Maria Ivanovna Makarova, 74, a retired Moscow bread factory worker, receives a state pension of 1, 300 rubles a month. Widowed last year, she lives alone in a one room flat in Tyoply Stan, an outer Moscow suburb.


Her pension, state officials maintain, is "adequate". Maria Ivanovna disagrees. "If it wasn't that my daughter helps me, I would simply starve", she says. "I have already sold all I can".


Maria Ivanovna's pension, in truth, does not buy very much. While her flat, heating and telephone are still cheap, food is costly. Her pension, the result of 20 year's work in a bakery, is enough to buy each day a loaf of bread, a single egg, a liter of milk and a few potatoes This may be enough to fend off starvation, but it is not a diet to be recommended. Capital expenditure, such as new clothes or household items, is, of course, out of the question for Maria Ivanovna.


Maria Ivanovna is not a special case The vast majority of state pensions range from 1, 000 rubles to perhaps 2, 500 rubles a month. A retired teacher gets about 1, 500 rubles a month, for instance; a doctor around 1, 800 rubles a month. Even a good pension buys very little in new free-market Russia. Twenty-five hundred rubles a month will now only buy eight single greenbacks, or maybe 12 bottles of vodka. Meat can cost up to 400 rubles a kilo. Cheese costs a minimum 150 rubles a kilo in state shops. Even transport may soon become a real expense.


Russia is now facing a budget crisis. Revenues are down 60 percent from projected figures, due mainly to falling oil exports and the secretion of export earnings abroad. Viktor Geraschenko, chairman of the Russian Central Bank, has suggested that budget cuts will have to be made to reflect this fall in revenue. Geraschenko suggested the social security budget as one are where cuts could be made.


Most old people would not starve if the pension was further cut. If the old were not supported by their families they most likely would be dead already. However, to cut the already meager pension would be an act of great cruelty. There are iron laws of economics that the new Russia must obey if it is ever to recover. However, there are also laws of humanity which must be kept if Russia is to remain a human society. You can not build a future by starving the old.