Russian shock therapy shifted half the population into poverty while capital income soared

Evidence

In 1988, only 2 percent of Russians lived in poverty; by 1995, that number had soared to 50 percent, meaning half the Russian population had become destitute. During the same period, nonwage income (primarily dividends, interests, and entrepreneurial income) rose from 5 percent to 23 percent of GDP. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 359

Categorization

• XREF: This quantitative redistribution pattern — poverty up, nonwage income up — mirrors the class-discipline mechanism Mattei describes across all her cases. — connects to: Russia’s shock privatization under Yeltsin impoverished half the population in seven years — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1594; Shock therapy transferred income from Chile’s poor to its richest five percent — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 341