WHAT'S IT LIKE LIVING IN RUSSIA TODAY?

Some answers...
Hello, everybody,

I ran across this site and found it interesting to share views and knowledge with people all over the globe. Being a Russian I cannot help giving some comments to the thread where my home country is concerned. Though I have noticed the discussion is a year and a half old I would like to touch upon some questions that were raised here. Hope it may be interesting to somebody. In order not to make my posting too long I will split it into sections.

Q: What's it like living in Russia today? Everyday life? How does it vary from section to section?

A: As to our everyday life… I think we here do the same things as most people in the world: we work to earn our livelihood, enjoy holidays, fall in love, bring up children, make plans for the future and seek for a better life. It used to be so and I think will always be whatever happened around. Or did anyone expect something different? I can hardly tell you what differences with other countries are simply because I do not know much about them (hopefully A2K can be helpful here) and I am not inclined to make judgements in the field where I am almost ignorant. I can be more useful to share info on the developments here and my personal opinions.

Having read what harsh life I am living here I have actually got to understand that the image of Russia is unfortunately very negative when looking from abroad. I must admit that it does have grounds sometimes and yet the picture seems to me somewhat exaggerated. Docent P has also contributed into it. He sounds like a very angry person. So what? I am angry about the same things! Moreover it is a peculiar turn of the Russian character that we are always critical to the ways of Russia. Let some people consider it unpatriotic. Never thought that accepting everything for granted is an evidence of patriotism. If one really cares for their own country they should care if something is going wrong. Sorry, I have got off the subject, but these are my feelings.

Unfortunately the situation described by C.I. with doctors, lawyers, and professors serving as waiters, bar-tenders, and room stewards on cruise boats because their average monthly salary was $100, but by working on the boat, they could earn upwards of $500 per month just on gratuities cannot surprise anyone here. I see it as one of the grave problems of the country. When we turned to the free market system in early nineties we subconsciously hoped that little would change but we would only have a more efficient and fair system of consumables distribution. But it consequently turned up that the only valuable skills are those in sales nowadays. We received western-like shopping centres instead of our ability to apply other talents. Now we know what survival of the fittest is. Want to have a boxing round with Mike Tyson? You are welcome; this is free market. No? You think it unfair? Then you are a commie!

Nonetheless this new system seems to work and after ten years we gradually learnt how to act in it. A decade ago we were clueless and mixed-up. Now we earn money as best we can and some do succeed. For people with money (I am not talking only of those with very much money) life became more comfortable in the context of consumption. One can have whatever money can buy. But arts and sciences are now only for those who have relatively rich parents, husbands etc. For others it would be a kind of sacrifice.

Have just noticed that I use the word “money” too often. Maybe it is another feature of today’s Russia.

Some answers (continued)...
Q: What is the average pay of Russians today?

A: This is a good question. As a matter of fact the spread is enormous.

First please note that our traditional way of reckoning is to calculate net monthly income. When a Russian says that his or her salary amounts to this or that figure it means that he or she makes this money for the period of one month and the sum is after tax.

While the average income in the Soviet Union (in the mid-eighties it was 200 roubles per month or approx.$300 at the official rate of that time) used to be an amount most people really received all over the country and a double difference (i.e. 50% lower or 100% greater) was regarded as very considerable, now it is a virtual figure describing as we here like to say “an average body temperature of all patients at a hospital including those in a fever and those in the mortuary”. If my memory does not fail me as per the recent government statistics the average is around 7,000rbls (approx.$250) in the whole country and 13,000rbls in Moscow ($450). However even in Moscow I personally know people whose monthly income varies from $50 to $3,000 and I refer only to salaries without any proceeds from business activities. The difference in the pay mainly depends on the company and much less on the position or title.

Some answers (continued)...
Q: What is the most common way for a professional to travel in an urban setting? What is the most common way for a common labourer to travel in a rural setting?

A: Metro and/or bus are the most common means for commuting in urban or close-to-urban areas (here I would only add suburban trains). Metro, in the cities where it exists, seems to be the most convenient way to get to where you want. The time headway between trains in Moscow varies from 1 or 2 minutes at peak hours to approximately 10 minutes at night. The city transport operates from 6 a.m. to 1a.m. No night buses unlike London. Though according to my wife who was born in Saratov, there are night buses there but I never used them myself and cannot confirm it.

BTW while Moscow authorities keep boasting about their titanic efforts to maintain municipal transport, in the city of Saratov (we often go there for holidays to visit my wife’s parents) buses are better and cheaper. This is an example where privatisation has had good results: most buses are privately owed. I doubt that many people could afford buying a bus and I guess that the local authorities had probably bought used buses in Germany and let them on lease. But there appeared a problem for the retired because they had been granted free passage on municipal transport, what is not acknowledged in private buses. Hence they have to choose the few roots where municipal buses are used or pay in full.

Despite nearly prohibitive customs duties the number of old foreign cars on Moscow streets is significant. They are more expensive than the same cars in Western Europe but still cheaper than new domestically produced vehicles ($3-5K vs. $5-8K, although prices may vary). The auto producers lobby is constantly pushing on the government in order to limit the import of cheap used cars. If one goes to the centre of Moscow and see lots of new expensive cars there, such person will be very likely to think that all muscovites are very rich people. When the company on which I work bought a Honda Accord for $35K we had to wait three or four weeks because there was a queue! Assuming only 5% of the city inhabitants make a fortune, it would mean a market of nearly half a million very wealthy customers in Moscow, so this fact is not actually surprising. Even cars costing more than $100K are not rare in Moscow. Normally drivers are afraid of such vehicles because an accident involving an expensive car can leave a common car-owner without all his possessions. Although a liability insurance is now required for driving, this recent measure is seen to be in the mere interest of large insurance companies. Unfortunately insurance policies have too many provisions for not covering big harm while it is more profitable to pay minor damages from your own pocket to avoid a rise in the cost of this insurance for the next year.

For distant trips we travel by rail much more often than by air.

Re: Some answers (continued)...

Heh. Nice style ;-)

Thank you for all the information, I'm glad you've come to join us, hope you'll stay! Welcome to A2K. (That rhymes).

Re: Some answers (continued)...

Do you happen to know - when I was in Petersburg a long time ago (well, 1995), the strangest thing there was - this is a city of canals, right (for those who've never been there) - and at midnight, or 1 AM or something, all the bridges would be opened (as in, to let the boats pass through). And there would be no way to get from any one part of the city to any other anymore until morning.

Apparently, this was how it had always been done. It sure almost got me into trouble a couple of times! Once I just stayed the night out, then, at some rave, instead of having to rush out at midnight ...

Is it still done that way?

Glad to see that the average income in Russia is increasing, because when I visited in 2000, most professionals were earning about $100/month. Many of the Balkan countries are now at that level of income for professionals; our local guide in Romania is a dentist, and he earns about $100/month, but can earn that much in one day being a tour guide for Americans in one day on tips

Re: Some answers (continued)...




Saint-Petersburg: BRIDGES

That's not so uncommon (better: that wasn't so uncommon).
On the other hand, it's rather unlovely to be on a ship and wait until you can pass in the morning - like it usually was the fact at French seaports :wink:

I'm tellin ya - its too cold to swim across at night!

Missing a rendez-vous isn't nice, too

Living Standards


Actually the situation is not such a straightforward one. First, let alone the domestic inflation rate in the US, dollar has been gradually losing its value in Russia during all post-soviet years, though the exchange rate of Russian rouble dropped 3 times in 1998 all in one day, and rouble remains one of the most undervalued currencies in the world (when they take purchasing power parity, $US rate appears to be somewhere between 10 and 15 rbls while the commercial bank rate is now 29 rbls for $1). I will give just one example: In mid-nineties I used to change $20 or $30 and it was sufficient for a couple of weeks to buy food. If I go shopping now I normally spend more money in one day. With an annual inflation rate around 12% in Russia, $US dropped from 32 roubles/dollar in 2002 to 29 in 2004. I mean the cost of living denominated in US dollars has increased. So, if we still choose US dollar, it is for its stability because nobody knows what could happen to rouble in the next year. And it also makes sense to save dollars because doing so people normally seek to buy expensive things which are in most cases imported. Now EURO presents a good alternative though this currency does not have a long “credit history”. The second reason for keeping money in a hard currency is in favour of EURO because the imported consumer goods mostly come to Russia from Europe.

Second, doctors, university professors and people whose profession requires specific technological knowledge are still heavily underpaid and $100 seems to be the amount very close to their monthly income. (Why is this education still popular in Russia?) Another category of impoverished people are pensioners. The majority of them receive around 2,000 roubles or approx.$70 per month irrespective of whom they were when they worked. And the government has recently deprived them of all privileges!

The Soviet Union seems to have been a badly managed but self-sufficient economy seeking after specialists. For the last decades in USSR professionals were also underpaid but this is incomparable to their position in present-day Russia. As a result there exists a phenomenon of so-called “internal emigration” when professionals give up their jobs and choose more profitable areas.

Bridges in St.Pete

Yes, they lift bridges in St.Petersburg at nighttime. As far as I remember the famous Tower Bridge in London is of the same type, they open it to let a big ship go up or down the Thames, only I do not know if it happens frequently.

WH, thank you for the picture!

And why did you have doubts as to if they still open bridges in St.Pete? Or did you just refer to the time when you visited the city?

More answers: Russian Mafia
There were some more questions I did not cover in my previous postings.

Q: The effect of the Russian Mafia? We are told they are very powerful...very dangerous.

A: Powerful? Yes, I guess. Dangerous? That all depends. If you are just a visitor from a foreign country, they have no interest in you. You should be more afraid of ordinary street crime. Mafia members are not those badly shaven men with handguns or knives.

Russian organized crime is not similar to Italian Cosa Nostra. It was not born in poverty-stricken suburbs. It was given birth in the Soviet Union of 70’s and 80’s. I have already said that it was almost impossible to go beyond the average level then. Even the communist party top functionaries and senior industry managers lived a very modest life if compared to rich Russians of the present days. Those who wanted to overstep the set circle mentally and spiritually became prominent scientists, artists, poets, philosophers and dissidents. Some of them went to the West. Those who wanted to go beyond borders financially engaged in illegal businesses, not without certain help from some local government officials, I think. Some of those people also went West when Soviet police put their eye on them or just being tired of secret life. With the fall of the Soviet Union there was no more need to hide, new opportunities emerged and when ordinary people lost all their savings and had to work for ridiculous salaries there were those who had bunch of dollars or just power to control resources. They could not but yield the temptation.

My wife could tell you better than me what the Russian gangsters used to look like in the early nineties. At that time I taught Russian to foreigners (it was not only to earn a living as it is my speciality as per the diploma), tried to start my PhD thesis (alas! unsuccessfully) and also tried to fight the government who sent troops to blockade and shell the parliament because they did not want president Yeltsin to solely decide the fate of Russia and write the new constitution at his sole discretion (you maybe know, it was also in vain). Thus my life was very interesting then, but it had nothing to do with the mafia (I do not count for those who fired at the parliament supporters).

Like me, my future other half just graduated from a university and holding a diploma in chemistry that did not pay any more looked for a job. She finally got it but the company appeared to be mobsters controlled. No, please do not think that she was forced to make poison or manufacture explosives! It was a routine office work. The company traded in bubblegum and the like. Only if somebody dared to sell bubblegum on the same territory without their “authorization”, they knew what to do: they hired former professional wrestlers for this purpose. It rarely went so long that they had to beat somebody severely. Serious clashes with gun firing were with strong competitors only, who themselves were alike. My wife recalls a very peculiar way these “bubblegum dealers” persuaded small entrepreneurs to “co-operate” with them. Several bullyboys started to talk claiming that they all were “orphans” and needed life support. At the same time they expressed it in such a manner as if their victim had stolen something from these “orphans”!

The owner of this bubblegum business was a well-bred Renaissance man. He used to have a couple of partners in earlier days. Then all of them were killed under very strange circumstances. Every year he commemorated them, and few had doubts who indeed was to blame for their death. Now he was heard to have left consumer goods distribution long ago and become a proprietor of a smart hotel. A very respectable gentlemen. And a good career: from bubblegum trading to hotel ownership!

Or another example. Even formally it had nothing to do with criminal activities. However I find it to be a clear case of mafia work. An acquaintance of mine, who was a Russian from Latvia, was in great need of money. He was “a foreign invader” in his home city of Riga and feared to be expelled from there for the reason that he had married a girl from Russia, i.e. being a holder of a Russian passport (previously he had been denied the Latvian citizenship) he had a place to go and did not need to occupy the soil of independent Latvia. So he went to Moscow and earned his bread as a street vender. In order to avoid problems with the local police he went to the district authorities to apply for a permission to trade. What do you think they answered him? “No problem, you only have to get authorization from our head office” (this is how they put it). “The Head Office” appeared to be a private company that was entitled to do street trade in the district on an exclusive basis. They drove very expensive cars and liked to decorate themselves with huge golden chains. Their permission required an official “cleaning fee” (i.e. the hawkers had to pay them a very considerable monthly fee for cleaning the territory).

My strongest belief is that Mr.Khodorkovsky, a head of Yukos oil company with whom the western media seem to sympathize so much, is a very clever and talented mafia tycoon. This is not because I have been convinced of it by the Russian officials. On the contrary they only accuse him of not having paid all the taxes (does this story resemble you anything?). What makes me suspicious is his story of a young communist leader who at the time of Gorbachev got into business selling French cognac and computers (he already had money then to buy them in quantities!) and then became one of co-founders of Menatep banking group, which used to service many government transactions. The name of Menatep bank is known too well in Moscow because lots of people lost their money there in 1998. As it turned up they did not have funds to pay off the depositors though they had enough to buy up oil industries. A succession of, let us say, “very unfriendly” merges and acquisitions and kicking partners out of the business made Mr.Khodorkovsky the richest person in Russia. Though his investments into the oil industry gave it a boost and Yukos became the most effective oil company in the country (without discovering a single new oilfield, they bought the existing ones instead), according to what I heard I do not think that I would have liked to work on Yukos with all their powerful security services and employee surveillance systems. Finally Mr.Khodorkovsky decided to become a western-style CEO, started to talk of social responsibilities of big businesses, invest into his own PR as well as various political parties in the parliament. Not unusual. His only mistake was that he fancied himself to be an independent figure, but the state, which cares so little about its own citizens, does care of threats to itself, if not political then economic.

Forget about gangster bosses of the 90’s. Now they are very esteemed business people, members of local governments and legislatures (somehow they prefer legislatures). Many of them stand for strengthening of law-enforcement agencies (they are probably afraid of being robbed). There is a remarkable trend nowadays: they tend to sell their Russian businesses to large international companies and invest abroad. They do think that these investments are safer.

Sorry for the long posting. Hope it will be interesting to somebody.

Very interesting...keep them coming

Yes, it is interesting, and i hope that you will continue to provide information on Russia. You write well and lucidly, and the content is very informative. Thank you for your contribution.

SerSo, Also a thank you from me in California. Please keep writing about Russia, and tell us about both the good and the bad aspects of life.

A lot of mafia in St. Petersburg own restaraunts. And at there busiest hours they might have one customer. It's really weird. I guess it's more so they have a place to hang out, because they certainly don't make profit from regular customers.

Ah, I miss St. Pete.

St.Petersburg, St.Pete or Peter... Or maybe Leningrad?

Just a comment: Indeed I did not even notice first that I accidentally truncated St.Petersburg to St.Pete :O)

Actually the name of the city is too long and inconvenient to use it in full. In official documents they do write the full version, but in colloquial Russian we normally say just "Peter". Even when it was Leningrad we called it just the same.

Tsar Peter I was a great amateur of foreign terms and the Russian language borrowed a number of words in that period. The names invented by him were sometimes very strange to Russian ear. For instance his flagship bore a name of "Gotto Predestinacia". Those Russians who now know Germanic and Romanic languages can translate it into normal Russian, but the sailors of that time deserved sympathy: they had to learn the name by heart and when asked by an officer were bound to answer without delay…

Hey, SerSo, I have a question. There is a monument near the hermitage, near the pillars with ships in them. And I heard that guys relieve themselves there almost religiously. Every time we walked by there was a single figure standing in every alcove... which is a little suspicious if you ask me.
So my question is whether or not that is a rumor.

P.S.- I have some artwork in the hermitage. Impressive, huh?