I linked last week to a video that showed a much more affluent Russia than I last saw in 1996. And 1996 was light years from the Russia I first visited with the Durham Sister Cities group that spent 12 days there in 1990. Turns out that growing prosperity is real:

Five million families in Russia annually earn more than $30,000, according to the report of
Rosgosstrakh insurer. The number grew by over 60 percent over a year.

Given that the family size averages 2.7 persons here, roughly 13.5 million have the income above the medium one. Besides just wealthy, Russia has 160 families that are the millionaires in terms of the U.S. dollars and 12,000 families have revenues above $5 million. It isn’t surprising that 80 percent of millionaires live in Moscow and in the Moscow region.

The wealthiest category of the Russians (revenues above $5 million) widened by a half past year. The families with revenues of $30,000 to $100,000 manifested the highest growth of 71 percent.