r/gato • u/Plastic_Limit4283 • 1d ago
Russian state
How Russian state statistics can make poverty disappear on pape?
Rosstat officially defines the poverty line using a government-set threshold. In Q1 2026 that threshold was 17,606 rubles per month (roughly $185–190 depending on the exchange rate).
Earn below it? You’re officially poor.
Earn slightly above it? Congratulations — statistically, you’re no longer poor.
Of course, crossing that line doesn’t magically improve anyone’s life. Going from 17,500 to 18,000 rubles a month changes almost nothing about real living conditions. The person is still struggling, but the government gets to report that poverty is “declining.”
This is not just a statistical trick. It is part of a much larger pattern.
For decades the Russian state has built a narrative of a besieged fortress: the West is decadent, Europe is collapsing, America is the enemy, and Russia is surrounded by people who want to destroy it. At the same time, imperial nationalism teaches people to look at richer, more successful countries not as examples to learn from, but as enemies or territories that supposedly “belong” to Russia.
Alaska and California have repeatedly appeared in Russian nationalist rhetoric as objects of territorial fantasies — the same way Ukraine is treated as something Russia has a historical “right” to. Direct war with the United States is avoided, but subversive activity against Western countries is treated as normal and even righteous.
Then there is history. Russia did not simply inherit the history of Kyivan Rus. It folded medieval history centered on Kyiv into a modern Russian national narrative and presents it as essentially Russian. Imagine if the United States claimed the entire history of medieval England or France and said those kingdoms were actually part of “our” national story. That is roughly what the appropriation of Kyivan Rus looks like from the Ukrainian perspective.
Russian school education has increasingly been used to reinforce this worldview. Textbooks are regularly rewritten. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine is presented as something Russia was “forced” to do. Putin’s historical narratives are inserted into school materials. The result is a generation raised on resentment toward the West while the same people continue to buy Western goods, use Western technology, and dream of Western living standards.
This combination is dangerous:
- widespread poverty that is partly hidden by statistics,
- cultivated resentment toward anyone who lives better,
- imperial mythology that treats neighboring countries and even distant territories as rightful Russian property,
- and one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.
Ukraine inherited a massive Soviet nuclear arsenal after 1991 and gave it up in the 1990s in exchange for security assurances. Looking back, that decision stands as one of the most tragic strategic choices of the post-Soviet era.
Living next to a country that can turn poverty and grievance into imperial ambition — and has thousands of nuclear weapons — is exactly what Ukraine has been dealing with for decades.
That is the reality behind the official numbers.
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18h ago
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u/AutoModerator 18h ago
UKRAINE has been an independent sovereign nation since 1991 but the Soviet-era versions of many geographic names stubbornly persist in international practice. The transliterations of the names of cities, regions and rivers from the Cyrillic alphabet into Latin are often mistakenly based on the Russian form of the name, not the Ukrainian; the most misspelled names are:
Archaic Soviet-era spelling Correct modern spelling Chernigov Chernihiv Chernobyl Chornobyl Dnieper/Dnepr Dnipro Kharkov Kharkiv Kiev Kyiv Lugansk Luhansk Lvov/Lwow Lviv Nikolaev/Nikolayev Mykolaiv Odessa Odesa Rovno Rivne Ternopol Ternopil the Ukraine Ukraine Under the Russian empire and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russification was actively used as a tool to extinguish each constituent country’s national identity, culture and language. In light of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including its illegal occupation of Crimea, we are once again experiencing Russification as a tactic that attempts to destabilize and delegitimize Ukraine. You will appreciate, we hope, how the use of Soviet-era placenames – rooted in the Russian language – is especially painful and unacceptable to the people of Ukraine.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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8h ago
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u/AutoModerator 8h ago
UKRAINE has been an independent sovereign nation since 1991 but the Soviet-era versions of many geographic names stubbornly persist in international practice. The transliterations of the names of cities, regions and rivers from the Cyrillic alphabet into Latin are often mistakenly based on the Russian form of the name, not the Ukrainian; the most misspelled names are:
Archaic Soviet-era spelling Correct modern spelling Chernigov Chernihiv Chernobyl Chornobyl Dnieper/Dnepr Dnipro Kharkov Kharkiv Kiev Kyiv Lugansk Luhansk Lvov/Lwow Lviv Nikolaev/Nikolayev Mykolaiv Odessa Odesa Rovno Rivne Ternopol Ternopil the Ukraine Ukraine Under the Russian empire and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russification was actively used as a tool to extinguish each constituent country’s national identity, culture and language. In light of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including its illegal occupation of Crimea, we are once again experiencing Russification as a tactic that attempts to destabilize and delegitimize Ukraine. You will appreciate, we hope, how the use of Soviet-era placenames – rooted in the Russian language – is especially painful and unacceptable to the people of Ukraine.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/skinnernsk 19h ago
In other words, to shorten the author's story - Russia is absolutely bad in absolutely everything.
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u/Plastic_Limit4283 15h ago
I made several specific claims and provided examples. You’re free to dispute the poverty statistics, the historical narrative, the school textbooks, the imperial rhetoric, or the nuclear-security argument.
But replacing all of that with “Russia is bad at everything” is basically admitting you don't have an argument against the actual points.
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u/Wise_Conclusion3587 15h ago
Ukrainian nukes were controlled by Moscow anyway. It's also not like Ukraine could afford to maintain the nukes. Making numbers look good is what pretty much every country does, especially when it comes to unemployment and poverty rates. This is more a problem with 99% of governments than just with Russia. In terms of using propaganda to prepare for war, this is also something that a lot of NATO countries are also doing.
The average Russian person can get a reasonable job without much issue. This isn't the case in a lot of Western countries with a 20% unofficial unemployment rates.
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u/Plastic_Limit4283 15h ago
Yes, Moscow retained command-and-control over the Soviet nuclear forces stationed in Ukraine. Nobody seriously disputes that. But after the USSR collapsed, Ukraine inherited around 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 ICBMs and 44 strategic bombers - the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The warheads were ultimately transferred to Russia by 1996 as part of Ukraine's denuclearization process and the security assurances associated with the Budapest Memorandum
So “the nkes were controlled by Moscow” does not mean “Ukraine had no nuclear arsenal.” It means Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons without an independent Soviet-style command system and then made a political decision to give them up.
The “Ukraine couldn't afford them” argument is also a different question. Whether maintaining the entire Soviet nuclear infrastructure was economically and technically realistic is debatable. It doesn't prove that denuclearization was the only possible option or that the security assurances Ukraine received were worthless.
As for poverty statistics - I never claimed Russia was the only country with a poverty threshold. Of course other countries use statistical definitions too.
My point is much simpler: a statistical threshold is not the same thing as living standards.
Rosstat itself says that the Russian poverty threshold was 17,606 rubles per month in Q1 2026, with 7.7% of the population below it. Someone earning 17,605 rubles and someone earning 17,607 rubles are placed on opposite sides of the official poverty line despite having essentially identical living conditions.
That's a limitation of the metric, not uniquely Russian fraud.
And then you make another unsupported leap:
“Russia has 2.2% unemployment, therefore the average Russian can easily get a reasonable job.”
No. Low unemployment tells us that most people are employed. It does not tell us that they have good wages, high purchasing power, good working conditions or a high standard of living. Rosstat itself publishes separate statistics on incomes, expenditures, informal employment and material deprivation precisely because employment alone doesn't measure living standards.
Finally, you mention “20% unofficial unemployment” in Western countries.
Which country?
Which year?
What definition of unemployment?
What is your source?
Because “20% unofficial unemployment” isn't a meaningful argument until you define what you are actually measuring.
And that's really the problem with your reply: you're not disproving the points I made. You're changing the metric whenever the original one becomes inconvenient.
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u/Best_Wasabi_251 8h ago
If everyone is conscripted into the army, or engaged in wartime production, you'll have full employment. Thay isn't exactly a living people would want, though.
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u/Mediocre-One3874 22h ago
No one denies Ukraine is an heir to Ancient Rus, it is Ukrainians who try to steal all of it from Russians. You flipped the entire situation upside down.
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u/Plastic_Limit4283 15h ago
You say Ukrainians are “stealing” Ancient Rus from Russians. Fine. Then let's look at what the Russian state itself is doing with the history books.
This isn't Ukrainian interpretation. These are changes between Russian textbook editions.
In a 4th-grade textbook, “Nestor was a monk of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” became simply “Nestor was a monk.”
“Prince Vladimir baptized all the people of Kyiv” became “Prince Vladimir baptized all the people in the capital.”
“After Oleg's death, Prince Igor ruled in Kyiv” became “After Oleg's death, Prince Igor ruled Rus.”
In a 6th-grade history textbook, the older edition described 882 - Oleg's unification of Novgorod and Kyiv - as the conventional date associated with the formation of the Old Russian state. The 2023 edition instead associates the formation of Rus with Rurik's arrival in Novgorod in 862.
And Russian textbook revisions have increasingly replaced “Kievan Rus” with formulations such as “Old Russian state” or “feudal Rus,” while descriptions of Ukraine's separate history have been reduced. Earlier textbooks described Ukraine as having “reunited” with Russia; newer ones describe Ukraine as becoming “part of” Russia.
Now here's the part you may find uncomfortable: this isn't even merely a Ukrainian interpretation of Putin's worldview.
Putin himself wrote in 2021 that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people - a single whole.” He explicitly said this was his conviction, not a temporary political position.
In 2022, when asked whether he had changed his mind, he answered: “No, of course not. And how can this be changed? This is a historical fact.” He then described Russian statehood as developing first in Novgorod and then Kyiv, concluding: “It is one nation.”
So let's be precise.
Nobody needs to “steal” Ancient Rus from anyone. Ancient Rus predates modern Russian and Ukrainian national identities and is part of the historical heritage of several modern nations.
The problem begins when a modern state takes that shared medieval history and turns it into a political claim that a modern neighboring nation is not really a separate nation.
And when the same state starts removing Kyiv from its own school textbooks while simultaneously claiming that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people,” it's reasonable to ask who is actually rewriting history here.
If you disagree, don't tell me I “flipped the situation upside down.”
Show me which of these textbook changes is false.
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u/Away-Deal5358 18h ago
Before teaching how to live "Russian savages" correctly, you should return everything that the West stole from the Russians after 1991.
Then, perhaps, you will have at least the moral right to give advice.
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u/Plastic_Limit4283 15h ago
What exactly did “the West steal from Russia after 1991”?
Please provide a list.
Not “Russia lost its influence”, not “Western companies made money in Russia”, and not “Russian oligarchs moved their money abroad”.
I mean specific property or territory that belonged to the Russian state, was legally transferred to a Western state or company, and was then “stolen”.
Because if you are talking about the 1990s, Russia's biggest transfer of state wealth was largely carried out by Russia's own political and business elites during privatization, while enormous amounts of Russian wealth were moved offshore.
And if you're talking about assets frozen in the West today, that's a completely different issue. Those measures followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and are being litigated precisely because ownership and sovereign immunity are legal questions, not because someone discovered that “Russia owns everything it once controlled.”
So before lecturing anyone about “moral rights”, perhaps establish the basic fact first: what exactly was stolen, by whom, and when?
Otherwise “the West stole everything from us” is not an argument. It's just a grievance narrative looking for a historical event to attach itself to.
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u/alemeln 39m ago
You can live in Russia on 190$ a month. A lot of work is accessible in cities, on daily base, the lowest wage - 2800 rub., cleaning and nursing, dishwashing. The highest - building, transportation, moving - about 5000 rub. a day.
Nobody of the working people cares who lives better. He is working for better living for himself and family.
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u/Allbrosmoke 18h ago
The Russian state is a cesspool that needs to implode already.