The construction of «poverty» in post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

The role of this paper is to demonstrate how an intention of the Russian government to reduce the number of people who are still «in poverty» will not just require economic growth «trickling down» to the marginalised, but also a reconfiguration of the state’s theoretical construction, and quantification, of poverty. Facilitated by the use of current welfare reforms as a case study example, it will be posited that, as these negative discourses are the lenses through which social policy is both constructed and delivered, without a radical change in government policy/thinking it will be extremely difficult to reduce poverty levels significantly within the set timeframe.