Somehow you have a different experience than I do. That is fine. But that is also the reason, why we need to rely on some sort of stats to give us a rough idea of the situation. In one of the articles that I linked it was stated that:
"Rosstat carried out the study involving 60,000 households in every Russian region between Sept. 15 and Sept. 29, 2018".
So they took a "representative" sample.
"Only 9 percent of Russia’s urban population reported lack of access to a sewage system."
Maybe it was a survey, people self-reported? Whatever you think it was, think of this: Russia has 146 mil people. Let's be generous and say that only 5 percent do not have any indoor plumbing. That's 7 mil people. Lack of indoor plumbing is much more of an issue in rural area. There are 20+ 'republics', some of which (like Тыва or Бурятия) have rural population percentage of around 50%. So that's 100s of thousands of people without indoor plumbing in these republics. Mind you, we are very generous with our percentage values here...
So, if we go back to the original statement by the parent comment:
"many citizens of the “republics” have never seen indoor plumbing"
Would you agree that the gist of it is true? I would even grant that some, maybe 10s of thousands in fact have never seen any indoor plumbing, if they never left their small village in the middle of nowhere to go to a hospital or some other place that has it. Russia is huge, it has a lot of people, it has a lot of 'republics', some are very rural, so it is not outrageous to state these things.
BTW, the column that I interpreted as "indoor plumbing" in the Rosstat document that I linked was "водопроводом". To me it means plumbing...
This is my last attempt at trying to explain how I see this point :) in any case, have a good one!
This looks familiar... I was born in the 80s in the Soviet Union. Don't remember much of the 80s, but I remember the 90s well. Going to a village or smaller town to visit friends/relatives looked exactly like that video. It was very simple: there were water wells, we would fetch some water for cooking/cleaning/taking a bath and then there were outhouses. The sewage in outhouses was never treated. You would just put some sawdust on it and that was it. I do not think much has changed. Russian urbanization is around 75%, some regions much less than that. So I still do not think that it was wrong for "labster" to state that 'many citizens of the “republics” have never seen indoor plumbing'.
Sorry, I did not mean that Saint Petersburg is bleak (quite the opposite). I meant that the further away you go from these big cities, the worse everything looks.
Russia is huge... if you go to a village that is far away from any larger city, you'll see a lot of stuff - even stranger than not having indoor plumbing. If you can, I suggest travel to non-touristy areas, far away from large cities and see it for yourself :) Then report back and prove us wrong ;)
Both articles were citing Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. I agree that you can find pretty much any narrative and most of the news sources are not very objective. However, in my mind, automatic rejection of "the news" is almost the opposite problem, which is at least as big as the false narrative issue. I have no solutions to offer for any of these problems, but maybe we can at least agree that Russian Federal Statistics Service numbers give us a rough estimate.
Trusting your "own empirical evidence", rejecting "the news" is the bubble that I have been talking about. At least to me it looks like a bubble. And I am not saying that I don't live in a bubble, because I do. It takes effort and time to learn all the different sides of the argument, collect facts, etc. so it not possible to do it for all the issues. On the other hand, I completely agree there are good reasons not to trust "the news" blindly or even Russian State Statistics. We need to have some sort of middle way were we do not dismiss arguments just because they are in "the news", but at the same time take a critical look.
"Russia begins where asphalt roads end" :) there are always some truth in jokes. "never seen indoor plumbing" could be an exaggeration, but my intuition (my "own empirical evidence" if you will) tells me that the gist of it is true. I have been to Russia and seen Moscow in all of its fanciness. However, further away from Moscow, Saint Petersburg the picture is quite bleak. But that's just my 2 cents.
"Rosstat carried out the study involving 60,000 households in every Russian region between Sept. 15 and Sept. 29, 2018".
So they took a "representative" sample.
"Only 9 percent of Russia’s urban population reported lack of access to a sewage system."
Maybe it was a survey, people self-reported? Whatever you think it was, think of this: Russia has 146 mil people. Let's be generous and say that only 5 percent do not have any indoor plumbing. That's 7 mil people. Lack of indoor plumbing is much more of an issue in rural area. There are 20+ 'republics', some of which (like Тыва or Бурятия) have rural population percentage of around 50%. So that's 100s of thousands of people without indoor plumbing in these republics. Mind you, we are very generous with our percentage values here...
So, if we go back to the original statement by the parent comment:
"many citizens of the “republics” have never seen indoor plumbing"
Would you agree that the gist of it is true? I would even grant that some, maybe 10s of thousands in fact have never seen any indoor plumbing, if they never left their small village in the middle of nowhere to go to a hospital or some other place that has it. Russia is huge, it has a lot of people, it has a lot of 'republics', some are very rural, so it is not outrageous to state these things.
BTW, the column that I interpreted as "indoor plumbing" in the Rosstat document that I linked was "водопроводом". To me it means plumbing...
This is my last attempt at trying to explain how I see this point :) in any case, have a good one!