Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 20 – Income inequality in Russia has risen to the point that it now
equals the level of income inequality in the Russian Empire just before the
1905 and 1917 revolutions, Kirill Teteryatnikov says; but despite that, dealing
with this political explosive development has been dropped from Russian
government strategy documents.
The
researcher at the Vneshekonombank says that today, the least well-off half of
the population receives only 17 percent of national income, the very same level
that such people received in tsarist Russia in the years before the 1905
revolution. And those at the top of the income pyramid now received roughly the
same share as those in that position before 1917 (ehorussia.com/new/node/17757).
What makes this differentiation so
unfortunate, Teteryatnikov says, is that the private capital that the wealthiest
groups have been able to create “is not being invested in the Russian economy,
is not creating new work forces, and is not promoting consumer demand, but
instead is being sent abroad.”
As a result of these trends, he
continues, “after a quarter of a century since the start of market reforms in
Russia, the poor have become still poorer, the rich richer, and the superrich
extremely so,” with the bottom half falling behind by 20 percent and the top
ten percent gaining 141 percent – and those in the top 0.1 and 0.01 percent doing
far better than that.
Given the well-known impact of
economic inequality on development and political stability, one might expect
the government to be focusing on it ever more intently. But in fact,
Teteryatnikov says, the reverse has been the case: Fighting inequality was
mentioned in government documents in 2008-2009, but it was dropped as a
priority in the 2015 strategy paper.
And this has happened, he points out,
even though “the problems of inequalitiy and poverty have not only remained but
become more serioius.”
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