ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews poverty with the help of interviews of people in certain key professions such as social pedagogues at schools and doctor's assistants, but also with those who in their professional capacity work closely with problem families and assist the poor in other ways. There are marks of local initiatives and innovations, indicating decreasing anomie and increasing social trust. When the economic shock from privatisation was over, the Russian economy battled with high inflation and devaluation in 1998-9. Transition was coupled with economic reforms, for example legalising the right to start a private business or private farming. Across Russia, the sudden emergence of large-scale poverty in the 1990s was exacerbated by the fact that the social welfare programmes inherited from the Soviet Union were inadequately focused on deprivation. Russia has confronted the challenge of reforming its social protection systems in conditions of limited budgetary resources.