When I was a kid, I grew up in a little town in South Germany. We had two ”projects” where the poor people lived. Mostly long term unemployed, living from social security and other government aid. Among them many foreigners from Rumania, Belarus and Poland. They had German roots (family) in the past and were allowed to immigrate to Germany, but their dream of living wealthy in our social democracy was smashed fast.
Of course some made it with hard work and government help. They were able to build houses in the little villages surrounding my hometown and the German neighbors watched them in jealousy. An integration has never happened one way or the other and many of the immigrants still live in the projects being poor.
What does it mean to be poor? Having been poor a few times (only for months) in my life I know pretty well what it means. Of course I had a family to back me up. Not with money, but a place I could return to for food and shelter. I just suffered, because I have been too proud to go back home with the tail between my legs. Being poor in Germany isn’t really being poor. You have access to healthcare, free or supported housing, food stamps, a monthly minimum wage and many other amendments.
Being poor in New York is different. Being poor in such a rich city, where the decadence is just around you all over the place. At the beginning it just hurts, that you can’t consume like the others. Than after a while your stomach starts to bother you, because the 2 hot dog “recession menu” or a slice of pizza a day are not enough to live from. Five dollars don’t buy you a lot in Manhattan. It gets you a bottle of water, a slice of pizza, 2 hot dogs or 2 simple burgers at McD and a soup at night. Maybe a cup of coffee, when you find some change in your pockets.
I have been poor a few times when I started off in New York. It wasn’t easy being illegal and getting work. I have lived like this for months, crashing on the couches of people I just met that liked me. There were also problems with medical help. You can’t go to a doctor or dentist, if you don’t have money. It’s a constant fear, when you get a flue or you twisted some ankle, that it won’t go away and you need to go to a hospital. As an American you are covered half way by some social laws, but as an illegal you have no rights. You are welcomed as long as you have money. If not you shouldn’t be there. That’s the clear message of the system.
Today I feel fine. I appreciate my expensive healthcare plan and good dinners, but I still get upset if a restaurant owner rips me off with some fifty dollar meal, that didn’t even taste good. Probably I learned about the real value of money. And … nowadays I live in Moscow. It’s a similar decadency as in New York, but people even show off more. Against all news articles I read, I was surprised to find a large middle class. Many of them belong to the upper middle class and they are called “New Russians”. They think of themselves of being rich, but in my point of view, they are only upper middle class. Of course in a country where 90% of the people make a monthly salary below $200 you can call yourself rich, if you make more than 2000.
Yes, a salary below $200/month. That is $6.66 a day, if you don’t pay rent, phone, health insurance, electricity, heat, and other amendments. If you go outside of Moscow it gets worse. You don’t have to drive far, a hundred kilometers maybe and you are in the middle of nowhere. You were driving through the woods for two hours. Here and there you passed a village. People were sitting on the sides of the streets offering their farming goods or handcrafted stuff. There are no jobs out here and you are only left with helping yourself. People grow vegetables, hold rabbits and chickens to have at least some food.
Micha, my girlfriends uncle, just had an accident out there, on his way to some dacha (a weekend house). He got off the road and his car flipped a few times. Drivers in Russia don’t wear seatbelts because it’s uncomfortable and not cool, so he got hurt badly. Yes, a Russian driver even finds it an offence to his driving skills, if you wear your seatbelt on the co-driver seat. The people who found Micha were very nice. They even came to the hospital to visit him and brought him food. It’s one of the positives things about poverty that people get closer with each other. What else do they have, than themselves and their local community. The cops out there, we have talked to, had a monthly salary of 4000 Rubels, which is about $120. They didn’t have gas for their police cars and their radios only had reception (if they worked) in a 5 kilometer circle around the station, but their territory was 10 times larger. The only jobs they have out there is either being a policeman or joining the local criminals. This huge country Russia is 99% rural areas like what i descrinbed above and much worse, and only 1 % cities. About 10% of the population (150 million) lives in Moscow.
Back to Moscow. Many of these people and mostly the young come into the big cities to get their share of the cake. It reminds you of history class and industrialization of the 19th century in Europe, doesn’t it? The cities are growing vastly, while the villages in the regions are left for the elderly and weak. Moscow by now has 15 million registered citizens, but there are much more illegal people and these are not only from Kazachstan or other neighboring former Soviet republics. Many of the illegal are people from all over Russia. Even Russians need a registration and permission to stay in Moscow, otherwise the city would be overcrowded, but the police is not able to control the stream of new people coming into the city each day.
All of them follow the same dream of capitalism, looking for a better life. Most stay poor and can hardly manage to survive on a daily basis with jobs on construction sites or cleaning the places and cars of the wealthy. Some live in empty train wagons, some sleep in our hallway. Some even in selfmade shacks in the city parks. At the end of this, I didn’t even talk about the seniors who get a pension of $30/month. Unless they have family who supports them, they need to continue to do some work or stand in metro entrances begging for some change to make their daily living. It breaks my heart, when I see an old babushka (grandmother), that is totally worn out, sitting on a piece of cardboard, surrounded by little icons of the orthodox church, begging for some small amounts of change, while its snowy weather and far below zero. Or sometimes I see soldiers with no legs hopping on their hands through the metro, asking for some food or money. After they have done their (mandatory) duty in Chechnya or elsewhere, they are left with nothing. The system doesn’t care about them. The Russia they fought for leaves them alone now. Help yourself or get nothing.
Russia is known to be a country of suffering for centuries and it seems Russians got used to it. But the youth is infected with MTV, Bravo and the new ideas of comfort, consume and capitalism. They will fight for it one way or the other. Meanwhile on the top, an elite circle of oligarchs is gaining more and more money. In parallel there is a political elite that also wants its share of the wealth and fill their pockets with cash, while the base is getting poorer and poorer. The youth is fighting to make it into the middle class in legal or illegal ways. The old and weak are left behind with no one to care about them. It’s a sad situation and I wonder what happens, when the people finally wake up and realize that the dream is a dream and only a very small group will manage the jump into a higher class, while the others will loose.
How long will it take for people to understand that Russia itself is not poor, but wealthy from oil, gas and other resources? Its citizens are kept poor on purpose for the benefit of some elite. How long will it take until another revolt? Another movement like the French or the red revolution that brought us democracy and communism?
I think it was Hemmingway who once said, a revolution only happens, if the people have nothing to loose, but their lives. Russia is not far from that point. I don’t want to be here when it happens, because it will be a bloody one. The elite should share the wealth or be prepared for a fierce fight that cannot be won. History has shown it. We should learn out of that, but my wealthy Russian friends think they are secure. They think the low class people will continue to suffer. They think they are safe and it’s enough to have an armed door man, a driver and maybe a few body guards. They live on a secured island, the center of Moscow. What matters tomorrow? We live today, many Russians think. Well, time will tell.
February 27th, 2005 by 
Two-Zero 
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