Paul Goble
Staunton, April 13 – A survey of 1500 Russians conducted by officials Tomsk found that younger people in that city are less tolerant of representatives of other nationalities than are their parents and other older people, according to a press release of the new Children of the Mountains Organization which unites people from the North Caucasus now living in Russia.
Madonna Dunyaeva, the head of the Children of the Mountains group, said that in March, the Tomsk oblast department for youth policy conducted a poll to clarify “the level of tensions in inter-ethnic relations among residents of Tomsk oblast” and that the results have now been released (www.amic.ru/news/146253/).
The survey showed, she said that “young people of Tomsk are less tolerant to representatives of other nationalities than are adults,” with 15 percent of young people agreeing with the statement that “multi-nationality harms Russia,” 33 percent saying they feel “anger” toward non-Russians there, and 43 percent supporting a ban on immigration.
Moreover, Dunyaeva continued, the poll found that “every third declared that he or she had been a witness in recent times to conflicts on an ethnic basis” and one in every five of those young people said they “support those who took part in the [December 11] demonstration in [Moscow’s] Manezh Square.”
All these figures are higher than those found for older Russians, and the head of the Children of the Mountains Organization, said that “it is necessary to establish an educational course, ‘the peoples of Russia,’ in the schools which would acquaint children with the cultures of various peoples. Only by doing so can be defeat the main cause of xenophobia – ignorance.”
She added that it is also “necessary to establish close cooperation between the higher educational institutions and the diasporas [in order to provide] the diasporas with information on arriving students” because it is precisely these diasporas which can quickly and effectively help [these arrivals] adapt to local culture and to learn the [Russian] language.”
Tomsk Governor Viktor Kress said that he supports this idea. “I absolutely agree with Madonna when she says that it is necessary to study the peoples of Russia. We ought to have such a course not only in the schools” but for the broader population.
The Children of the Mountains Youth Organization was established in Tomsk at the end of January and now has branches in various Siberian cities. Its founding document declares that it seeks to promote “the unity of Caucasus young people on the territory of Russia and also love to the traditions of the culture of the Caucasus” (http://deti-gor.com/site/).
The group, which says it is the “first union of its type” in the Russian Federation, includes all ethnic groups from the region, including ethnic Russians, who “want to jointly resolve pressing issues of Caucasus youth and also to preserve the culture and mentality of the Caucasus and the Trans-Caucasus.”
In a related report, Andrey Smirnov, the director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in Baku that one of the reasons that there are inter-ethnic problems in Moscow is that there are very few residents of the Russian capital who are genuine Muscovites (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/15685/).
According to Smirnov, “today fewer than ten percent of the total number of residents of Moscow are indigenous Muscovites, those who have at least one parent who was born and grew up in Moscow.” As a result, Moscow today is “an unstable conglomerate in which there are a large number of migrants.”
“I think,” Smirnov said, reflecting the view of many longstanding residents of the capital, “native Muscovites would never permit themselves” to attack anyone on the basis of religious or ethnic differences. But “of course,” he added, “for today’s Russia, one of the dangers is the disloyalty of certain Russian Muslims.”
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Real Incomes of 40 Percent of Russians have Fallen Since 1991, Studies Find
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 13 – The real incomes of the two least-well-off quintiles of the Russian population have fallen since 1991 while those of that two best-off have risen significantly, dramatically increasing income differentiation and potentially exacerbating class-based tensions, according to two studies by the Higher School of Economics.
“If one considers the overall figures concerning how Russia lived in 1990 and 2009,” Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” says in reporting on these studies, “it turns out that citizens have only won as a result of reforms. Thus, consumption has gone up overall 1.45 times. But this is like an average temperature in a hospital” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/41896/).
That is the trend Moscow and its supporters normally report, but if one unpacks the figures as the Higher School of Economics experts do in two reports (“The Level and Way of Life of the Population in 1989-2009” and “A Comparative Analysis of Consumption and Expenditures”), Polunin says, the picture is far more complicated and less positive.
The bottom 40 percent of the population has fallen behind over this period, he reports. The level of real incomes for the lowest 20 percent has fallen 1.45 times and the next lowest quintile by 1.2 times. At the other end, the top 20 percent have seen their incomes double, and the next highest quintile had their incomes go up a quarter.
This change in the distribution of real incomes has hit the least-well-off groups especially hard because of the decline in state support for housing, education and especially medicine, with the lower quintiles forced to spend a higher proportion of their incomes for all these things or do without them, the studies found.
The situation in medicine is particularly striking, Polunin observes. In the European Union, for example, individuals directly bear 24 percent of the cost of medical treatment while in Russia that figure is now 40 to 50 percent, a dramatically higher fraction than only twenty years ago.
And this increase is hitting Russians, especially those least well off, because the average rate of illness among Russians rose 43 percent per 100,000 population over the period 1990 to 2008 and because many of the illnesses involved, such as cancer and heart disease, are particularly expensive to treat.
But the most striking findings of the report concern income differentiation, Polunin suggests. “In Soviet times, the earnings of a worker (120 rubles a month), an engineer (180 rubles a month), and a colonel in the KGB (350 rubles a month) of course were different, but not by ten times as much as is the case today.”
The Soviet system’s commitment to wage equality “froze the development of the economy,” the report says, “but still more abnormal has been the gigantic growth in inequality which the establishment of the market economy has involved.” In Russia, it has been especially severe, eight times more rapid than in Hungary and five times more than in the Czech Republic.
The reports of the Higher Economic School nonetheless generally stress the positive aspects of the changes, something that is not surprising given the liberal views of most of those working there. But they do acknowledge that for many of the poorest in Russia today, the Soviet past does not look altogether bleak.
The reports note, for example, that “Soviet people strictly speaking did not suffer impoverishment. In the USSR [at least at the end of the Soviet period] there was no hunger, the population was guaranteed state services for health and education, often not of bad quality, and practically free housing. Besides, in the USSR there was no unemployment.”
“On the other hand,” the reports say, “there were shortages of practically all consumer goods and those available were not of high quality as a result of the absence of competition.” These conclusions prompted the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist to ask three people whether people lived better “in the same of the USSR or now.”
Yevgeny Yasin, a former Russian economics minister and one of the senior scholars at the institution which prepared the reports said that “it is incomparable better to live now,” but he acknowledged that was true only for those near the top of the income pyramid and said that if he were had the bottom, he “would certainly have a totally different impression.”
He added that the government should address the consequences of income inequality not only as a matter of justice, something the reports did not address but to ensure propitious macro-economic conditions. Just raising pay will not be enough; productivity must be increased as well, Yasin said.
Aleksey Mukhin, general director of the Moscow Center of Political Information, in contrast, said that “of course, it was easier to live in the middle 1980s. Life was predictable,” although he acknowledged that after 1991, there appeared “greater possibilities for the realization of creative potential.”
But not surprisingly, Oleg Kulikov, a KPRF Duma deputy, argued that “of course, people lived better in Soviet times. Today, life expectancy compared with the Soviet past has fallen by more than ten years,” as has the birthrate, which reflects the fact that people have children only when they have “confidence in the future.”
Kulikov adds, “it is possible to say that now the people are voting for the USSR by their premature departure from life and their decisions not to have children. Moreover, Soviet times lacked many of the features of today: inter-ethnic conflicts, poverty, and bums on the streets,” all developments that make the past look better.
Moreover, he says, “we were certain that the difficulties which did exist were temporary and that the situation would improve. There was hope that this great country could deal with them.” Now, ordinary people do not have that experience or that feeling, he said, and they are understandably upset.
Staunton, April 13 – The real incomes of the two least-well-off quintiles of the Russian population have fallen since 1991 while those of that two best-off have risen significantly, dramatically increasing income differentiation and potentially exacerbating class-based tensions, according to two studies by the Higher School of Economics.
“If one considers the overall figures concerning how Russia lived in 1990 and 2009,” Andrey Polunin of “Svobodnaya pressa” says in reporting on these studies, “it turns out that citizens have only won as a result of reforms. Thus, consumption has gone up overall 1.45 times. But this is like an average temperature in a hospital” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/41896/).
That is the trend Moscow and its supporters normally report, but if one unpacks the figures as the Higher School of Economics experts do in two reports (“The Level and Way of Life of the Population in 1989-2009” and “A Comparative Analysis of Consumption and Expenditures”), Polunin says, the picture is far more complicated and less positive.
The bottom 40 percent of the population has fallen behind over this period, he reports. The level of real incomes for the lowest 20 percent has fallen 1.45 times and the next lowest quintile by 1.2 times. At the other end, the top 20 percent have seen their incomes double, and the next highest quintile had their incomes go up a quarter.
This change in the distribution of real incomes has hit the least-well-off groups especially hard because of the decline in state support for housing, education and especially medicine, with the lower quintiles forced to spend a higher proportion of their incomes for all these things or do without them, the studies found.
The situation in medicine is particularly striking, Polunin observes. In the European Union, for example, individuals directly bear 24 percent of the cost of medical treatment while in Russia that figure is now 40 to 50 percent, a dramatically higher fraction than only twenty years ago.
And this increase is hitting Russians, especially those least well off, because the average rate of illness among Russians rose 43 percent per 100,000 population over the period 1990 to 2008 and because many of the illnesses involved, such as cancer and heart disease, are particularly expensive to treat.
But the most striking findings of the report concern income differentiation, Polunin suggests. “In Soviet times, the earnings of a worker (120 rubles a month), an engineer (180 rubles a month), and a colonel in the KGB (350 rubles a month) of course were different, but not by ten times as much as is the case today.”
The Soviet system’s commitment to wage equality “froze the development of the economy,” the report says, “but still more abnormal has been the gigantic growth in inequality which the establishment of the market economy has involved.” In Russia, it has been especially severe, eight times more rapid than in Hungary and five times more than in the Czech Republic.
The reports of the Higher Economic School nonetheless generally stress the positive aspects of the changes, something that is not surprising given the liberal views of most of those working there. But they do acknowledge that for many of the poorest in Russia today, the Soviet past does not look altogether bleak.
The reports note, for example, that “Soviet people strictly speaking did not suffer impoverishment. In the USSR [at least at the end of the Soviet period] there was no hunger, the population was guaranteed state services for health and education, often not of bad quality, and practically free housing. Besides, in the USSR there was no unemployment.”
“On the other hand,” the reports say, “there were shortages of practically all consumer goods and those available were not of high quality as a result of the absence of competition.” These conclusions prompted the “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist to ask three people whether people lived better “in the same of the USSR or now.”
Yevgeny Yasin, a former Russian economics minister and one of the senior scholars at the institution which prepared the reports said that “it is incomparable better to live now,” but he acknowledged that was true only for those near the top of the income pyramid and said that if he were had the bottom, he “would certainly have a totally different impression.”
He added that the government should address the consequences of income inequality not only as a matter of justice, something the reports did not address but to ensure propitious macro-economic conditions. Just raising pay will not be enough; productivity must be increased as well, Yasin said.
Aleksey Mukhin, general director of the Moscow Center of Political Information, in contrast, said that “of course, it was easier to live in the middle 1980s. Life was predictable,” although he acknowledged that after 1991, there appeared “greater possibilities for the realization of creative potential.”
But not surprisingly, Oleg Kulikov, a KPRF Duma deputy, argued that “of course, people lived better in Soviet times. Today, life expectancy compared with the Soviet past has fallen by more than ten years,” as has the birthrate, which reflects the fact that people have children only when they have “confidence in the future.”
Kulikov adds, “it is possible to say that now the people are voting for the USSR by their premature departure from life and their decisions not to have children. Moreover, Soviet times lacked many of the features of today: inter-ethnic conflicts, poverty, and bums on the streets,” all developments that make the past look better.
Moreover, he says, “we were certain that the difficulties which did exist were temporary and that the situation would improve. There was hope that this great country could deal with them.” Now, ordinary people do not have that experience or that feeling, he said, and they are understandably upset.
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