FAIR INEQUALITY: HOW CONTEMPORARY RUSSIANS UNDERSTAND AN INCREASING INCOME GAP BETWEEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE?

Abstract

The article deals with a question of interpretations of income inequalities between diffe-rent people in contemporary Russia. Analyzing different kinds of statistical data and secon-dary data of previous sociological researches, the author concludes, that contemporary Russians are more tolerant to the fact of income inequality, than it used to be in 1990s. Author also makes a hypothesis, that my explain this change: nowadays there are fewer people, who believe in their hopeless poverty, in Russia. Using the results of his own survey, author exami-nes this hypothesis and concludes, that contemporary Russians really became more loyal to the fact of inequality, than they used to be in 1990s. The main conclusion of the article is that modern Russians often raise the question of fairness of criteria for income inequality between different people, but they do not think, that the fact of inequality is wrong or bad for their society.