Hidden poor are being found

Press, 29 June 1989, Page 13

Hidden poor are being found

IN MOSCOW Patricia Legras

Anatoli Vassiliev could not believe his eyes. A student, he was earning pocket money by helping with the census at the beginning of the year. His area included a six-storey house built during Khrushchev’s time in the 1960 s in a workingclass district of Moscow. From the outside, it was an ordinary shabby brick building, like so many others built hastily at that time in an effort to relieve the housing crisis. Inside, Anatoli found a world of nearpoverty he had never imagined existed in his country. The block of flats had originally been allotted to the widows of those repressed by Stalin in the 19305, and rehabilitated under Khrushchev. Many 80 and 90-year-olds were still living there.

■ On the first floor, Anna Gavrilovna had a one-room flat. The furniture consisted of an iron

bedstead, a cupboard, a table, two rickety chairs, and a heap of dirty old clothes in a corner. She was happy to talk, since no-one ever visited her. Her husband had been in the army, and like so many had been arrested in 1937. In 1941, she received a letter informing her of his death. In 1955, she received another, saying he had been "rehabilitated posthumously.” As his widow, she was entitled to his apartment. Her monthly pension is 45 roubles (SNZI3S) — $3O goes on rent and electricity, $l5 on medicines, leaving $l3 a day for food. She can afford only potatoes, milk, brown bread,

onions, carrots and cabbage. Once a week, she buys salted fish, but never meat or chicken.

As he knocked on door after door to fill up his census forms, Anatoli Vassiliev found the same scene inside — stained wallpaper, bare, uneven flooring, untidy piles of clothes or rags, and an iron bedstead. At least the place was linked up to the city’s heating supply and so no-one could freeze to death. In one room, Vera Dmitrovna, 100 years old, never left her bed. Her 80-year-old sister looked after her. The flat smelled of cabbage. Next door, Raisa Gerasimovna, an invalid, could only move about on* crutches. She

received only $l2O a month, and she knitted hats for a workshop for an extra $9O. Life is difficult for the 60 million pensioners in the Soviet Union, especially those living alone. Prices have risen in recent years, and cheaper goods have disappeared from sale in the shops since they are unprofitable.

But monthly payments to the elderly have not changed at all. Recently, the Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, admitted that 18 million pensioners received less than 60 roubles per month. Those who are fit enough make extra money by cleaning

back yards, or collecting empty bottles and waste paper. At week-ends, there are always a few old ladies in the Lenin Hills, hovering to pick up the champagne bottles left by newly-weds after their traditional trip to view the capital. '

The official poverty level, calculated in the 19605, was put at $153 per person. But most sociologists consider that taking rises in costs of living into account, the level should now be $2lO to $225.

Statistics show that there are over 43 million people in families with an income per person of less than that — out of a total

population of 280 million. Apart from ' pensioners, young couples with children, single mothers, and invalids make up the bulk of the country’s poor. There are also, according to Soviet television, 1.2 million tramps, always on the move, living in stations, basements, under bridges, without any papers or regular jobs.

The official average wage is 200 roubles per month, but many workers receive less than this. A letter to a local newspaper in Pskov, northern Russia, explains the plight of many young couples: “I am an economist, with a salary of 107 roubles. My husband, a forest guard, earns

100. After tax, we have 178 roubles left for us and our two children. We spend 218 on food

and rent. Result, we are 40 roubles down at the end of the month.”

The local newspaper said it received "lots” of similar letters from families obliged to borrow money from parents or friends to make ends meet.

"Poverty is a national tragedy,” wrote the official party newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” But there is no organisation to which people can turn for help, since it is only recently that the country admitted that it has its poor.

One of the draft laws to be studied by the Soviet Union’s newly-elected People’s Congress will be aimed at guaranteeing a “subsistence wage” in all sectors. But it will probably not come into force until the 19905. Before then, despite official denials, many fear there will be a round of price rises that they simply cannot afford.