The Politics of Poverty in Contemporary Russia

"Drawing on a multitude of in-depth interviews and surveys with ordinary people, front-line social workers and local officials, Sätre explains what it is like to be poor in Russian society, how and why some people prosper, while others struggle and many fall into poverty traps. The author considers official poverty statistics but focuses on Sen’s more sophisticated capability approach, showing how access to human capital, welfare rights and social relationships influence opportunity and poverty. The book’s greatest strength is that it brings the reader into little-known towns, villages and provincial cities whose residents, some interviewed at several points from 2002 to 2017, give vivid accounts of how Russia’s transformation has affected the welfare of their families and communities." - Linda J. Cook, Professor of Political Science, Brown University, USA.

"Ann-Mari Sätre’s work always gives us a valuable insight into the everyday lives of people in Russia away from the mainstream and reminds us that there is more to Russian politics than what goes on in the kremlin. In this book, Sätre has surpassed herself, combining a careful analysis of official and independently-sourced macro-data on poverty with detailed life-stories of individuals inhabiting different niches in the social and geographic peripheries. Through the stories that Ann-Mari has collected from the poor and the not-so-poor and the people at the local level who try to help them in a number of Russia’s regions over the past decade, we learn how multi-faceted is the experience of poverty in the Russia of the 21st century and how variable the human responses to it. The Politics of Poverty in Contemporary Russia, is far more than a standard text on the production and reproduction of poverty, in a very real and immediate way it conveys the precarity of people living on the edge, where a single negative life event or a helping hand from a nascent civil society organisation can make the difference between the spiralling downwards into ever deepening poverty or the achievement of some degree of stability or, even, hope." - Judith Pallot, University of Oxford and Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. President of BASEES.