Russia

Article Outline

Introduction; Land and Resources of Russia; People and Society of Russia; The Arts in Russia; Economy of Russia; Government; History of Russia

Social Structure

During the Soviet period, Communist Party members were granted special privileges. A system of separate stores, cars, hotels, and resorts was reserved for the political elite. For most people, however, the difference in income and access to material goods was relatively small. Private ownership of businesses and capital (goods or monies from which future income can be derived) was illegal, so income in addition to one’s wage from the state was extremely rare and social differentiation was slight. The richest 10 percent of the population earned only four times more than the poorest 10 percent. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the distinctions between social classes have become much more pronounced.

Privatization of property and businesses has been primarily in the hands of a select few. Many government and Communist Party officials have used their political power to control the privatization process and to gain shares of companies. Some people became rich through fraudulent investment opportunities. Organized crime leaders profited through extortion, drug smuggling, and other illegal activities. However, many Russians also became wealthy through innovation, invention, and other entrepreneurial activities.

The wealthy, known as the New Rich or New Russians, often live quite extravagantly. At the other extreme are those living in poverty, including many of the elderly, who tend to live on fixed incomes such as state pensions. The remainder of Russians have incomes that place them between these extremes and are considered middle class. Many middle-class Russians benefited in the early 1990s from the privatization of housing, which allowed them to purchase their apartments at a price far below market value. Consequently, they can spend a larger portion of their incomes on food and other goods than those who rent housing. The middle class is mostly confined to large cities, such as Moscow. In many rural areas there are few people in the middle class, and the contrasts between incomes are far greater.

Way of Life

The lifestyle of Russians depends to a great degree on their income levels. For Russia’s poor, life is a daily grind of survival and many people spend hours each day selling their belongings or other goods on the street. The lifestyles of wealthier people have become Westernized to a very high degree; American-style products and pastimes are popular, especially in large cities. Watching television and videotapes is a popular form of entertainment. Russian television now includes Western-style programs, such as game shows and soap operas. Reading is extremely popular, as it was during the Soviet period, but the types of literature read have changed considerably. Russian classics have lost ground to detective novels, pulp fiction, science fiction, and romance novels. Western sports that were officially discouraged during the Soviet period, such as tennis, have made noticeable inroads, especially among the upper classes. Traditional games and sports, such as chess and soccer, are also still popular. Concerts by Western music groups have become commonplace in Moscow and other large cities, and many Russian pop groups emulate Western styles, although a few groups incorporate traditional Russian musical elements.

Social Issues

The economic and social changes that have occurred since 1991 have especially impacted women and children. Marriage has declined and the divorce rate has risen, resulting in an increased number of single mothers. Women are expected to do almost all the housework, even if they also work a full-time job outside the home. Women’s employment is concentrated in lower-paying jobs, and unemployment is higher among women than among men. Throughout Russia, the number of homeless, unemployed, and underemployed people increased dramatically following the Soviet period.

Various social ills that did not exist or were very minor during Soviet times are a significant problem in contemporary Russia. Illegal drug use has risen substantially because of a lack of enforcement and increased drug availability. Drug use is increasing most rapidly among the young. The amount of alcohol consumption has also increased. Alcohol poisoning is a leading cause of death, especially from homemade or diluted industrial sources. This problem is a significant factor in Russia’s comparatively low life expectancy age, especially for men.

Drug use is accelerating the spread of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), because the virus that causes AIDS, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is transmitted chiefly by intravenous drug users who share syringe needles. The incidence of several other infectious diseases has also increased in recent years. Tuberculosis (TB) and other treatable diseases have spread as a result of incomplete treatment of patients and a lack of recognition of the symptoms of the disease among those infected. Venereal diseases have also spread rapidly. On the positive side, the government has conducted successful campaigns against diphtheria and poliomyelitis.

Social Services in Russia

In the early 1990s the Russian federal government decentralized the social safety net, giving control over health care and other social welfare programs to local governments. In 1993 the government instituted a new system of compulsory health insurance to replace the universal, state-funded health-care system inherited from the Soviet period. The program is supposed to be funded by a combination of employer and municipal support. However, budgetary difficulties and corruption at all levels caused the system to be underfunded. Nonworking citizens suffered the most from this shortfall, since their health benefits are supported solely by municipal contributions.

Some benefits are part of a traditional labor compensation package. Family, maternity, and unemployment benefits are available, and pensions are nominally guaranteed to women and men who have worked a minimum period of time and meet the age requirements. However, pensions failed to keep pace with dramatic increases in the cost of living following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Kurt E. Engelmann contributed the People and Society section of this article.

The Arts in Russia

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History of Russian Arts

In 988 Vladimir I (see Vladimir, Saint), ruler of Rus (the ancient state that was the ancestor of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), married a Byzantine princess and converted from paganism to the Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire. The introduction of Christianity into Rus spurred the development of the country’s fine arts. For 600 years, imported Christian forms dominated Russian painting, music, architecture, and literature. Russian artists, however, applied their unique vision and dramatically altered the imported forms. Especially in painting, the blending of foreign influences with native genius produced some of the world’s most beautiful icons. In the early 15th century Andrey Rublyov, the greatest of Moscow’s artists, painted icons that surpassed those of his Byzantine collaborators in quality and brilliance.

Foreign invasions during the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) and the Westernizing policies of Peter the Great around the turn of the 18th century exposed Russia’s artists to new secular influences. As a result, the focus of the Russian artistic experience shifted to Western Europe. Art forms that had been forbidden by the medieval Russian Orthodox Church—such as portraiture, instrumental music, and dramatic productions—entered the mainstream of the nation's cultural life. By the mid-18th century Russians were producing ballets, operas, chamber music, baroque architecture, and novels.

As they had done with Byzantine influences in the Middle Ages (in Russia, 9th century to early 16th century), the Russians borrowed art forms from the West, assimilated them, and raised them to unique levels of brilliance and achievement. Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital founded by Peter the Great in the early 18th century, provided dramatic evidence of this process. The city became Russia’s 'window on the West.' Buildings that followed the style of 18th-century Saint Petersburg architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his 19th-century successor Carlo Rossi spread across the Russian Empire. By 1850 the art and architecture of Saint Petersburg had become the model that all of Russia tried to follow. The new vision blended all the artistic influences of Russia’s past and present with those of ancient Greece and Rome.

In the 19th century the Russian genius for blending foreign and native art forms produced the romantic poetry of Aleksandr Pushkin; the realist novels of Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy; and the brilliant operas and ballets of Mikhail Glinka, Aleksandr Borodin, Peter Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and Modest Mussorgsky. Under the directorship of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the Moscow Art Theater performed the bittersweet plays of Anton Chekhov and the realist works of Maksim Gorky, including his best-known play, The Lower Depths (1902; translated 1912).

The 20th century ushered in the beginnings of an avant-garde movement. From 1900 to 1917 Russia’s arts included the symbolist poetry of Aleksandr Blok, Andrey Bely, and Zinaida Gippius; the revolutionary musical scores of Aleksandr Scriabin and Igor Stravinsky; the height of the so-called neo-primitivism period in the paintings of Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, and Mikhail Larionov; and the stunning ballet productions of Sergey Diaghilev featuring dancers Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Ida Rubinstein.

The revolutionary creations of Russia’s avant-garde, especially the constructivist designs of Vladimir Tatlin and Konstantin Melnikov (see Constructivism), continued during the first years of the Soviet era. However, these soon withered under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s rigid dictates. For many years the Soviet government used the stale precepts of socialist realism to censor the arts, including the poetry of Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Boris Pasternak; the novels and plays of Mikhail Bulgakov; and the musical compositions of Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev.

From the 1930s to the 1970s various artists challenged the restraints of socialist realism, including such independent literary giants as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak; composers Sergey Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich; poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Joseph Brodsky; theatrical director Yury Lyubimov; and filmmakers Sergey Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Andrey Tarkovsky. Others, such as novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, saw no other way but to make peace with the system that demanded conformity above all else. Some artists, including poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergey Yesenin, committed suicide.

In the 1980s émigré artists who had fled the Soviet Union and dissident artists who had remained in Russia began to influence what would become the cultural mainstream of post-Soviet Russia. The works of many artists became widely available in Russia only in the 1980s, including the émigré paintings of Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky; the novels of Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak, and Mikhail Bulgakov; the nonconformist poetry of Anna Akhmatova; and the modernist sculpture of Ernst Neizvestny.