Since the Soviet Union pretended that homelessness didn’t exist, they never officially published figures on it, however most experts both today and back then agreed that the homeless population was in the hundreds of thousands. Most conservative estimates put the figure at around 150k-200k, while some put the figures as high as 2 million.
The Soviet Population was 266 million in 1980 and 286 million in 1989. In both cases, if we go around the absolutely most conservative estimates of 150k, that’s around 0.05% of the population.
So, I’m not interested in being a Debbie Debater here, and I’m absolutely not claiming that you’re wrong, but I think two of the three sources you give don’t really pass my standard for reliable.
The first one doesn’t quite pass the vibe check for me. When I go to the home page, the top articles are about “the five greatest russian erotic films” and “7 budding russian models”. It just doesn’t scream “impartial scientific article” to me.
The Christian Science Monitor one is from a researcher from radio liberty research. What I read is that this place was founded and funded by the CIA with the explicit purpose of broadcasting propaganda into the east bloc. To me, I’m about as likely to trust an article from this source as I am to trust an article about homelessness in South Korea coming from a think tank funded by North Korea, called the “Proletarian Empowerment Institute” or whatever.
One thing I can find plenty of impartial sources on is that it’s hard to find reliable data on homelessness from the USSR. But to go and trust some less than credible sources for a lack of alternatives is pure lamp post bias.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and I’m not saying you’re wrong. All I’m saying is that the sources you cite don’t pass my personal smell test, and I still feel agnostic on whether or not homelessness rates in the USSR were better or worse than in the US in the 80s.
As an aside, it’s really embarrassing, but I don’t know where I got the 0.01% figure from. A second google search seems to suggest a range of 600,000 to 2,000,000 out of 247,000,000 so something closer to 0.0025%–0.08%. These figures I am more likely to trust, because the research climate for social sciences in the US was a bit freeer than in the USSR. For me personally, it doesn’t really affect whether or not I believe that the homelessness rate in the USSR was higher or lower than in the US because I still feel like I’m pretty much in the dark on the former. But maybe for you these figures help you sharpen your beliefs, so I figured I’d share them.
Since the Soviet Union pretended that homelessness didn’t exist, they never officially published figures on it, however most experts both today and back then agreed that the homeless population was in the hundreds of thousands. Most conservative estimates put the figure at around 150k-200k, while some put the figures as high as 2 million.
The Soviet Population was 266 million in 1980 and 286 million in 1989. In both cases, if we go around the absolutely most conservative estimates of 150k, that’s around 0.05% of the population.
https://www.rbth.com/history/332657-homeless-people-ussr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Soviet_census https://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0519/ehome.html
Ugh… Anticommunist propaganda. Vagrancy was considered illegal, and “homeless” people had access to free dorms. Your figures are entirely made up
So, I’m not interested in being a Debbie Debater here, and I’m absolutely not claiming that you’re wrong, but I think two of the three sources you give don’t really pass my standard for reliable.
The first one doesn’t quite pass the vibe check for me. When I go to the home page, the top articles are about “the five greatest russian erotic films” and “7 budding russian models”. It just doesn’t scream “impartial scientific article” to me.
The Christian Science Monitor one is from a researcher from radio liberty research. What I read is that this place was founded and funded by the CIA with the explicit purpose of broadcasting propaganda into the east bloc. To me, I’m about as likely to trust an article from this source as I am to trust an article about homelessness in South Korea coming from a think tank funded by North Korea, called the “Proletarian Empowerment Institute” or whatever.
One thing I can find plenty of impartial sources on is that it’s hard to find reliable data on homelessness from the USSR. But to go and trust some less than credible sources for a lack of alternatives is pure lamp post bias.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and I’m not saying you’re wrong. All I’m saying is that the sources you cite don’t pass my personal smell test, and I still feel agnostic on whether or not homelessness rates in the USSR were better or worse than in the US in the 80s.
As an aside, it’s really embarrassing, but I don’t know where I got the 0.01% figure from. A second google search seems to suggest a range of 600,000 to 2,000,000 out of 247,000,000 so something closer to 0.0025%–0.08%. These figures I am more likely to trust, because the research climate for social sciences in the US was a bit freeer than in the USSR. For me personally, it doesn’t really affect whether or not I believe that the homelessness rate in the USSR was higher or lower than in the US because I still feel like I’m pretty much in the dark on the former. But maybe for you these figures help you sharpen your beliefs, so I figured I’d share them.