Incomes of Russian Officials Now Multiples of Incomes of Other Russians, New Survey Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – The gap between what government bureaucrats are paid and what all other Russians receive is now approaching the levels of some third world countries; and this gap between these “two Russias” is even greater if one takes not just the pay officials get but the money they are able to steal via corruption, the SerpomPo telegram channel says.

            Drawing on a Transparency International report (transparency.org.ru/special/deklarator-sravnil-dohody-top-chinovnikov-s-dohodami-rossiyan), the channel says that the median income of Russian officials – 82,000 rubles (1150 US dollars) a month is three times higher than that of all other Russians – 27,000 rubles (380 US dollars) a month (t.me/SerpomPo/11552).

            But in many parts of the Russian Federation, the official incomes of officials are vastly higher than that. In Tyva, officials are paid seven times what other workers are. In Daghestan, this figure is six; and in Sakha, Tyumen, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, it is five, the telegram channel continues.

            These ratios are calculated exclusively on the salaries Russian government officials are paid, but if one adds in the money they gain from what is massive corruption in many places, the differences between official Russia and the rest is far higher in all of these places and many others as well.

            “There are now two different Russias which almost do not intersect,” SerpomPo says. Instead, “the gap between them is growing and reaching unimaginable in European, even Eastern European countries but only to be found in some ‘central African’ states. How and when all of this is going to end is of course a rhetorical question.”