Khabarovsk – Thirty kindergarten kids were poisoned with bad food. Four went to the emergency room, and several remain hospitalized. Russian public schools and pre-schools are known for their low health standards. Anti-biotic resistant TB and other respitory diseases are quite common. You can get higher standards at nicer "public schools" that aren’t that public.

All education in Russia is free, but it doesn't really work that way. The way it works is – you pay a bribe, which you could compare to a private school premium – and the money you pay gets split up between the school administration and the actual school needs. That’s where the logic of the black market kicks in - if you take too much of the bribe into your pocket – you won’t have much left to improve the school, and eventually you’ll lose the ones who are willing to pay. If you put everything into the school, you won’t have much desire to work hard on improving it on a principal’s official government salary of $150-200 a month.

This system of course doesn’t contribute to building a middle class, or improving education. Families that are well of go to nicer schools and their kids are in better conditions than the parents used to be, and kids from poor families go to ordinary schools, which are much worse these days, compared to the Soviet schools. As RussiaBlog mentioned before there are no official statistics on poverty and wealth that would be correct, because many people never declare what they make or don’t make. There’s about a 15% of middle class among the Russian population, about 5% of (very) wealthy people, and the rest, approximately 80%, live below the poverty line.