What is the average salary in Russia?

What is the biggest lie told by the Russian

authorities? That there is no corruption? That in the

country, production is growing?

That is a lie, of course, though maybe not the biggest one.

Maybe the claim that our healthcare system

gets better every year is also

an obvious lie, but in my view it is not

the biggest. The biggest,

most brazen and outrageous lie

our authorities tell us—Putin, Medvedev,

United Russia, the government—is the lie about

how high wages are in Russia.

I look at the data from

Rosstat (Russia’s federal statistics agency), and my eyes nearly pop out.

I have traveled all over the country, and at

every meeting I asked, “So, guys,

what are your wages like?” And everyone gave me figures

completely different from the numbers I see in this

table.

What is the average wage in Omsk?

[music]

[applause]

What is the average wage in the city of

Chelyabinsk, one of Russia’s major cities?

Something like 20–25 thousand? In 2013, if you believe

the Russian government, at the beginning of this

year the average wage in the country was 39

thousand rubles, and then it grew, and by

March it had already reached 42 thousand rubles. And

now, you won’t believe it,

the average wage in Russia supposedly

stands at 45,840 rubles

and this is not even funny anymore—it is genuinely

infuriating. How can they lie like that?

You know, at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

we have our own sociological

service.

And it is the best polling service—you

can check for yourselves: the results of the mayoral elections,

the State Duma elections, the presidential

elections—we predicted them more accurately than all

the other polling organizations. So we

decided, by all the rules of proper research, to conduct

a nationwide sociological survey on

the question of what the real average wage in Russia

actually is, so that people themselves could tell us

about it, and so that at last we would have

some reliable data. Let me tell you

what we ended up with. Here

you see this chart from the government, and

it assures us that over the last three

years wages in Russia have steadily

increased. And how do people respond to that?

Sixty percent say wages

have not changed, 26 percent say they have fallen,

and only 14 percent of our fellow citizens

appear to live in the same reality as

Dmitry Medvedev,

where wages are always rising. But then

we go on to ask people: what do you think

the average wage in the country is right now?

What do you think?

Give us an approximate figure. Let me remind you

that the government tells us it is 45

thousand 840 rubles. As you can see,

the most popular answer is 10

to 15 thousand rubles, and the three most popular

answers

are all still below 25 thousand rubles.

What a striking—I would even say

dramatic—difference from the government’s

figures, with which, as we can see,

only five percent of people agree. And then

we go even further and ask a rather

personal question: please tell us,

what is your wage? And we see the same thing.

Most people report a range of

10 to 20 thousand rubles, and there is no sign whatsoever of 45 thousand

rubles. Not even close. This is very

important. I truly believe that this is

the most monstrous lie about our country,

and here is why.

Because they base all their economic

policy, all their social measures,

on some imaginary average

Russian citizen earning

45 thousand rubles. It is not much, but still,

you can somehow live on it. And so in Putin’s

mind there exists this cheerful, energetic

59-year-old Russian man. He earns 45 thousand,

he has excellent healthcare,

so he is nice and healthy, full

of energy.

Of course he wants to keep working and

does not want to retire. And so

my Russian everyman, he thinks, is doing just fine.

His wage is 45 thousand, and at age 60 he

retires and gets another 13

thousand.

That makes 58—rather too generous,

so we can now raise the retirement

age and take those 13 thousand away from this person.

Let him go on living on

45. But in real life, that kind of Russian citizen

does not exist. In real life, by the age of

50, there is a seriously ill person,

because the healthcare available to him has been

abysmal, and his wage is not 45 thousand but closer to 18 thousand. And by the time he nears

retirement age, he has very likely

lost his job altogether,

and will not find a new one. And this person alone

had been counting on a meager 13 thousand rubles

in pension payments to save him from poverty—utter

destitution.

And then he is told, “Sorry,

friend, we are raising the retirement age.

Please wait another five years.”

You can see the full survey data

on my blog. We carried out

a detailed analysis of the data and can

state, based on the sociological evidence, that

the real average wage in

Russia is around 15 to 18 thousand rubles. And here

is what follows from that.

After all, the government tells us that

even by their current figures, taking into account

the average wage of 45 thousand

rubles, we still have 22 million

citizens live below the poverty line, that is,

they are destitute.

And if we look at the data on the real

salary—18,000 rubles (about 18,000 RUB)—then

it turns out that the majority of people here

live in poverty. A rich

resource-based state—we have oil, gas,

timber, gold, and diamonds—and yet people can barely

survive. So why the hell do we need a

government like this? Do you and I believe that

they are capable of improving the situation? No,

of course not. All they are capable of is

falsifying the data—whether it's election votes

or making up an average salary figure.

Let's make a deal—a pact with you.

Based on your personal experience, if

your data about the salaries of your

parents and relatives is closer to Putin's figures,

then do nothing. But if it's closer

to our figures, then first of all,

share this video, and secondly,

on September 9, come in your city to the

rally against raising the retirement

age. Subscribe to our channel—

this is where the truth is told.