Talisman in the form of a dragon for a rich new life. A new social group has appeared in Russia - the new poor Russians. The new rich on the radio.

1) Introduction.___________________________ _____________________________________2

2) The poor of modern Russia._______________________ _____3-7

3) The rich of Russia today.___________________8-10

4) How do the rich differ from the poor?____________________11-14

5) Conclusion._________________ _________________________________15

6) List of References. __________________ __________________16

Introduction.

I looked at the problem of how widespread poverty and wealth are in Russia, and I studied how representatives of these segments of the population live today. I examined the features and characteristics of their consumer preferences.

The relevance of my topic is that the number of poor people is growing, and at the same time the rich people are not decreasing either, we see this every day and live next to it.

Modern society is divided into classes. The concept of class, introduced at one time into scientific circulation by Thierry and Guise primarily to designate the political division of society, later acquired an almost exclusively economic character. Sociology owes this approach mainly to K. Marx and M. Weber, who used the concept of class in the most expanded form.
Social class is one of the central problems of sociology, which still causes conflicting opinions. Class is understood in two senses - broad and narrow.
In a broad sense, a class is understood as a large social group of people who own or do not own the means of production, occupy a certain place in the system of social division of labor and are characterized by a specific way of generating income. Already in the Ancient East and ancient Greece, there were two opposing classes - slaves and slave owners. Feudalism and capitalism are no exception - and there were antagonistic classes: exploiters and exploited. This is the point of view of K. Marx, which is still adhered to today not only by domestic, but also by foreign sociologists.
In a narrow sense, class is any social stratum in modern society that differs from others in income, education, power and prestige. The second point of view prevails in foreign sociology, and is now acquiring the rights of citizenship in domestic sociology as well. In modern society, based on the described criteria, several strata that transform into each other, called classes, are distinguished. Some sociologists find six classes, others count five, etc. According to the narrow interpretation, there were no classes either under slavery or under feudalism. They appeared only under capitalism and mark the transition from a closed to an open society

The poor of modern Russia.

Theoretically, poverty is the inability to maintain a certain acceptable standard of living. However, in Russia, the official and most common method of assessing need is not a comprehensive study of the features and elements characterizing the differentiation of living standards, but rather a measurement of the income security of the population. This ignores the wide range of other available resources that influence the maintenance of people's material well-being. Assessing such a complex social phenomenon as poverty is difficult if one rigid criterion is chosen as the basis for separating the poor from the non-poor. This applies, first of all, to the approach based on the criterion of average per capita income. In the context of Russia's transition to a market, which is accompanied by economic instability, inflation, shadow processes, the use of per capita income as the only criterion in assessing real poverty can often give a distorted picture of the phenomenon. Firstly, the objectivity of the per capita income declared by respondents is extremely difficult to verify, and secondly, it alone is clearly not enough to understand what resources a modern Russian family actually has. The application of this criterion is limited in conditions of a highly differentiated pattern of interregional differences.

If we consider poverty in this particular context, we can find that the degree of neediness manifests itself not only (and not so much) in the low per capita income of a certain group of the Russian population, but in being below a certain critical threshold, the poverty line, due to material accumulations accumulating over time. deprivation and lack of a number of significant resources. The age of the average poor person in Russia is 47 years old, while the average rich person is 33 years old, and a representative of the middle class is 42 years old. The poor also differ in the demographic composition of their households. Here, compared to the population as a whole, the proportion of large, single-parent, and other problem types of families is higher, in particular, multi-generational families with pensioners, disabled people and children at the same time. Only 37.8% of poor families do not have any economically inactive adult family member (whether retired or unemployed), while for the average Russian family this figure is 47.2%, and for a wealthy one - 80. 1%. In addition, the author writes that there is an obvious tendency for Russian poverty to shift towards small towns and rural settlements. If on average in Russia, according to the survey and the methodology we applied, there are 23.4% living below the poverty line, then in rural areas - 30.6%, in small towns - 24.2%, and in large regional and capital regions - 18- 19%. The daily life of the Russian poor, in their opinion, differs from all other groups of Russian society primarily in the nature of food, the quality of occupied housing, the level of medical care, the availability of purchase and the quality of clothing and shoes.

What is the economic potential of the poor, primarily property? Davydova emphasizes that the ability to meet the needs for acquiring and renewing basic durable goods is one of the most significant characteristics that distinguishes the life of poor families from the life of not only the rich, but also the majority of Russians. An analysis of the property security of the population as a whole shows that there are a number of durable items that the vast majority of the population possesses, which are undoubtedly recognized as necessary for creating and maintaining a normal living space, regardless of whether a person is rich or poor. If any Russian family finds itself deprived of these very fundamental items in its daily life, its standard of living is truly low. One of the results of the study was the identification of this generally recognized set of property, the absence of which definitely indicates a slide below the poverty line in modern Russia. Without fail, it includes a refrigerator (only 1.3% of the population as a whole do not have it), a color TV (5.4% do not have it), a carpet or rug (6.7% of respondents do not have it), as well as a washing machine , vacuum cleaner and any furniture set, including a wall, kitchen, upholstered furniture, etc. (from 14.9 to 17.9% of Russians do not have them). Let us immediately make a reservation that our task in this case did not include assessing the qualitative state of these durable items - to assess the standard of living of the population from the standpoint of being below the poverty line, the very fact of their presence or absence in the family is enough. Nadezhda Markovna also advises refraining from making the compulsory property set absolute (in the sense of asserting that a family is poor because it does not, say, have a vacuum cleaner).
The point is that the inability to provide oneself with this minimum necessary set of life goods in modern Russia indicates a tendency to gradually slide below the poverty line (where the degree of impoverishment itself may remain different). At the same time, it is obvious (and statistically proven fact) that the absence of at least two of the above types of property (for example, a refrigerator and a television) is a clear sign of existence at the poverty level.

Low resource endowment means that the poor have much less opportunity to use certain types of strategically important property (dacha, garage, car, etc.) as needed to maintain their level of material well-being: usually they simply do not have them. The most needy group of the population is half as likely as the average Russian to have a dacha, a garden plot with a summer house. But if for the poor living in rural areas and small towns, this factor is partially compensated by the presence of land, vegetable gardens, and subsidiary plots (our data show that village residents have land and livestock almost regardless of the depth of their impoverishment, the only difference is in the volume of these resources) , then the position of the urban poor from the point of view of their ability to use land and a personal plot to provide food themselves turns out to be much more unprofitable.

Poor Russians have quite limited opportunities for introducing personal subsidiary farming (PHS) - they are one and a half times lower than for the population as a whole. The myth that exists in the mass consciousness that the needy population of Russia survives mainly due to dacha and vegetable gardening activities requires a certain adjustment - dacha and vegetable gardening activities may serve as a significant help for the middle-income segments of the population, but the poor segments for the most part are deprived of access and to this resource for improving one’s own position. The extreme limitation of the resource potential of the poor (both in monetary terms and in property terms) directly determines other features of their economic behavior. These studies show that a number of effective elements of this behavior - savings, investments, exploitation of accumulated property - are initially unfeasible for poor Russians. Just 7.1% of the poor have at least some savings (in contrast to a quarter of the population overall and 80.9% of the rich). On the contrary, the poor tend to gradually accumulate debt (a third of the poor, i.e., twice as many as the population as a whole, reported that they have to regularly borrow money to maintain their level of material well-being). Accumulated small debts are present in 38.7% of poor families; in addition, a quarter of the poor state that they also have rent debts. In more prosperous groups of the population, living in debt still does not acquire the same scale as among the poor. The acute shortage of any material resources among the poor leads to the fact that every second of them is not able to use any paid services that are available to other segments of the Russian population. Thus, about 90% of the poor do not resort to paid educational services, over 95% do not resort to health services, and almost 60% do not use medical services. The lag in the consumption capabilities of the poor, especially in the areas of education, health, recreation, and recreation, is obvious. The fact that some of the poor still manage to use paid medical services reflects not their capabilities in this area, but rather the obvious replacement of free medical care in Russia with a pseudo-market option and the urgent need of the poor for medical services. Judging by self-assessments, only 9.2% of the poor today can say with some confidence that their health is fine, while 40.5%, on the contrary, are sure that their health is poor. The fear of losing health and the inability to receive medical care even in urgent need form the basis of the life fears and fears of the overwhelming majority of the poor.

According to the study, a significant proportion of the Russian population (23.1%) is seriously concerned about the lack of prospects for children, and it is for the poor that this problem in practice becomes most acute. As noted, good educational opportunities, including extracurricular activities for children and adults, are now among the top five most significant factors that differentiate the lives of poor families from those of everyone else. Already, the overwhelming majority of the Russian poor (62.2%) assess their own opportunities for obtaining the education and knowledge that they need as poor (the population as a whole tends to make this assessment only in a third of cases, the rich almost never). Only every tenth poor family in Russia manages to pay for educational services, and as a result, among the poor there is a growing belief that they “would like to get a good education, but it’s unlikely to be possible” (41.1% of the poor compared to 29.7 % of the general population). And here a new problem arises, the severity of which is not yet fully understood by the Russian state. Excessive polarization of society, a progressive narrowing of social opportunities for its most deprived groups, inequality of life chances depending on the level of material security will soon lead to increased reproduction of Russian poverty, a sharp limitation of opportunities for children from poor families to achieve the same things in life as the majority their peers from other social strata. The flip side of this problem will be a reduction in the influx of talented youth into the Russian economy and, as a result, a decrease in the competitiveness of the country's economy. Already now, the poor, as a clearly defined social group, rarely manage to achieve any significant changes in their situation, solve a difficult family problem, stop the decline in living standards, or break out of the circle of failures that haunt them. Over the past three years, only 5.5% of them managed to raise the level of their financial situation (among the population as a whole - 22.7%); 9.0% - increase the level of education and qualifications (general population - 20.7%); only 7.9% of the poor managed to get a promotion at work or find a new suitable job (for the general population - 17.4%); 3.7% allowed themselves expensive purchases - furniture, a car, a dacha, an apartment (the general population - 15.5%); finally, a few poor people (less than 1%) managed to visit another country in the world (population - 4.8%). In total, three quarters of Russia's poor have not been able to change anything for the better in their current situation over three years. While the chances of this for the wealthier segments of the population were much higher and grew in proportion to the growth of their material wealth. The situation with the growing impoverishment of the poor is close to critical in many respects: half of them state that they have poor nutrition, up to 70-80% do not have any opportunities for normal leisure and recreation, and, finally, every third Russian poor has already lost so much faith in the possibility of changing the situation , that he has practically come to terms with the fact that his life is going badly (on average for the array of respondents - every tenth).

The problem becomes obvious: the constantly depleting resources of Russia's poor must somehow be replenished. The structure of their income as a whole is not very different from the structure of income of the population - in both cases, it is based on income from employment (salary at the main or additional place of work) and social transfers (pensions, benefits, alimony, etc.). d.). For the poor, wages, earnings and transfers are 69.6, 16.1 and 43.1%, for the population as a whole - 74.1, 19.7 and 36.5%, respectively. Other sources of income (from property, from renting property, interest on deposits, investments, from own business) do not occupy any place in the total structure of income of the poor, and extremely insignificant - in the total structure of income of the population as a whole. Some socio-demographic features of the poor group (its greater economic inactivity, associated mainly with the large proportion of family members such as pensioners, children, disabled people, the unemployed) inevitably shifts the income structure of needy families towards a decreasing role of wages and increasing the importance of social transfers, the inadequacy of which has already been mentioned. But this is only one, and by no means the main aspect of the problem of the poor in Russia. The main thing is that the same socio-demographic characteristics entail a large dependency burden on the income of workers, if any in the family of the poor. And they are present in 81.7% of cases (for the population as a whole - in 87.5% of families). However, income from employment with an increased dependent burden, low wages, and closed access to other sources of income due to the low social and resource potential of the poor is not enough to escape from poverty. Therefore, one should not focus on the fact that the poor lack the social transfers they receive - they often simply lack normal employment opportunities that can provide for the basic basic needs of their families.

The rich of Russia today.

The Russian rich differ from the rest of the population primarily in some significant features of their socio-demographic composition: higher educational and qualification potential, younger age and a lower proportion of pensioners in their families. For example, among representatives of the rich strata there are only 6.6% of multi-generational households, while among the population as a whole there are twice as many such households - 13.9%.

Despite the general similarity of ideas of different groups of Russians about the specifics of life of rich people in Russia, there are several points that differentiate these ideas. Thus, for the rich themselves, the wide educational opportunities that are available to them are of relatively greater importance. If among the population as a whole this position is noted by 41% of respondents, then among the rich it is highlighted by more than half of the respondents - 53.5%. At the same time, in the views of the rich, positions related to consumer opportunities play relatively less importance (compared to the population as a whole) - this applies to the opportunity to spend a vacation abroad, the level of medical care, the purchase of real estate abroad, and the availability of expensive car. Considering the peculiarities of the socio-professional and educational status of the rich segments of the population, as well as the fact that 42.4% of them named the presence of high qualifications among the five main reasons for the well-being of the rich, the emphasis on access to quality education is not surprising. However, the most important thing in determining the specifics of the lives of rich people in modern Russia from the point of view of both the rich themselves and the population as a whole are the characteristics of their consumption. What, in real life, and not just in the imagination of the population, are the main “consumer” characteristics of the lives of rich Russians? Before answering this question, it is necessary to at least roughly estimate the gap in per capita income between the rich sections of the population and its most disadvantaged part. As research data show, this gap reaches 20 times. Taking into account the fact that in most cases representatives of the rich segments of the population underestimate their incomes during surveys, this gap is even more significant, but even what we have today speaks volumes.

The difference in the financial resources available to the rich and the poor is even more obvious in the presence of savings sufficient for a person and his family to live on for at least a year. The share of rich respondents who have the necessary means for this is more than 11 times higher than the corresponding figure for the population as a whole and almost 80 times higher for the poor. It is assumed that representatives of different strata imply qualitatively different levels of spending. The gap in current incomes and disposable resources also predetermines differences in the quality and level of consumption of rich people in comparison with the bulk of the Russian population (and not just with the poor stratum itself).

The next group of items that determine the specifics of Russian consumption are items that are also widely distributed among the population as a whole, but in their regard the gap in consumption between the rich and everyone else is 2-4 times. These are home computers, a mobile phone, a stereo system, a microwave oven, a food processor and other household appliances. Among rich people, the vast majority (almost all) have them, while among the population as a whole, at most a third have these household items. We can say that today even these things that have become familiar can be considered as items of elite consumption. However, it is clear that in the near future a number of them will become a necessary and accessible element of life for wider sections of Russians and will cease to serve as a watershed in the consumption styles of the rich and the population as a whole. A definite confirmation of this is data on the regional profile of the availability of consumer goods of this group. In a number of regions characterized by the greatest dynamism of socio-economic development (Moscow and St. Petersburg, Northern and Northwestern regions), differences in the possession of individual items of this group in different segments of the population are reduced by almost half. At the same time, for example, the shares of owners of household appliances (microwave oven, food processor, toaster, etc.) in Moscow and the Northern region among rich people and in the population as a whole are almost equal, and the use of mobile phones and stereo systems by the rich in Moscow exceeds the corresponding figure for Muscovites as a whole is no more than one and a half times. The specifics of Russian consumer behavior are also recorded as they consume various types of services. Only 3% of the rich have not used any paid services over the past three years. The overwhelming majority (88.8%) used paid medical services, 61.4% carried out their own construction or bought housing, paid education for themselves or their children, as well as recreation and health improvement could be afforded (or considered necessary) by more than half of the rich. 46.9% of respondents from the most prosperous segments of the population went on tourist or educational trips abroad (either themselves or one of their family members)

In terms of consumption of many paid services, well-off Russians differ sharply from the rest of the population (the gap in consumption ranges from 2 to 8 times). Moreover, the differentiation of the rich strata and the population according to this criterion is of a slightly different nature compared to the differentiation of consumption of household items. If, among household items, there is still a considerable range of things that are equally accessible to the rich, the poor, and the population as a whole, and a number of elements of the object-material environment, although different in the degree of accessibility, are accessible in principle, then the consumption of paid services by too many positions are not sufficiently accessible to the vast majority. The only position for which consumption covers more than half of the population is paid medicine. In our opinion, it is the specific differentiation of consumption in the service sector between the rich, the poor and the population as a whole that, in a sense, predetermines the potential for further isolation of the rich group. The data obtained reflect the process of conservation of differences in the way and lifestyle of the rich strata in comparison with the rest, less affluent population, and primarily in terms of the formation of their resource potential. And these resource differences are reflected in the real life practices of representatives of different social strata. A strong resource component determines not only the current and expected level and lifestyle of rich people, but also many life opportunities for the next generation of representatives of this social group.

Thus, when assessing their own achievements, and most importantly, future opportunities in various spheres of life and activity, young Russians clearly differentiate in their assessments depending on their belonging to one or another segment of the population. Our research data shows that in many important areas related to life prospects, poor youth in general are characterized by a much greater degree of pessimism than their rich peers. And the highest degree of separation between rich youth and the bulk of young Russians is in such opportunities as the opportunity to see the world, become a rich or famous person, have their own business, get a good education and an interesting, prestigious job, and gain access to power. The high level of material security of rich Russians also affects the formation of specific strategies of economic behavior among their representatives. Firstly, more than half of the surveyed representatives of the rich strata (56.1%) do not make any additional efforts at all to somehow improve the financial situation of their family, since they simply do not need it. The rest focus their additional efforts either on intensive work activity (for example, 14.5% of the rich, primarily specialists and the self-employed, engage in part-time work in several places and overtime work at the main workplace), or on the use of available resources ( for example, 10.9% receive income from renting out their property), or from interest on existing savings. Among the population as a whole, 76.9% are forced to resort to additional measures to improve their financial situation, and another 14.8% would like to do something, but do not see such an opportunity. At the same time, for the majority of the population, the main ways to improve their situation are the provision of food and/or one-time or temporary extra work. Qualitatively different in level and lifestyle from the bulk of the population, rich Russians occupy fundamentally different positions in their assessments of various aspects of their lives. This is fundamentally different from the indicators for the population as a whole, where the share of the “bad” answer for certain items could reach up to 50%.
An integral assessment of how life is developing in general shows that a significant proportion of the Russian population (66.9%) assesses it more or less satisfactorily, then
how almost three-quarters of the rich think it's good. The only point that the rich part of the country's population (66.7%) is not too happy with is the level of their personal security. At the same time, concern about personal safety is typical, first of all, of entrepreneurs and managers of the first and second levels.

How do the rich differ from the poor?

Researchers propose using a “multidimensional approach to separate the poor from the non-poor, taking into account not only the volume of current cash income of the population, but also the specifics of its resource endowment as a whole,” meaning “primarily the accumulated property potential.”

Indeed, it is not entirely correct to judge the level and quality of life only on the basis of average per capita income, since 1) people tend to invent fables about their income; 2) in reality, a family may have resources that go beyond daily income; 3) with approximately the same income, you can lead a different lifestyle; 4) the same nominal monetary incomes in different regions of the country may have different product content, etc. In general, the cited provisions and the arguments in their favor that we have retold look convincing. It is also known from fiction that housing, household items, clothing, etc. carry information about the property status, lifestyle and even the character of their owner. And yet, the question of using the criterion of resource provision (accumulated property potential) to characterize the level and quality of life of the population requires clarification, which we will try to do. Let us apply the named characteristic (accumulated property potential) to the solution of the question not about the differences between the poor and the non-poor in general, but about the identification of different levels within the framework of poverty itself, about the differences between “simply poverty” and poverty in relation to modern Russian society. This issue is discussed in the article by N.E. Tikhonova: “...the level and lifestyle that corresponds more to the concept of “poverty” than “just poverty” is distinguished by the following characteristics: accumulated debts, including for rent, the absence of such household items (even very old ones) as a vacuum cleaner, a furniture wall or upholstered furniture, a carpet, a color TV, as well as poor living conditions... inaccessibility of any paid services... on average, lower incomes than those of the simply poor. We think that the listed characteristics of poverty, taken as a whole, in the aggregate, truly reflect the realities of modern Russian society. Let us pay attention to such a sign of poverty, in contrast to “simply poverty,” as the lack of a vacuum cleaner, upholstered furniture, and other named items. Let's build a chain of reasoning: if the absence of these household items is one of the distinguishing signs of poverty from “simply poverty,” then it turns out that the presence of these items in the household is a sign of a slightly more decent property status than poverty, i.e. “simply poverty” The article does not directly state this, but such a conclusion suggests itself; it follows from the logic of the presentation, from the fact that we are talking about characteristics that make it possible to distinguish between “simply poverty” and poverty.

Inequality and poverty are concepts closely related to social stratification. Inequality characterizes the uneven distribution of society's scarce resources - money, power, education and prestige - between different strata or segments of the population. The main measure of inequality is the amount of liquid assets. This function is usually performed by money (in primitive societies inequality was expressed in the number of small and large livestock, shells, etc.).
If inequality is represented as a scale, then at one pole there will be those who own the most (the rich), and at the other - the least (the poor) amount of goods. Thus, poverty is the economic and sociocultural state of people who have a minimum amount of liquid assets and limited access to social benefits.
Poverty is not only a minimum income, but a special way of life and lifestyle, norms of behavior, stereotypes of perception and psychology passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, sociologists talk about poverty as a special subculture.
The most common and easy-to-calculate way to measure inequality is to compare the lowest and highest incomes in a given country. P. Sorokin compared different countries and different historical eras in this way. This phenomenon is called inequality scale. For example, in medieval Germany the ratio of top to bottom income was 10,000:1, and in medieval England it was 600:1. Another way is to analyze the share of family income spent on food. It turns out that the rich pay only 5-7% for food. The poorer the individual, the more money he spends on food, and vice versa.
The essence of social inequality lies in the unequal access of different categories of the population to socially significant benefits, scarce resources, and liquid values. The essence of economic inequality is that a minority of the population always owns the majority of national wealth. In other words, the highest incomes are received by the smallest part of society, and the average and lowest incomes are received by the majority of the population. The latter can be distributed in different ways. In the United States, the lowest incomes, like the highest ones, are received by a minority of the population, and the average income is received by the majority. In Russia today, the lowest incomes are received by the majority, the average incomes by a relatively large group, and the highest incomes by a minority of the population. Accordingly, the income pyramid, its distribution between population groups, in other words, inequality, in the first case can be depicted as a rhombus, and in the second - as a cone. As a result, we will obtain a stratification profile.
While inequality characterizes society as a whole, poverty affects only part of the population. Depending on how high the level of economic development of a country is, poverty affects a significant or insignificant part of the population. As we have seen, in 1992, in the United States, 14% of the population was classified as poor, and in Russia - 80%.
Sociologists call the scale of poverty the proportion of a country's population (usually expressed as a percentage) living below the official poverty line or threshold. The terms “poverty level”, “poverty lines” and “poverty coefficient” are also used to indicate the scale of poverty.
The poverty threshold is an amount of money (usually expressed, for example, in dollars or rubles) officially established as the minimum income through which an individual or family is able to purchase food, clothing and housing. It is also called the “poverty level”. In Russia, it received an additional name - the living wage.

In sociology, a distinction is made between absolute and relative poverty.
Absolute poverty is understood as a condition in which an individual
etc.................

Social stratification is a central theme of sociology. It describes social inequality in society, the division of social strata by income level and lifestyle, by the presence or absence of privileges. In primitive society, inequality was insignificant, so stratification was almost absent there. In complex societies, inequality is very strong; it divides people according to income, level of education, and power. Castes arose, then estates, and later classes. In some societies, transition from one social layer (stratum) to another is prohibited; There are societies where such a transition is limited, and there are societies where it is completely permitted. Freedom of social movement (mobility) determines whether a society is closed or open.

1. Components of stratification

The term “stratification” comes from geology, where it refers to the vertical arrangement of the Earth’s layers. Sociology has likened the structure of society to the structure of the Earth and placed social layers (strata) also vertically. The basis is income ladder: The poor occupy the bottom rung, the wealthy groups occupy the middle rung, and the rich occupy the top rung.

The rich occupy the most privileged positions and have the most prestigious professions. As a rule, they are better paid and involve mental work and management functions. Leaders, kings, czars, presidents, political leaders, big businessmen, scientists and artists make up the elite of society. The middle class in modern society includes doctors, lawyers, teachers, qualified employees, the middle and petty bourgeoisie. The lower strata include unskilled workers, the unemployed, and the poor. The working class, according to modern ideas, constitutes an independent group that occupies an intermediate position between the middle and lower classes.

The wealthy upper class have higher levels of education and greater amounts of power. The lower class poor have little power, income, or education. Thus, the prestige of the profession (occupation), the amount of power and the level of education are added to income as the main criterion of stratification.

Income- the amount of cash receipts of an individual or family for a certain period of time (month, year). Income is the amount of money received in the form of wages, pensions, benefits, alimony, fees, and deductions from profits. Income is most often spent on maintaining life, but if it is very high, it accumulates and turns into wealth.

Wealth- accumulated income, i.e. the amount of cash or materialized money. In the second case they are called movable(car, yacht, securities, etc.) and immovable(house, works of art, treasures) property. Usually wealth is transferred by inheritance. Both working and non-working people can receive inheritance, but only working people can receive income. In addition to them, pensioners and the unemployed have income, but the poor do not. The rich can work or not work. In both cases they are owners, because they have wealth. The main asset of the upper class is not income, but accumulated property. The salary share is small. For the middle and lower classes, the main source of existence is income, since the first, if there is wealth, is insignificant, and the second does not have it at all. Wealth allows you not to work, but its absence forces you to work for a salary.

The essence of power- the ability to impose one’s will against the wishes of other people. In a complex society, power institutionalized those. protected by laws and tradition, surrounded by privileges and wide access to social benefits, allows decisions vital for society to be made, including laws that usually benefit the upper class. In all societies, people who have some form of power - political, economic or religious - constitute an institutionalized elite. It determines the domestic and foreign policy of the state, directing it in a direction beneficial to itself, which other classes are deprived of.

Prestige- the respect that a particular profession, position, or occupation enjoys in public opinion. The profession of a lawyer is more prestigious than the profession of a steelmaker or plumber. The position of president of a commercial bank is more prestigious than the position of cashier. All professions, occupations and positions existing in a given society can be arranged from top to bottom on ladder of professional prestige. We define professional prestige intuitively, approximately. But in some countries, primarily in the USA, sociologists measure it using special methods. They study public opinion, compare different professions, analyze statistics and ultimately get an accurate prestige scale. American sociologists conducted the first such study in 1947. Since then, they have regularly measured this phenomenon and monitored how the prestige of the main professions in society changes over time. In other words, they build a dynamic picture.

Income, power, prestige and education determine aggregate socioeconomic status, i.e., the position and place of a person in society. In this case, status acts as a general indicator of stratification. Previously, its key role in the social structure was noted. It now turns out that it plays a vital role in sociology as a whole. The ascribed status characterizes a rigidly fixed system of stratification, i.e. closed society, in which the transition from one stratum to another is practically prohibited. Such systems include slavery and the caste system. The achieved status characterizes the mobile stratification system, or open society, where people are allowed to move freely up and down the social ladder. Such a system includes classes (capitalist society). Finally, feudal society with its inherent class structure should be considered intermediate type i.e. to a relatively closed system. Here transitions are legally prohibited, but in practice they are not excluded. These are the historical types of stratification.

2. Historical types of stratification

Stratification, that is, inequality in income, power, prestige and education, arose with the emergence of human society. It was found in its rudimentary form already in simple (primitive) society. With the advent of the early state - eastern despotism - stratification became stricter, and with the development of European society and the liberalization of morals, stratification softened. The class system is freer than caste and slavery, and the class system that replaced the class system has become even more liberal.

Slavery- historically the first system of social stratification. Slavery arose in ancient times in Egypt, Babylon, China, Greece, Rome and survived in a number of regions almost to the present day. It existed in the USA back in the 19th century.

Slavery- an economic, social and legal form of enslavement of people, bordering on complete lack of rights and extreme inequality. It has evolved historically. The primitive form, or patriarchal slavery, and the developed form, or classical slavery, differ significantly. In the first case, the slave had all the rights of a junior member of the family: he lived in the same house with his owners, participated in public life, married free people, and inherited the owner’s property. It was forbidden to kill him. At the mature stage, the slave was completely enslaved: he lived in a separate room, did not participate in anything, did not inherit anything, did not marry and had no family. It was allowed to kill him. He did not own property, but was himself considered the property of the owner (“a talking instrument”).

This is how slavery turns into slavery. When they talk about slavery as a historical type of stratification, they mean its highest stage.

Castes. Like slavery, the caste system characterizes a closed society and rigid stratification. It is not as ancient as the slave system, and less widespread. While almost all countries went through slavery, of course, to varying degrees, castes were found only in India and partly in Africa. India is a classic example of a caste society. It arose on the ruins of the slave system in the first centuries of the new era.

Caste called a social group (stratum), membership in which a person is obliged solely by birth. He cannot move from one caste to another during his lifetime. To do this, he needs to be born again. The caste position of a person is enshrined in the Hindu religion (it is now clear why castes are not very common). According to its canons, people live more than one life. Each person falls into the appropriate caste depending on what his behavior was in his previous life. If he is bad, then after his next birth he must fall into a lower caste, and vice versa.

In total, there are 4 main castes in India: Brahmans (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), Shudras (workers and peasants) and about 5 thousand non-main castes and subcastes. The untouchables (outcasts) stand out especially - they do not belong to any caste and occupy the lowest position. During industrialization, castes are replaced by classes. The Indian city is increasingly becoming class-based, while the village, where 7/10 of the population lives, remains caste-based.

Estates. The form of stratification that precedes classes is estates. In the feudal societies that existed in Europe from the 4th to the 14th centuries, people were divided into classes.

Estate - a social group that has rights and obligations that are fixed by custom or legal law and are inheritable. A class system that includes several strata is characterized by a hierarchy expressed in the inequality of their position and privileges. The classic example of class organization was Europe, where at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. society was divided into the upper classes (nobility and clergy) and the unprivileged third class (artisans, merchants, peasants). And in the X-XIII centuries. There were three main classes: the clergy, the nobility and the peasantry. In Russia from the second half of the 18th century. The class division into nobility, clergy, merchants, peasantry and petty bourgeoisie (middle urban strata) was established. Estates were based on land ownership.

The rights and duties of each class were determined by legal law and sanctified by religious doctrine. Membership in the estate was determined by inheritance. Social barriers between classes were quite strict, so social mobility existed not so much between classes as within classes. Each estate included many strata, ranks, levels, professions, and ranks. Thus, only nobles could engage in public service. The aristocracy was considered a military class (knighthood).

The higher a class stood in the social hierarchy, the higher its status. In contrast to castes, inter-class marriages were fully tolerated, and individual mobility was also allowed. A simple person could become a knight by purchasing a special permit from the ruler. Merchants acquired noble titles for money. As a relic, this practice has partially survived in modern England.

Russian nobility.
A characteristic feature of classes is the presence of social symbols and signs: titles, uniforms, orders, titles. Classes and castes did not have state distinctive signs, although they were distinguished by clothing, jewelry, norms and rules of behavior, and ritual of address. In feudal society, the state assigned distinctive symbols to the main class - the nobility. What exactly did this mean?

Titles are verbal designations established by law for the official and class-clan status of their owners, which briefly define the legal status. In Russia in the 19th century. there were such titles as “general”, “state councilor”, “chamberlain”, “count”, “adjutant”, “secretary of state”, “excellency” and “lordship”.

Uniforms were official uniforms that corresponded to titles and visually expressed them.

Orders are material insignia, honorary awards that complement titles and uniforms. The rank of order (commander of the order) was a special case of a uniform, and the order badge itself was a common addition to any uniform.

The core of the system of titles, orders and uniforms was the rank - the rank of each civil servant (military, civilian or courtier). Before Peter I, the concept of “rank” meant any position, honorary title, or social position of a person. On January 24, 1722, Peter I introduced a new system of titles in Russia, the legal basis of which was the “Table of Ranks.” Since then, “rank” has acquired a narrower meaning, relating only to public service. The report card provided for three main types of service: military, civilian and court. Each was divided into 14 ranks, or classes.

The civil service was built on the principle that an employee had to go through the entire hierarchy from bottom to top, starting with the service of the lowest class rank. In each class it was necessary to serve a certain minimum of years (in the lowest 3-4 years). There were fewer senior positions than lower ones. Class denoted the rank of a position, which was called class rank. The title “official” was assigned to its owner.

Only the nobility—local and service nobility—were allowed to participate in public service. Both were hereditary: the title of nobility was passed on to the wife, children and distant descendants in the male line. Daughters who married acquired the class status of their husband. Noble status was usually formalized in the form of genealogy, family coat of arms, portraits of ancestors, legends, titles and orders. Thus, a sense of continuity of generations, pride in one’s family and the desire to preserve its good name gradually formed in the mind. Taken together, they constituted the concept of “noble honor,” an important component of which was the respect and trust of others in an untarnished name. The total number of the noble class and class officials (with family members) was equal in the middle of the 19th century. 1 million

The noble origin of a hereditary nobleman was determined by the merits of his family to the Fatherland. Official recognition of such merits was expressed by the common title of all nobles - “your honor.” The private title “nobleman” was not used in everyday life. Its replacement was the predicate “master,” which over time began to refer to any other free class. In Europe, other replacements were used: “von” for German surnames, “don” for Spanish ones, “de” for French ones. In Russia, this formula was transformed into indicating the first name, patronymic and last name. The nominal three-part formula was used only when addressing the noble class: using the full name was the prerogative of the nobles, and the half name was considered a sign of belonging to the ignoble classes.

In the class hierarchy of Russia, the titles achieved and ascribed were very intricately intertwined. The presence of a pedigree indicated the ascribed status, and its absence indicated the achieved one. In the second generation, the achieved (granted) status turned into ascribed (inherited).

Adapted from the source: Shepelev L. E. Titles, uniforms, orders. - M., 1991.

3. Class system

Belonging to a social stratum in slave-owning, caste and class-feudal societies was fixed by official legal or religious norms. In pre-revolutionary Russia, every person knew what class he belonged to. People were, as they say, assigned to one or another social stratum.

In a class society the situation is different. The state does not deal with issues of social security of its citizens. The only controller is the public opinion of people, which is guided by customs, established practices, income, lifestyle and standards of behavior. Therefore, it is very difficult to accurately and unambiguously determine the number of classes in a particular country, the number of strata or layers into which they are divided, and the belonging of people to strata. Criteria are needed that are chosen quite arbitrarily. This is why, in a country as sociologically developed as the United States, different sociologists offer different typologies of classes. In one there are seven, in another there are six, in the third there are five, etc., social strata. The first typology of US classes was proposed in the 40s. XX century American sociologist L. Warner.

Upper-high class included the so-called old families. They consisted of the most successful businessmen and those who were called professionals. They lived in privileged parts of the city.

Low-high class in terms of material well-being it was not inferior to the upper - upper class, but did not include old tribal families.

Upper-middle class consisted of property owners and professionals who had less material wealth compared to people from the two upper classes, but they actively participated in the public life of the city and lived in fairly comfortable areas.

Lower-middle class consisted of low-level employees and skilled workers.

Upper-lower class included low-skilled workers employed in local factories and living in relative prosperity.

Lower-low class consisted of those who are commonly called the “social bottom”. These are the inhabitants of basements, attics, slums and other places unsuitable for living. They constantly feel an inferiority complex due to hopeless poverty and constant humiliation.

In all two-part words, the first word denotes the stratum, or layer, and the second - the class to which this layer belongs.

Other schemes are also proposed, for example: upper-higher, upper-lower, upper-middle, middle-middle, lower-middle, working, lower classes. Or: upper class, upper-middle class, middle and lower-middle class, upper working class and lower working class, underclass. There are many options, but it is important to understand two fundamental points:

• there are only three main classes, whatever they may be called: rich, wealthy and poor;
• non-primary classes arise from the addition of strata, or layers, lying within one of the major classes.

More than half a century has passed since L. Warner developed his concept of classes. Today it has been replenished with another layer and in its final form it represents a seven-point scale.

Upper-high class includes "aristocrats by blood" who emigrated to America 200 years ago and over many generations amassed untold wealth. They are distinguished by a special way of life, high society manners, impeccable taste and behavior.

Lower-upper class consists mainly of the “new rich” who have not yet managed to create powerful clans that have seized the highest positions in industry, business, and politics.

Typical representatives are a professional basketball player or a pop star, who receive tens of millions, but who have no “aristocrats by blood” in their family.

Upper-middle class consists of the petty bourgeoisie and highly paid professionals - large lawyers, famous doctors, actors or television commentators. Their lifestyle is approaching high society, but they cannot afford a fashionable villa in the most expensive resorts in the world or a rare collection of artistic rarities.

Middle-middle class represents the most massive stratum of a developed industrial society. It includes all well-paid employees, moderately paid professionals, in a word, people of intelligent professions, including teachers, teachers, and middle managers. This is the backbone of the information society and the service sector.

Half an hour before work starts
Barbara and Colin Williams are an average English family. They live in a suburb of London, the town of Watford Junction, which can be reached from central London in 20 minutes in a comfortable, clean train carriage. They are over 40 and both work in an optical center. Colin grinds the lenses and puts them into frames, and Barbara sells the finished glasses. So to speak, it’s a family contract, although they are hired workers and not the owners of an enterprise with about 70 optical workshops.

It should not be surprising that the correspondent did not choose to visit the family of factory workers who for many years personified the largest class - the workers. The situation has changed. Of the total number of Britons who have a job (28.5 million people), the majority are employed in the service sector, only 19% are industrial workers. Unskilled workers in the UK receive an average of £908 per month, while skilled workers receive £1,308.

The minimum basic salary Barbara can expect to earn is £530 per month. Everything else depends on her diligence. Barbara admits that she also had “black” weeks when she did not receive bonuses at all, but sometimes she managed to receive bonuses of more than 200 pounds a week. So on average it comes out to about £1,200 a month, plus “the thirteenth salary.” On average, Colin receives about 1,660 pounds a month.

It is clear that the Williamses value their work, although it takes 45-50 minutes to get there by car during rush hour. My question about whether they were often late seemed strange to Barbara: “My husband and I prefer to arrive half an hour before work starts.” The couple regularly pays taxes, income and social security, which is about a quarter of their income.

Barbara is not afraid that she might lose her job. Perhaps this is due to the fact that she was lucky before, she was never unemployed. But Colin had to sit idle for several months at a time, and he recalls how he once applied for a vacant position that had 80 other people applying for it.

As someone who has worked her entire life, Barbara speaks with undisguised disapproval of people taking the dole without making an effort to find a job. “Do you know how many cases there are when people receive benefits, do not pay taxes and secretly earn extra money somewhere,” she is indignant. Barbara herself chose to work even after the divorce, when, having two children, she could live on an allowance that was higher than her salary. In addition, she refused alimony, having agreed with her ex-husband that he would leave the house to her and the children.

The registered unemployed in the UK are about 6%. Unemployment benefit depends on the number of dependents, averaging around £60 per week.

The Williams family spends around £200 a month on food, which is just below the average English household's spending on groceries (9.1%). Barbara buys food for the family at a local supermarket, cooks at home, although 1-2 times a week she and her husband go to a traditional English “pub” (beerhouse), where you can not only drink good beer, but also have an inexpensive dinner, and even play cards .

What distinguishes the Williams family from others is primarily their house, but not in size (5 rooms plus a kitchen), but in its low rent (20 pounds per week), while the “average” family spends 10 times more.

Lower-middle class are made up of low-level employees and skilled workers, who, by the nature and content of their work, gravitate toward mental rather than physical labor. A distinctive feature is a decent lifestyle.

The budget of a Russian miner's family
The street Graudenzerstrasse in the Ruhr city of Recklinghausen (Germany) is located near the General Blumenthal mine. Here, in a three-story, outwardly nondescript house, at number 12 lives the family of the hereditary German miner Peter Scharf.

Peter Scharf, his wife Ulrika and two children - Katrin and Stefanie - occupy a four-room apartment with a total living area of ​​92 m2.

Peter earns 4,382 marks per month from the mine. However, in the printout of his earnings there is a fairly decent deduction column: 291 marks for medical care, 409 marks for a contribution to the pension fund, 95 marks for the unemployment benefit fund.

So, a total of 1253 marks were withheld. Seems like a lot. However, according to Peter, these are contributions to the right cause. For example, health insurance provides preferential treatment not only for him, but also for his family members. This means that they will receive many medications for free. He will pay a minimum for the operation, the rest will be covered by the health insurance fund. For example:

Removing the appendix costs the patient six thousand marks. For a member of the cash register - two hundred marks. Free dental treatment.

Having received 3 thousand marks in his hands, Peter pays 650 marks monthly for the apartment, plus 80 for electricity. His expenses would have been even greater if the mine had not provided each miner with seven tons of coal free of charge each year in terms of social assistance. Including pensioners. For those who don’t need coal, its cost is recalculated to pay for heating and hot water. Therefore, for the Scharf family, heating and hot water are free.

In total, 2250 marks remain on hand. The family does not deny itself food and clothing. Children eat fruits and vegetables all year round, and they are not cheap in winter. They also spend a lot on children's clothing. To this we must add another 50 marks for a telephone, 120 for life insurance for adult family members, 100 for insurance for children, 300 per quarter for car insurance. And by the way, they don’t have a new one - a Volkswagen Passat made in 1981.

1,500 marks are spent monthly on food and clothing. Other expenses, including rent and electricity, are 1150 marks. If you subtract this from the three thousand that Peter receives in his hands at the mine, then a couple of hundred marks remain.

The children go to the gymnasium, Katrin is in the third grade, Stefanie is in the fifth. Parents do not pay anything for education. Only notebooks and textbooks are paid. There are no school breakfasts at the gymnasium. Children bring their own sandwiches. The only thing they are given is cocoa. It costs two marks a week for each person.

His wife Ulrika works three times a week for four hours as a saleswoman in a grocery store. He receives 480 marks, which, of course, is a good help for the family budget.

— Do you put anything in the bank?

“Not always, and if it weren’t for my wife’s salary, we would be breaking even.”

The tariff agreement for miners for this year states that each miner will receive so-called Christmas money at the end of the year. And this is neither more nor less than 3898 marks.

Source: Arguments and Facts. - 1991. - No. 8.

Upper-lower class includes medium- and low-skilled workers employed in mass production, in local factories, living in relative prosperity, but in a manner of behavior significantly different from the upper and middle classes. Distinctive features: low education (usually complete and incomplete secondary, specialized secondary), passive leisure (watching TV, playing cards or dominoes), primitive entertainment, often excessive consumption of alcohol and non-literary language.

Lower-low class are the inhabitants of basements, attics, slums and other places unsuitable for living. They either do not have any education, or have only a primary education, most often survive by doing odd jobs, begging, and constantly feel an inferiority complex due to hopeless poverty and humiliation. They are usually called the “social bottom”, or underclass. Most often, their ranks are recruited from chronic alcoholics, former prisoners, homeless people, etc.

The working class in modern post-industrial society includes two layers: lower-middle and upper-lower. All intellectual workers, no matter how little they earn, are never classified in the lower class.

The middle class (with its inherent layers) is always distinguished from the working class. But the working class is also distinguished from the lower class, which may include the unemployed, the unemployed, the homeless, the poor, etc. As a rule, highly qualified workers are not included in the working class, but in the middle one, but in its lowest stratum, which is filled mainly by low-skilled workers mental labor - employees.

Another option is possible: skilled workers are not included in the middle class, but they constitute two layers in the general working class. Specialists are part of the next layer of the middle class, because the very concept of “specialist” presupposes at least a college-level education.

Between the two poles of the class stratification of American society - the very rich (wealth - $200 million or more) and the very poor (income less than $6.5 thousand per year), who make up approximately the same share of the total population, namely 5% , there is a part of the population that is commonly called the middle class. In industrialized countries it makes up the majority of the population - from 60 to 80%.

The middle class usually includes doctors, teachers and teachers, engineering and technical intelligentsia (including all employees), the middle and petty bourgeoisie (entrepreneurs), highly qualified workers, and executives (managers).

Comparing Western and Russian society, many scientists (and not only them) are inclined to believe that in Russia there is no middle class in the generally accepted sense of the word, or it is extremely small. The basis is two criteria: 1) scientific and technical (Russia has not yet moved to the stage of post-industrial development and therefore the layer of managers, programmers, engineers and workers associated with knowledge-intensive production is smaller here than in England, Japan or the USA); 2) material (the income of the Russian population is immeasurably lower than in Western European society, so a representative of the middle class in the West will turn out to be rich, and our middle class ekes out an existence at the level of the European poor).

The author is convinced that every culture and every society should have its own middle class model, reflecting national specifics. The point is not in the amount of money earned (more precisely, not only in them alone), but in the quality of its spending. In the USSR, most workers received more than the intelligentsia. But what was the money spent on? For cultural leisure, increased education, expansion and enrichment of spiritual needs? Sociological research shows that money was spent on maintaining physical existence, including the cost of alcohol and tobacco. The intelligentsia earned less, but the composition of budget expenditure items did not differ from what the educated part of the population of Western countries spent money on.

The criterion for a country to belong to a post-industrial society is also questionable. Such a society is also called an information society. The main feature and main resource in it is cultural, or intellectual, capital. In a post-industrial society, it is not the working class that rules the roost, but the intelligentsia. It can live modestly, even very modestly, but if it is numerous enough to set living standards for all segments of the population, if it has made the values, ideals and needs it shares become prestigious for other segments, if the majority strives to join its ranks population, there is reason to say that a strong middle class has formed in such a society.

By the end of the existence of the USSR there was such a class. Its boundaries still need to be clarified - it was 10-15%, as most sociologists think, or still 30-40%, as one might assume based on the criteria stated above, this still needs to be talked about and this issue still needs to be studied. After Russia’s transition to the extensive construction of capitalism (which one exactly is still a debatable question), the standard of living of the entire population and especially the former middle class fell sharply. But has the intelligentsia ceased to be such? Hardly. A temporary deterioration in one indicator (income) does not mean a deterioration in another (level of education and cultural capital).

It can be assumed that the Russian intelligentsia, as the basis of the middle class, did not disappear in connection with economic reforms, but rather lay low and wait in the wings. With the improvement of material conditions, its intellectual capital will not only be restored, but also increased. He will be in demand by time and society.

4. Stratification of Russian society

This is perhaps the most controversial and unexplored issue. Domestic sociologists have been studying the problems of the social structure of our society for many years, but all this time their results have been influenced by ideology. Only recently have conditions emerged to objectively and impartially understand the essence of the matter. In the late 80s - early 90s. Sociologists such as T. Zaslavskaya, V. Radaev, V. Ilyin and others proposed approaches to the analysis of the social stratification of Russian society. Despite the fact that these approaches do not agree in many ways, they still make it possible to describe the social structure of our society and consider its dynamics.

From estates to classes

Before the revolution in Russia, the official division of the population was estate, not class. It was divided into two main classes - taxes(peasants, burghers) and tax-exempt(nobility, clergy). Within each class there were smaller classes and layers. The state provided them with certain rights enshrined in law. The rights themselves were guaranteed to the estates only insofar as they performed certain duties in favor of the state (they grew grain, engaged in crafts, served, paid taxes). The state apparatus and officials regulated relations between classes. This was the benefit of bureaucracy. Naturally, the class system was inseparable from the state system. That is why we can define estates as socio-legal groups that differ in the scope of rights and obligations in relation to the state.

According to the 1897 census, the entire population of the country, which is 125 million Russians, was distributed into the following classes: nobles - 1.5% of the entire population, clergy - 0,5%, merchants - 0,3%, philistines - 10,6%, peasants - 77,1%, Cossacks - 2.3%. The first privileged class in Russia was considered the nobility, the second - the clergy. The remaining classes were not privileged. The nobles were hereditary and personal. Not all of them were landowners; many were in government service, which was the main source of subsistence. But those nobles who were landowners constituted a special group - the class of landowners (among the hereditary nobles there were no more than 30% of landowners).

Gradually, classes appeared within other classes. At the turn of the century, the once united peasantry was stratified into poor people (34,7%), middle peasants (15%), wealthy (12,9%), kulaks(1.4%), as well as small and landless peasants, who together made up one third. The bourgeoisie were a heterogeneous formation - the middle urban strata, which included small employees, artisans, handicraftsmen, domestic servants, postal and telegraph employees, students, etc. From their midst and from the peasantry came Russian industrialists, the petty, middle and large bourgeoisie. True, the latter was dominated by yesterday's merchants. The Cossacks were a privileged military class that served on the border.

By 1917 the process of class formation not completed he was at the very beginning. The main reason was the lack of an adequate economic base: commodity-money relations were in their infancy, as was the country’s internal market. They did not cover the main productive force of society - the peasants, who, even after the Stolypin reform, never became free farmers. The working class, numbering about 10 million people, did not consist of hereditary workers; many were half-workers, half-peasants. By the end of the 19th century. The industrial revolution was not completely completed. Manual labor was never replaced by machines, even in the 80s. XX V. it accounted for 40%. The bourgeoisie and proletariat did not become the main classes of society. The government created enormous privileges for domestic entrepreneurs, limiting free competition. The lack of competition strengthened the monopoly and hampered the development of capitalism, which never moved from the early to the mature stage. The low material level of the population and the limited capacity of the domestic market did not allow the working masses to become full-fledged consumers. Thus, the per capita income in Russia in 1900 was 63 rubles per year, and in England - 273, in the USA - 346. The population density was 32 times less than in Belgium. 14% of the population lived in cities, while in England - 78%, in the USA - 42%. Objective conditions for the emergence of a middle class, acting as a stabilizer of society, did not exist in Russia.

Classless society

The October Revolution, carried out by non-class and non-class strata of the urban and rural poor, led by the militant Bolshevik Party, easily destroyed the old social structure of Russian society. On its ruins it was necessary to create a new one. It was officially named classless. So it was in fact, since the objective and only basis for the emergence of classes was destroyed - private property. The process of class formation that had begun was eliminated in the bud. The official ideology of Marxism, which officially equalized everyone in rights and financial status, did not allow the restoration of the class system.

In history, within one country, a unique situation arose when all known types of social stratification - slavery, castes, estates and classes - were destroyed and not recognized as legitimate. However, as we already know, society cannot exist without social hierarchy and social inequality, even the simplest and most primitive. Russia was not one of them.

The arrangement of the social organization of society was undertaken by the Bolshevik Party, which acted as a representative of the interests of the proletariat - the most active, but far from the largest group of the population. This is the only class that survived the devastating revolution and bloody civil war. As a class, it was solidary, united and organized, which could not be said about the peasant class, whose interests were limited to land ownership and the protection of local traditions. The proletariat is the only class of the old society deprived of any form of property. This is exactly what suited the Bolsheviks most of all, who planned for the first time in history to build a society where there would be no property, inequality, or exploitation.

New class

It is known that no social group of any size can spontaneously organize itself, no matter how much it might want to. Administrative functions were taken over by a relatively small group - the Bolshevik political party, which had accumulated the necessary experience over many years of underground activity. Having nationalized land and enterprises, the party appropriated all state property, and with it power in the state. Gradually formed new class party bureaucracy, which appointed ideologically committed personnel - primarily members of the Communist Party - to key positions in the national economy, culture and science. Since the new class acted as the owner of the means of production, it was an exploiting class that exercised control over the entire society.

The basis of the new class was nomenclature - the highest layer of party functionaries. The nomenclature denotes a list of management positions, the replacement of which occurs by decision of a higher authority. The ruling class includes only those who are members of the regular nomenklatura of party organs - from the nomenklatura of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee to the main nomenclature of the district party committees. None of the nomenklatura could be popularly elected or replaced. In addition, the nomenclature included heads of enterprises, construction, transport, agriculture, defense, science, culture, ministries and departments. The total number is about 750 thousand people, and with family members, the number of the ruling class of the nomenklatura in the USSR reached 3 million people, i.e. 1.5% of the total population.

Stratification of Soviet society

In 1950, the American sociologist A. Inkels, analyzing the social stratification of Soviet society, discovered 4 large groups in it - the ruling elite, the intelligentsia, the working class and the peasantry. With the exception of the ruling elite, each group, in turn, split into several layers. Yes, in the group intelligentsia 3 subgroups were found:

the upper stratum, the mass intelligentsia (professionals, middle officials and managers, junior officers and technicians), “white collar workers” (ordinary employees - accountants, cashiers, lower managers). Working class included the “aristocracy” (the most skilled workers), ordinary workers of average skill and lagging, low-skilled workers. Peasantry consisted of 2 subgroups - successful and average collective farmers. In addition to them, A. Inkels especially singled out the so-called residual group, where he included prisoners held in labor camps and correctional colonies. This part of the population, like the outcasts in the Indian caste system, was outside the formal class structure.

The differences in income of these groups turned out to be greater than in the United States and Western Europe. In addition to high salaries, the elite of Soviet society received additional benefits: a personal driver and a company car, a comfortable apartment and a country house, closed shops and clinics, boarding houses, and special rations. Lifestyle, clothing style and behavior patterns also differed significantly. True, social inequality was leveled to a certain extent thanks to free education and healthcare, pension and social insurance, as well as low prices for public transport and low rent.

Summarizing the 70-year period of development of Soviet society, the famous Soviet sociologist T. I. Zaslavskaya in 1991 identified 3 groups in its social system: upper class, lower class and separating them interlayer. The basis upper class constitutes a nomenclature that unites the highest layers of the party, military, state and economic bureaucracy. She is the owner of national wealth, most of which she spends on herself, receiving explicit (salary) and implicit (free goods and services) income. Lower class are formed by hired workers of the state: workers, peasants, intelligentsia. They have no property and no political rights. Characteristic features of the lifestyle: low incomes, limited consumption patterns, overcrowding in communal apartments, low level of medical care, poor health.

Social interlayer between the upper and lower classes form social groups serving the nomenklatura: middle managers, ideological workers, party journalists, propagandists, social studies teachers, medical staff of special clinics, drivers of personal cars and other categories of servants of the nomenklatura elite, as well as successful artists, lawyers, writers, diplomats, commanders of the army, navy, KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Although the service stratum appears to occupy a place that usually belongs to the middle class, such similarities are deceptive. The basis of the middle class in the West is private property, which ensures political and social independence. However, the service stratum is dependent in everything; it has neither private property nor the right to dispose of public property.

These are the main foreign and domestic theories of social stratification of Soviet society. We had to turn to them because the issue is still controversial. Perhaps in the future new approaches will appear that in some ways or in many ways clarify the old ones, because our society is constantly changing, and this sometimes happens in such a way that all the predictions of scientists are refuted.

The uniqueness of Russian stratification

Let us summarize and, from this point of view, determine the main contours of the current state and future development of social stratification in Russia. The main conclusion is the following. Soviet society has never been socially homogeneous, there has always been social stratification in it, which is a hierarchically ordered inequality. Social groups formed something like a pyramid, in which the layers differed in the amount of power, prestige, and wealth. Since there was no private property, there was no economic basis for the emergence of classes in the Western sense. Society was not open, but closed, like class and caste. However, there were no estates in the usual sense of the word in Soviet society, since there was no legal recognition of social status, as was the case in feudal Europe.

At the same time, in Soviet society there actually existed class-like And class-like groups. Let's look at why this was so. For 70 years, Soviet society was most mobile in the world society along with America. Free education available to all classes opened up for everyone the same opportunities for advancement that existed only in the United States. Nowhere in the world has the elite of society been formed in a short period of time from literally all strata of society. According to American sociologists, Soviet society was the most dynamic in terms of not only education and social mobility, but also industrial development. For many years, the USSR held first place in terms of the pace of industrial progress. All these are signs of a modern industrial society that put the USSR, as Western sociologists wrote about, among the leading nations of the world.

At the same time, Soviet society must be classified as class society. The basis of class stratification is non-economic coercion, which persisted in the USSR for more than 70 years. After all, only private property, commodity-money relations and a developed market can destroy it, and they just didn’t exist. The place of legal consolidation of social status was taken by ideological and party status. Depending on party experience and ideological loyalty, a person moved up the ladder or moved down into the “residual group.” Rights and responsibilities were determined in relation to the state; all groups of the population were its employees, but depending on their profession and party membership, they occupied different places in the hierarchy. Although the ideals of the Bolsheviks had nothing in common with feudal principles, the Soviet state returned to them in practice - significantly modifying them - in that. which divided the population into “taxable” and “non-taxable” layers.

Thus, Russia should be classified as mixed type stratification, but with a significant caveat. Unlike England and Japan, feudal remnants were not preserved here in the form of a living and highly respected tradition, they were not layered on the new class structure. There was no historical continuity. On the contrary, in Russia the class system was first undermined by capitalism and then finally destroyed by the Bolsheviks. Classes that did not have time to develop under capitalism were also destroyed. Nevertheless, essential, although modified, elements of both systems of stratification were revived in a type of society that, in principle, does not tolerate any stratification, any inequality. This is historically new and a unique type of mixed stratification.

Stratification of post-Soviet Russia

After the well-known events of the mid-80s and early 90s, called the peaceful revolution, Russia turned to market relations, democracy and a class society similar to the Western one. Over the course of 5 years, the country has almost formed an upper class of property owners, constituting about 5% of the total population, and the social lower classes of society have formed, whose standard of living is below the poverty line. And the middle of the social pyramid is occupied by small entrepreneurs who, with varying degrees of success, are trying to get into the ruling class. As the standard of living of the population rises, the middle part of the pyramid will begin to be replenished with an increasing number of representatives not only of the intelligentsia, but also of all other strata of society oriented towards business, professional work and career. From it the middle class of Russia will be born.

The basis, or social base, of the upper class was still the same nomenclature, who, by the beginning of economic reforms, occupied key positions in economics, politics, and culture. The opportunity to privatize enterprises and transfer them to private and group ownership came at the right time for her. In essence, the nomenklatura only legalized its position as the real manager and owner of the means of production. Two other sources of replenishment of the upper class are businessmen in the shadow economy and the engineering stratum of the intelligentsia. The former were actually the pioneers of private entrepreneurship at a time when engaging in it was persecuted by law. They have behind them not only practical experience in business management, but also prison experience of being persecuted by the law (at least for some). The second are ordinary civil servants who left scientific research institutes, design bureaus and hard labor companies on time, and are the most active and inventive.

Opportunities for vertical mobility opened up very unexpectedly for the majority of the population and closed very quickly. It became almost impossible to get into the upper class of society 5 years after the start of reforms. Its capacity is objectively limited and amounts to no more than 5% of the population. The ease with which large capital investments were made during the first Five-Year Plan of capitalism has disappeared. Today, to gain access to the elite, you need capital and opportunities that most people do not have. It's like it's happening top class closure, it passes laws restricting access to its ranks, creating private schools that make it difficult for others to obtain the education they need. The entertainment sector of the elite is no longer accessible to all other categories. It includes not only expensive salons, boarding houses, bars, clubs, but also holidays at world resorts.

At the same time, access to the rural and urban middle class is open. The stratum of farmers is extremely small and does not exceed 1%. The urban middle strata have not yet formed. But their replenishment depends on how soon the “new Russians,” the elite of society and the country’s leadership will pay for qualified mental work not at the subsistence level, but at its market price. As we remember, the core of the middle class in the West consists of teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, writers, scientists and middle managers. The stability and prosperity of Russian society will depend on success in the formation of the middle class.

5. Poverty and inequality

Inequality and poverty are concepts closely related to social stratification. Inequality characterizes the uneven distribution of society's scarce resources - money, power, education and prestige - between different strata, or layers of the population. The main measure of inequality is the amount of liquid assets. This function is usually performed by money (in primitive societies inequality was expressed in the number of small and large livestock, shells, etc.).

If inequality is represented as a scale, then at one pole there will be those who own the most (the rich), and at the other - the least (the poor) amount of goods. Thus, poverty is the economic and sociocultural state of people who have a minimum amount of liquid assets and limited access to social benefits. The most common and easy-to-calculate way to measure inequality is to compare the lowest and highest incomes in a given country. Pitirim Sorokin compared different countries and different historical eras in this way. For example, in medieval Germany the ratio of top to bottom income was 10,000:1, and in medieval England it was 600:1. Another way is to analyze the share of family income spent on food. It turns out that the rich spend only 5-7% of their family budget on food, and the poor - 50-70%. The poorer the individual, the more he spends on food, and vice versa.

Essence social inequality lies in the unequal access of different categories of the population to social benefits, such as money, power and prestige. Essence economic inequality is that a minority of the population always owns the majority of national wealth. In other words, the highest incomes are received by the smallest part of society, and the average and lowest incomes are received by the majority of the population. The latter can be distributed in different ways. In the United States in 1992, the lowest incomes, as well as the highest, were received by a minority of the population, and the average by the majority. In Russia in 1992, when the ruble exchange rate sharply collapsed and inflation consumed all ruble reserves of the vast majority of the population, the majority received the lowest incomes, a relatively small group received average incomes, and the minority of the population received the highest incomes. Accordingly, the income pyramid, its distribution between population groups, in other words, inequality, in the first case can be depicted as a rhombus, and in the second - as a cone (Diagram 3). As a result, we get a stratification profile, or an inequality profile.

In the USA, 14% of the total population lived near the poverty line, in Russia - 81%, 5% were rich, and those who could be classified as prosperous or middle class were respectively

81% and 14%. (For data on Russia, see: Poverty: Scientists’ views on the problem / Edited by M. A. Mozhina. - M., 1994. - P. 6.)

Rich

The universal measure of inequality in modern society is money. Their number determines the place of an individual or family in social stratification. The rich are those who own the maximum amount of money. Wealth is expressed by a monetary amount that determines the value of everything that a person owns: a house, a car, a yacht, a collection of paintings, shares, insurance policies, etc. They are liquid - they can always be sold. The rich are so called because they own the most liquid assets, be it oil companies, commercial banks, supermarkets, publishing houses, castles, islands, luxury hotels or painting collections. A person who has all this is considered rich. Wealth is something that accumulates over many years and is inherited, which allows you to live comfortably without working.

The rich are called differently millionaires, multimillionaires And billionaires. In the US, wealth is distributed as follows: 1) 0.5% of the super rich own assets worth $2.5 million. and more; 2) 0.5% of the very rich own from 1.4 to 2.5 million dollars;

3) 9% of the rich - from 206 thousand dollars. up to 1.4 million dollars; 4) 90% of the rich class own less than $206 thousand. In total, 1 million people in the United States own assets worth more than $1 million. These include the “old rich” and the “new rich.” The former accumulated wealth over decades and even centuries, passing it on from generation to generation. The latter created their well-being in a matter of years. These include, in particular, professional athletes. It is known that the average annual income of an NBA basketball player is $1.2 million. They have not yet become hereditary nobility, and it is unknown whether they will become one. They can disperse their wealth among many heirs, each of whom will receive a small portion and, therefore, will not be classified as rich. They may go bankrupt or lose their wealth in other ways.

Thus, the “new rich” are those who have not had time to test the strength of their fortune over time. On the contrary, the “old rich” have money invested in corporations, banks, and real estate, which bring reliable profits. They are not scattered, but multiplied by the efforts of tens and hundreds of the same rich people. Mutual marriages between them create a clan network that insures each individual from possible ruin.

The layer of “old rich” consists of 60 thousand families belonging to the aristocracy “by blood,” that is, by family origin. It includes only white Anglo-Saxons of the Protestant religion, whose roots stretch back to the American settlers of the 18th century. and whose wealth was accumulated back in the 19th century. Among the 60 thousand richest families, 400 families of the super-rich stand out, constituting a kind of property elite of the upper class. In order to get into it, the minimum amount of wealth must exceed $275 million. The entire rich class in the United States does not exceed 5-6% of the population, which is more than 15 million people.

400 selected

Since 1982, Forbes, a magazine for businessmen, has published a list of the 400 richest people in America. In 1989, the total value of their property minus liabilities (assets minus debts) equaled the total value of goods and. services created by Switzerland and Jordan, namely $268 billion. The entrance fee to the club of the elite is $275 million, and the average wealth of its members is $670 million. Of these, 64 men, including D. Trump, T. Turner and X. Perrault, and two women had a fortune of $1 billion. and higher. 40% of the chosen ones inherited wealth, 6% built it on a relatively modest family foundation, 54% were self-made men.

Few of America's great riches date their beginnings to before the Civil War. However, this “old” money is the basis of wealthy aristocratic families such as the Rockefellers and Du Ponts. On the contrary, the savings of the “new rich” began in the 40s. XX century

They increase only because they have little time, compared to others, for their wealth to “scatter” - thanks to inheritance - over several generations of relatives. The main channel of accumulation is ownership of the media, movable and immovable property, and financial speculation.

87% of the super-rich are men, 13% are women, who inherited wealth as the daughters or widows of multimillionaires. All the rich are white, most of them Protestants of Anglo-Saxon roots. The vast majority live in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Washington. Only 1/5 graduated from elite universities, the majority have 4 years of college behind them. Many graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in economics and law. Ten do not have higher education. 21 people are emigrants.

Abbreviated from source:HessIN.,MarksonE.,Stein P. Sociology. - N.Y., 1991.-R.192.

Poor

While inequality characterizes society as a whole, poverty affects only part of the population. Depending on how high the level of economic development of a country is, poverty affects a significant or insignificant part of the population. As we have seen, in 1992 in the United States, 14% of the population was classified as poor, and in Russia - 80%. Sociologists refer to the scale of poverty as the proportion of a country's population (usually expressed as a percentage) living at the official poverty line, or threshold. The terms “poverty level”, “poverty lines” and “poverty ratio” are also used to indicate the scale of poverty.

The poverty threshold is an amount of money (usually expressed, for example, in dollars or rubles) officially established as the minimum income that allows an individual or family to purchase food, clothing and housing. It is also called the "poverty level". In Russia it received an additional name - living wage. The subsistence level is a set of goods and services (expressed in the prices of actual purchases) that allows a person to satisfy the minimum acceptable, from a scientific point of view, needs. The poor spend 50 to 70% of their income on food; as a result, they do not have enough money for medicines, utilities, apartment renovations, and purchasing good furniture and clothing. They are often unable to pay for their children’s education at a fee-paying school or university.

The boundaries of poverty change over historical time. Previously, humanity lived much worse and the number of poor people was higher. In ancient Greece, 90% of the population lived in poverty by the standards of that time. In Renaissance England, about 60% of the population was considered poor. In the 19th century Poverty levels have dropped to 50%. In the 30s XX century only a third of the English were classified as poor, and 50 years later this figure was only 15%. As J. Galbraith aptly noted, in the past poverty was the lot of the majority, but today it is the lot of the minority.

Traditionally, sociologists have distinguished between absolute and relative poverty. Under absolute poverty is understood as a state in which an individual, with his income, is not able to satisfy even the basic needs for food, housing, clothing, warmth, or is able to satisfy only the minimum needs that ensure biological survival. The numerical criterion is the poverty threshold (subsistence level).

Under relative poverty refers to the impossibility of maintaining a decent standard of living, or some standard of living accepted in a given society. Relative poverty measures how poor you are compared to other people.

• unemployed;
• low-wage workers;
• recent immigrants;
• people who moved from village to city;
• national minorities (especially blacks);
• tramps and homeless people;
• people who are unable to work due to old age, injury or illness;
• single-parent families headed by a woman.

The new poor in Russia

Society is split into two unequal parts: outsiders and marginalized (60%) and wealthy (20%). Another 20% fell into the group with an income from 100 to 1000 dollars, i.e. with a 10-fold difference at the poles. Moreover, some of its “inhabitants” clearly gravitate towards the upper pole, while others - towards the lower one. Between them is a failure, a “black hole”. Thus, we still do not have a middle class - the basis for the stability of society.

Why did almost half the population find itself below the poverty line? We are constantly told that the way we work is the way we live... So there is no point in blaming the mirror, as they say... Yes, our labor productivity is lower than, say, the Americans. But, according to Academician D. Lvov, our wages are outrageously low even in relation to our low labor productivity. With us, a person receives only 20% of what he earns (and even then with huge delays). It turns out that, based on 1 dollar of salary, our average worker produces 3 times more products than an American. Scientists believe that as long as wages do not depend on labor productivity, one cannot expect that people will work better. What incentive can a nurse, for example, have to work if she can only buy a monthly pass with her salary?

It is believed that additional income helps to survive. But, as studies show, those who have money have more opportunities to earn extra money—highly qualified specialists, people in high official positions.

Thus, additional earnings do not smooth out, but increase income gaps by 25 times or more.

But people don’t even see their meager salaries for months. And this is another reason for mass impoverishment.

From a letter to the editor: “This year my children - 13 and 19 years old - had nothing to wear to school and college: we have no money for clothes and textbooks. There is no money even for bread. We eat crackers that were dried 3 years ago. There are potatoes and vegetables from my garden. A mother who collapses from hunger shares her pension with us. But we are not quitters, my husband doesn’t drink or smoke. But he is a miner, and they haven’t been paid for several months. I was a teacher in a kindergarten, but it was recently closed. My husband cannot leave the mine, since there is nowhere else to get a job and he has 2 years until retirement. Should we go trade, as our leaders urge? But our whole city is already trading. And no one buys anything, because no one has money - everything goes to the miner!” (L. Lisyutina, Venev, Tula region). Here is a typical example of a “new poor” family. These are those who, due to their education, qualifications, and social status, have never before been among the low-income.

Moreover, it must be said that the burden of inflation hits the poor the hardest. At this time, prices rise for essential goods and services. And all the spending of the poor comes down to them. For 1990-1996 for the poor, the cost of living increased by 5-6 thousand times, and for the rich - by 4.9 thousand times.

Poverty is dangerous because it seems to reproduce itself. Poor material security leads to deterioration of health, lack of qualifications, and deprofessionalization. And in the end - to degradation. Poverty is sinking.

The heroes of Gorky's play "At the Lower Depths" came into our lives. 14 million of our fellow citizens are “bottom dwellers”: 4 million are homeless, 3 million are beggars, 4 million are street children, 3 million are street and station prostitutes.

In half of the cases, people become outcasts due to a tendency to vice or weakness of character. The rest are victims of social policy.

Three-quarters of Russians are not confident that they will be able to escape poverty.

The funnel that pulls to the bottom sucks in more and more people. The most dangerous zone is the bottom. There are now 4.5 million people there.

Increasingly, life pushes desperate people to the last step, which saves them from all problems.

In recent years, Russia has taken one of the first places in the world in terms of the number of suicides. In 1995, out of 100 thousand people, 41 committed suicide.

Based on materials from the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

A new social group has appeared in Russia - the new poor Russians. These are actively working people who, nevertheless, cannot provide for themselves. This conclusion was reached by the participants of the round table held on Friday in the Federation Council. According to experts, even the “poverty threshold” set by the government at 2,137 rubles is actually the threshold of poverty. Therefore, contrary to official statistics in Russia, 30% of the population is poor and 35% are poor, that is, “two thirds of the Russian population live either in poverty or on the verge of it.”

“These are not poor people - these are poor people!”
On Friday, the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy tried to calculate how many poor people there are in Russia. Official statistics on this issue are based on the government-established minimum living wage of 2,137 rubles. According to Goskomstat, today 23.3% of Russians live below the poverty line. Independent studies show more depressing results. According to a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation, 27% of Russians earn less than 1 thousand rubles per month per person, and 38% earn from 1 to 2 thousand. That is, 65% of the population is below the poverty line.

Senators and experts do not agree, however, either with the size of the living wage itself, or with who should be considered poor in Russia.

“2137 rubles is an unacceptably low level! - said deputy chairman of the committee Igor Kamenskoy. “People whose incomes exceed the subsistence level, for example, one and a half times, should be considered poor, since they are able to satisfy only the most basic needs.” David Shavishvili, director of the Institute of Social Policy at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, was more categorical: “We usually call people poor who have incomes below the subsistence level. By all Western definitions, these are not poor - these are poor people! And the poor are those whose incomes exceed the subsistence level twice."

According to experts, 35% of the Russian population can safely be classified as poor, and 30% as poor. But 5% goes to the rich and super-rich.

Moreover, “the face of poverty is changing”: if traditionally the poor in Russia were the disabled, pensioners, large and single-parent families, now a special class has emerged - the new poor. “These are people who are actively working and yet cannot provide for themselves,” said Rimma Kalinichenko, program coordinator at the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Moscow.

“What to distribute?”
“We have set a deadline for overcoming poverty - 3-5 years. But is it possible to overcome poverty at all? - asked the deputy chairman of the committee Andrei Shmelev. - There is an opinion that the state should fight poverty with the help of the distribution function. But the question is, what to distribute?”

Here opinions are divided. David Shavishvili advised to pay attention to the oligarchs: “Half of the oligarchs’ income came from underpaid salaries.” In his opinion, it is possible to end “preferential conditions for employers” and overcome mass poverty of the population by establishing a basic salary standard of 8,500 rubles.

Representatives of the ILO also complained. “It’s difficult for us to fight poverty, because when we go to Geneva and ask for help, they tell us: “You will decide: either your country is a member of the G8 or poor,” said Rimma Kalinichenko. However, sometimes international organizations become generous with the new poor Russians. “We recently launched one of the programs in the Northwestern District,” Kalinichenko boasted.

There was laughter in the hall: “Of course, St. Petersburg is our poorest region!” “I specifically went to Geneva to ask for help in the Far North! This is where real poverty is! But the ILO did nothing! She helps St. Petersburg,” Mikhail Nikolaev, who represents Yakutia in the Federation Council, quipped.

"We need to find a survival formula for the people"
Lyudmila Rzhanitsyna, a professor at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, put an end to the dispute: “We must show the will: stop the reduction of the unified social tax, bring the minimum wage to the subsistence level. Eliminate the income tax on the minimum wage! You talk about poverty and you yourself cut off 13% from these 600 rubles!” The senators became embarrassed and turned away.

Rzhanitsyna continued: “Do you know that our child benefit is 70 rubles?! What can you buy with them?

However, the government is well aware of the meagerness of the benefits. “You can’t live on 70 rubles, but even if we double the benefits, what is 140 rubles? They won't give anything. And for the budget, such an increase will cost an additional 22 billion rubles,” Deputy Prime Minister Galina Karelova told the GAZETTE. Therefore, she believes, “we need to find a survival formula for people that would allow them not to rely only on benefits.”

The “survival formula” that the senators came up with is unlikely to satisfy the government: increase the minimum wage to the subsistence level, which will require not 22 billion rubles from the budget, but a couple of trillions.

In such a situation, the only consolation can be the psychological resilience of our people. According to VTsIOM-A polls, 80% of Russians stubbornly consider themselves to be in the middle class, although most of them are below the “threshold of poverty.”

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Anything can happen in life, and each of us has to face unusual circumstances and tests of strength and willpower. This is how you can recognize the real you.

website collected stories from the sites “Overheard” and Pikabu about people who cope with non-standard life situations with dignity.

• She worked as a designer, studied, rented an apartment, provided for a bat. There was only enough money for an apartment, food and a mouse. One day my entire salary was stolen on the bus. I’m walking, crying and suddenly I see: a wallet. I open it, and there is money 3 times more than my salary. At first I thought I was lucky, but then I felt ashamed. Maybe the person has the same situation as me. There was a business card of a certain Sergei in the wallet. I called the phone on it. Sergei turned out to be the driver of a wealthy man. He thanked me, and then it turned out that his boss needed a designer for his new house. Then to his friends... I was paid an advance on the very first day - my double salary! And most importantly, the mouse is happy.

• Mom told me how she passed the exam. She pulled out a ticket, but only knows one of two questions. She came out and said: “Can I start with the second question?” The professor was surprised, but allowed it. Mom answers, and then another teacher comes in and asks the professor to come into the department. He came out and said: “Then you will take it from her, she has already answered one question.” The teacher sits down, the mother, not at a loss, begins to retell the same question. They gave it "excellent".

• I always tried to diversify my life with some kind of movement, so as not to seem boring to others. Climbing wall? Please, and climb higher, too. Jump with a rope? Give me two, I jumped off the 83-meter pipe. An open cabin on a Ferris wheel? Spit and grind. But in fact, I’m still pissed: I’m afraid of heights and I’m still a hypochondriac. Sitting down on the mind-blowing attraction once again, I show everyone “class” with two fingers, and silently pray and cry.

• My wife and I are polyglots. I know 9 languages ​​perfectly, she knows 7. And it’s a complete thrill. We travel to different countries, communicate with locals in their language. Many are pleased, some do not even immediately understand that we are foreigners. But the coolest thing is that my wife and I can always talk in a language that others won’t understand. This is our favorite Russian-Japanese-Dutch mixture, incomprehensible to no one in the world.

• In 3rd grade we went to the cinema with our friends. Before the session we went down to the river. I was wearing beautiful ballet shoes. At first we threw “pancakes” into the water, and then we played around and began throwing stones into the waves with our feet. In one such throw, one shoe slipped into the water and began to sink. They couldn’t reach him with a stick, they just pushed him further from the shore. I'm in tears. A guy was walking by, saw us, walked into the waist-deep water in expensive trousers, took out a shoe and put it on my foot. I felt like Cinderella.

• By the age of 30 she became a successful woman. She raised her son, worked as a manager in a large company, traveled... Until she broke her leg. And time seemed to stand still: I don’t need to go anywhere, go - not to the store, not to the bank, not to work. Don't go anywhere at all. I started reading books that had long been collecting dust on the shelf, watching movies, and working remotely at a time convenient for me. At the end of my sick leave, I realized that I didn’t want to return to that ordinary world. I quit my job, started working as a taxi driver at night, and earned extra money by typing and translating. I only go to the store at night when no one is there. And it's such a thrill! I decided that I needed to take breaks in life, gain strength, watch sunrises and eat ice cream at night on the embankments.

• Everyone asks why I have recently become so active, cheerful, and cheerful. And she already jumped with a parachute, flew on a paraglider, got a tattoo and flew to India with her last money. Everyone likes the new me. And no one knows that a month ago I overcame cancer and life for me now is the greatest happiness.

• I met a guy in line to get a passport. We spent about 6 hours there, we were already like family to each other. Then we went for a walk with him. We walked until dawn, chatting about everything. We arrived at my house at 6 am. And so he asks me for my phone number, takes out his phone, and it’s dead. I don’t have a piece of paper or a pen with me, and there’s no one to ask for it. He looked around, dragged a log of considerable size and found a coal on the ground. And with this coal I drew my phone number on the log. He threw the log over his shoulder and went home. His mother was stunned: he left to get his international passport in the afternoon, the phone was turned off, he showed up at 6 in the morning, happy, brought some kind of log and said: “Don’t touch it until the morning.”

• In the theater, as a rule, the actors do not learn texts that can be read, but read them from the sheet. I don’t remember the name of the play, but the gist is that during the course of the scene a messenger runs in and hands the king a letter with the words: “Your Majesty, there is a letter for you!” The king unrolls the scroll and... oh horror, there is no text there (colleagues made a joke)! He was an experienced artist, so he returned the scroll to the messenger with the words: “Read, messenger!” The actor playing the role of the messenger was also no stranger. He gives the letter back and replies: “Illiterate, Your Majesty!”

• I’ve been working as a waitress for three years now, I’ve seen a lot of things: there were drunk people, crazy people, people didn’t pay the bill, and they left exorbitant tips. But the man who ordered coffee for himself and a rare steak for the little lion cub sitting in his arms definitely outdid everyone else.

• I live on the 2nd floor. My birthday is in the summer. One day I was sleeping and heard loud noises. I open my eyes and through the balcony door I see flowers in the windows and hands pounding on the glass. I get up and realize that in the other room these sounds are coming from the windows and in the kitchen. Friends who adore rocks (they all have equipment) decided to congratulate me in this unusual way this morning. I opened the windows - bouquets flew in, followed by friends. I will not forget the happiness of that day!

• Recently I was riding with a driver I knew on a minibus in the first seat, and we got stuck in a traffic jam. He saw that the second lock next to the truck body was not secured, just on the side of our minibus. This could threaten the load falling and an overall emergency situation. It was dark, and the driver would not have seen it in the rearview mirror. An acquaintance tried to get closer a couple of times to get this lock, but in the end he got it - extended his hand and secured it as needed. At that moment I thought that often good things happen to us, someone’s hand saves us from a dangerous situation, and we don’t even know it.
Robert glued onto his stomach exactly the same valve as Chace's. The boy considers his father the best in the world and wants to be like him in everything.

I recently read somewhere that forums as a means of communication between like-minded people have already become obsolete... People prefer to communicate and make friends on social networks.

On the other hand, this is an innovation that appeared not so long ago, so few people understand the ethics of communication, and therefore do not observe it. And few people think that “they don’t interfere with someone else’s monastery with their own rules.”

Those. any page or profile on social media. networks - the same apartment/house, a sacred place where the spirit and atmosphere created by the owner hovers...

And then THEY appear... and begin to walk in dirty shoes on the freshly washed floors of the home. Either they post advertising links, then they add incomprehensible content to groups... and you get a whole heap of letters with notifications about various crap.

Laws of Money

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For me personally, Facebook is not a tool for communication, but a means by which I share what is close to me or interesting to me.

A week ago I was added to a group with the loud name “Secrets of the New Rich”. I had not heard of such a cross-section of the population, I was not familiar with their secrets, so I decided not to leave the group, but to observe the development of events.

Having received a dozen links to all sorts of means of earning money in the form of MLM and info-business fly-by-night stories, recordings of speeches by apparently the new rich, as well as good morning wishes, I asked a question that was reasonable in my opinion, and I quote:

Or maybe a frivolous question... who is being added to this group: who has already BECOME the new rich or the one who is striving for this? Both of them, for example, have little to do with me. And to many people I know here too. What is the point of this group?

And I received a response from one of the group members:

Lady Alla: As I see, few people supported this statement, therefore, not so many of your friends are disgusted with counting money. And if you are so disgusted with being a wealthy person, then there is NO PROBLEM, you can leave... It is impossible to give by force - you can only take away by force, and no one is going to take anything away, but also to push it in by force!

I will not comment on my attitude towards those who, instead of answering a direct question, quickly get personal and think out what they themselves are missing.

Two phrases caught my attention: IT IS HORRIBLE TO COUNT MONEY and IT IS HORRIBLE TO BE A WEALTHY PERSON.

Let’s take them as a starting point to consider how limiting beliefs work and at what stage the substitution of concepts occurs.

1. Who hates counting money?

To those who consider money “dirty”, “unworthy”, “unspiritual”.

A fairly common trend among those who follow the spiritual path of development. Ascension, raising vibrations, expanding consciousness, in their opinion, is incompatible with material values.

But a master is one who has found the balance of the material and spiritual.

It is noteworthy that America, the ancestor of the entire New Age movement, experienced a crisis of spirituality 10 years ago.

From their own experience, through trial and error, they came to the conclusion that it is impossible to be a spiritual person and treat the world of matter, including money, without respect.

What can a person give who has reached a certain level of spiritual development, but is at the same time a beggar, constantly struggling to survive?

Will he be able to fulfill his destiny: to be a leader of a new era, to lead by example, if he himself is faced with the urgent question of how to pay the rent or how to feed himself and his children?

Who needs such an example? And who would want to follow such a person?

Are you interested in listening to the ravings of a person ranting about the New Earth, the 5th dimension, abundance and prosperity, if he himself has NOTHING except fantasies?!

Another illusion that many fall into looks like this: I serve the planet/humanity, I work on her/his healing, I am a conductor of high frequencies and vibrations.

Oops! We live on a completely material object, a planet called Earth, which is in the density of the THIRD dimension, the most physical of all.

Which you share and which you receive because of the divine work you do.

And in order to conduct higher frequencies, a person must be firmly ANCHORED in physical reality. In other words, it must be connected with the world of matter.

How can he do this if he floats high in the clouds and has long lost his connection with the three-dimensional Earth.

What is the way out?

Learn to appreciate not only spiritual values, but also material ones. Loving unconditionally is not only a spiritual principle, but also an integral attribute of the third dimension, i.e. MONEY.

2. Be wealthy

Let's look at this point.

What do you mean by “being wealthy”? Have a fortune? And what should be the size of this fortune so that you can confidently call yourself a wealthy person?

Personally, for me, a wealthy person is someone who has more than what is necessary to meet their basic needs.

If you need, for example, $1000 to live comfortably, and you have more every month, then you are already a wealthy person. Because you can afford something beautiful, travel, vacations in overseas countries, etc.

But for some, basic needs include $10,000, and then earning $8 thousand (quite a considerable amount, you must agree) he will feel unhappy, constantly living in survival mode.

So any numbers are relative.

And the last nuance for today: money cannot be the goal in life. Especially in the coming 2012.

This is where . If you want to help yourself, your loved ones, want to help many awakening people, it will be easier for you to do this if you are not limited by money.

Just imagine how many more opportunities open up for you if you can freely invest the money at your disposal... in trips, seminars, websites, centers... in anything.

What would you do, what would you do, if you had all the means necessary to do it?