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How do you say things are bad in #Russia in such a way that you don’t say they are bad? I recommend because this article is a masterstroke - you can see how Soviet censorship stimulates the creativity of system journalists.[^1]

The author made a really interesting analysis of ‘his private inflation’ by comparing the prices of specific products he buys on 6 January in 2024 and 2025, and then compared it with the official inflation of Rosstat, which reports it at 9.52%. The author’s inflation calculated on his private basket came out at 14.28%, and amidst a dozen objections as to why such comparisons should not be made, but actually can be, the fluent reader will find cleverly camouflaged mischief along the lines of ‘unfortunately, I don’t buy “light new cars” every year’. To me it sounds like an allusion to a category of products that seems to have cheapened in Rosstat’s statistics, like the famous locomotives in communist Poland.[^2]

And, as usual in Soviet times, what is relevant is what the author does not write explicitly - you have to see it for yourself in the table. For example, that the price of beef rose by ~40%, butter by 36%, rye bread by 23%, potatoes by 112% and so on. But because, for example, poultry has cheapened by ~8% the average total comes out at 14.28%.

Everything is laced with commentary from an expert, which is a specific rejoinder to the paper and the author. The expert speaks in the tone of ‘in principle it’s right, but also it’s not’ and uses, I don’t know whether on purpose or for lack of better ideas, an example so absurd that it only makes you smile (‘when flying in an aeroplane, the pilot sees the temperature outside at -55° and the passenger at -52° and apparently they are both right, but the pilot wisely controls the whole thing so he is right’), but at the same time smuggles some asslicking for the Kremlin.

[^1]: https://www.kp.ru/daily/27657/5042082/?from=twall (in Russian)

[^2]: one of Polish communist leaders went down in the annals of history in golden letters when, during a long period of severe shortages of food and other consumer goods, he delivered a dead serious TV speech announcing that “prices of meat have increased by 60% but prices of locomotives decreased by 27%”