Russian society is becoming more and more estate-based

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In times of crisis, traditionally the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and this is the case in Russia as well. The Garden Ring remains a kind of "reservation" for the wealthy residents of the capital; in general, Moscow is increasingly moving away from the regions. Access to normal food and health care is inherited instead of property.

Analysts from the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) included Moscow in the list of the 15 most developed megacities in the world. The rating agency Moody's, in turn, believes that in the coming years Moscow will confidently grow richer. The capital continues to attract a young and active workforce. The flip side of wealth is the stratification of society, which has been sharply increasing in recent years.

At a short distance from the new Sobyanin center, you can see three layers of Russian life, gradually the borders between them are becoming more and more impregnable:

- Garden Ring - a space for tourists and local residents without financial problems;

- the rest of Moscow within the Moscow Ring Road and large metropolitan suburbs that have become cities with a population of over one million. Inhabitants of this area spend hours getting to work by different types of transport; they travel to the Garden Ring just like to a museum. They simply cannot compare their standard of living with the first estate. Rather, the life of these people is similar to the existence of immigrants from Central Asia, despised by them, who work on Moscow construction sites, in trade and in the housing and communal services sector;

- the rest of Russia, looking at Moscow with envy. In each region there are groups that, in terms of income, are at least equal to the first metropolitan estate, but not in all respects. The regional elites are rich, they can eat well, use high-quality transport, but lack access to high-level healthcare and culture.

In recent years, the transition to the upper class has become a daunting task.

The new division of Russian society is not like the Indian castes. The estate community allows the transition from one estate to another. For example, a good job helps people from the Moscow region of Golyanovo or the regional center to move to Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Many people do just that - they move from the second league to the first. Then they try to gain a foothold in a new place in order to be able to pass on to their children the estate privilege - the right to eat normally, be treated, rest and work.

In recent years, the transition from a lower caste to a higher one has become more and more difficult. Often Russian observers say that the new nobility (ruling class) is separating from the people. As a rule, we are talking about the transfer of property and positions by inheritance. The problem is actually much deeper, since we are talking about diametrically different quality of life that can be inherited.

Today, the gap between the richest and the poorest Russians resembles a situation a century ago. The question in this case is not even about property. Hereditary poverty consists of many factors. For example, ecology plays a huge role. In the center of Moscow, the air is no different from the area near the oil refinery in Kapotnya, but the new aristocrats do not live in the central part of the capital, preferring country palaces.

The new nobility has its own restaurants, separate food items. Due to the sanctions and high cost, products intended for the elite are not available to the majority of the population; there are cheap surrogates for mass consumption. PWC analysts pay attention to efficient public transport in Moscow, but do not assess how comfortable it is for them to get to their place of work every day for two hours.

The representatives of the upper class have their own doctors from private clinics in Russia and abroad. Due to lack of time, residents of “Primkadya” cannot even check their own health, and in their case there is no question of access to high-quality health care. Now the authorities are trying to destroy the last defense mechanism - the ability to retire early. It was this mechanism that allowed the "grandmothers" to visit doctors in polyclinics. A side effect of raising the retirement age may be a deterioration in the statistics of the Ministry of Health on the “age of survival”.

These and some other parameters make up Russian hereditary poverty. Russians from the second and third leagues simply do not have enough health to move to the upper class. The second and third estate of Russian citizens is formed from the poor quality of food, bad ecology, uncomfortable transport, lack of leisure, poor quality medicine. The main factor is the lack of time to go to the doctors and constant stress with aggression at work, at home and in transport.

The consequences of the influence on people of these negative factors are the early death of parents, smoking, alcoholism, hereditary diabetes and a number of other diseases (the results of a forced improper lifestyle). This inheritance, together with poor education, can be inherited by the children of people from the lower castes.

In fact, there is a revival within one country of two nations, even biologically related to each other very conditionally. I don't even want to think about the possible consequences, although aggressive discussions around the centenary of the execution of the royal family lead to certain sad thoughts.