculated by the state. This term virtually designates the limit enough for real physical survival. The number of people living close to this point has increased in Russia from 20.6 million in the first quarter of 2010 to 22.9 million in 2011. This is 16.1% of the entire population of the country. It is worthy of note that a year ago, the Russian Federal Statistics Agency was saying that the number of the poor in the country was decreasing. The cost of living in Russia raised by 17%, which automatically increased the number of poor people. In the first quarter of the current year, the cost of living made up 6,437 rubles ($230). The inflation rate was quite high, whereas salaries in many regions of the country did not return to the pre-crisis level. media type="youtube" key="Kzgsvtjznc8" height="315" width="560" align="center"

Russia has suffered rapid inflation in recent months. According to Rosstat, it was 5.3% over the last three months. In some regions the price of bread is almost 30 rubles a loaf. Surveys in April suggested that Russians are now more afraid of rising prices than of terrorism. Elections have only made things worse. There were the State Duma elections on 2 December and the presidential elections on 2 March. Then Dmitrii Medvedev was designated to become our next president on 7 May. Last autumn, the government ordered a price freeze on some staple foods during this pre-election period - bread, flour, milk, eggs, vegetable oil. But this price freeze only served to heat up the price of other foods. The ‘consumer shopping basket' consists of a list drawn up by several departments of the minimum required for subsistence. It includes foodstuffs (107kg of potatoes, 23kg of fruit and 238 litres of milk per year), as well as clothes (5 pairs of tights or socks per year, 5 sets of underwear every two years), plus housing, utilities, transport etc. It was established in 1992 as a way of calculating a poverty threshold (desperate poverty, I'd say). The contents of this basket are reviewed once every five years, and the cost is recalculated once a quarter. In theory at least, the minimum wage, the level of pensions and other social security benefit are determined on the basis of it.

**Russian teen takes stand against poverty with 'hunger strike'** In an unusual protest against widespread poverty in Russia, a 17-year-old student from the Urals city of Yekaterinburg is testing the state-defined minimum cost of living by eating for just $88 for one month. Vitaly Nikishin decided to embark on his project after the government announced its revised minimum food basket price estimate in late December. Inflation pushed the figure for the Sverdlovsk Region up 22.7 percent year-on-year, but the minimum a person can spend on food a month is still defined as a paltry 2,626 rubles ($87.50). "These findings seemed absurd to me and I decided to do something, you could call it a hunger strike, to attract the public's attention to a pressing social problem: the problem of poverty in our country," Nikishin says on his blog. The blog gives a day-by-day account of how the teenager is coping with his unusual diet. It includes photographs and descriptions of each of his modest meals; how they taste and how filling they are. Nikishin also regularly records his weight, which has already dropped by 2 kg since the start of the experiment. The project has attracted a mass of followers in the Russian blogosphere and extensive media coverage. Nikishin says he gives interviews about the experiment practically every day. The publicity surrounding the project has even forced the regional government to respond, with local officials admitting that the estimate is unreasonable. "The minimum cost of living for a pensioner is 4,813 rubles [$160] a month, which works out as about the same for food a day as it does to feed a dog. That's how it is. The region spends more money feeding dogs than it does feeding pensioners," regional assembly member Andrei Alshevskikh told the Vesti TV channel. The Federal State Statistics Service, Rosstat, says the minimum food basket is an abstract figure used to calculate where the poverty line begins, and should not be taken literally. At the end of the experiment, Nikishin says he will compile a report from his blog and media coverage of his project. He plans to send the document as a petition to the regional and federal authorities in the hope that it will force them to address the issue of poverty in Russia. "Through my project I am first and foremost supporting anyone who has to survive year after year on the paltriest sums of money; my fellow citizens who use all their strength just to survive," Nikishin says.