Unnatural numbers

Gostokhnology cycle

Unnatural numbers.

The story of how the authorities are fighting statistics instead of problems

Project team, 8 July 2021

What the argument of Putin and Johnson led to

How officials hide mortality

Why did the income fall turn into growth

The Russian authorities in their own way solve economic difficulties-they actively manipulate statistics. At the request of the Kremlin, government and governors, the department responsible for statistics - Rosstat - goes to multiple tricks. In some cases, officials correct the "bad" numbers, in others they hide them. And in order for the sad news about the situation in the country of smaller ones to reach the Russians, the authorities came up with all statistics as little as possible and at the same uncomfortable time as possible.

Manipulation over time

In April 2019, the big scandal caused the news of Rosstat: a third of Russian families did not have enough money to buy winter and summer shoes to each family member. From the agency’s data followed: 35.4% of families have no financial opportunity to purchase two pairs of shoe suitable for each family member (one for each season). Among large families there are 40%. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was publicly indignant, but not by the poverty of the population, but by the work of Rosstat: “Why exactly for shoes? Why exactly thirds and where are these numbers from? " He asked . The department immediately answered : the study on the living conditions of the population is one of the most representative and deep. The study was attended by 60 thousand households, and each of the family members took an hour and a half interview.

That Russian families cannot afford

According to the Rosstat 2018 report, % households

The news about the lack of Russians on shoes spread so widely that it became even an argument in an international dispute. In July 2019, then the candidate for the British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson used it to criticize Vladimir Putin: he recalled that, “according to Rosstat, a third of Russia’s inhabitants cannot afford more than two pairs of shoes a year, 12% of the population still go to the toilet on the street, and real income has not been growing for five years.” So he answered Putin’s words that the liberal idea has outlived itself.

The government and the presidential administration “shuddered” from the news of Rosstat, seeing in them a “threat of social stability”, recalls a former employee of the government apparatus, participating in meetings dedicated to the work of Rosstat in the White House. At a meeting of the White House press secretaries in 2019, the representative of the prime minister Dmitry Medvedev Oleg Osipov then asked the Ministry of Economic Development (oversees Rosstat): “Can we know in advance that it will be published once again in order to at least be able to prepare?” , told the “project” a former employee of the government apparatus. The department answered such requests vaguely.

Government officials could not ban Rosstat to publish “bad” numbers - for this it is necessary to amend the federal law on statistical accounting, the source of the “project”, close to the leadership of Rosstat, explained. Among the basic principles of state statistics are its general access and timeliness. Therefore, the authorities have chosen another tactic - they decided to “minimize the information consequences,” says a former employee of the government apparatus.

What does this mean, they first demonstrated at a particularly difficult moment - after the introduction of Lokdown, the fall in oil prices and the economic crisis that soon began. In May 2020, the Rosstat published data on the April fall in industry late in the evening - at 21:00, and not at 16:00, as it was still. Industry fell by 6.6% in annual terms. At the same time, Rosstat published a report on the situation in the economy, which contained information about the growth of the number of unemployed by more than 800 thousand people per month. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8% of the economically active population. The reason immediately became clear - the government decided to attract as little attention to negative numbers as possible, publishing the statistics as much as possible, the Reuters agency wrote with reference to sources. Although Rosstat explained the transfer of the publication of employees forced by the remote work and recorded a new, as if compromising data output - 19.00.

But in the Kremlin and the government they would like to go even further and came up with a new way how to minimize the effect of the publication of negative statistics. Two informed interlocutors of the “project”, a government official and an interlocutor close to the leadership of Rosstat, heard at the meetings such an idea - to publish all the urgent information about what is happening in the country (inflation data, unemployment, industry, foreign trade, salary arrears, etc.) as less often, that is, mainly on Wednesday, at 19.00. And especially sensitive indicators, for example, demographic statistics, including mortality data from Covid-19, in this case to release in an even more uncomfortable time-only on Friday evening, one of them said. Now the news according to Rosstat is released almost every working day. According to the federal plan of statistical work, the period of publications of materials can fall on any working day, they are dispersed, which corresponds to world practice and allows you to “not get lost” in one data against the backdrop of others, explained to the “project” the head of the analysis of the real sector sector and foreign trade at the Center for Development of the Higher School of Economics, Vladimir Bessonov.

The Rosstat did not like the idea, but it liked the two key curators of media policy in the Kremlin and the government - the first deputy head of the presidential administration Alexei Gromov and the deputy head of the government apparatus Leonid Levin, the interlocutor, close to the leadership of Rosstat. Before the elections to the State Duma, as a government official told the project, the country's leadership would like to minimize negative news, so most likely the idea will be officially designed. This is enough to order the government. Moreover, such manipulations have recently become the norm over time.

For example, before the last Epistle of the President, the Rosstat parliament forced to postpone the publication of data on the fall of the real disposable income of Russians for the first quarter of 2021, the federal official told the project. The news was postponed the next week, although so far the dynamics of this key indicator have been published strictly on schedule. Real disposable cash income is minus income of mandatory payments (taxes and fees, interest on loans, etc.) adjusted for inflation. In January-March 2021, they decreased by 3.6%, and according to the results of last year, the fall amounted to 3%. In general, the available income of Russians over the last four quarters is 9% lower than in the crisis of 2014. On the terms of anonymity, the federal official claims that even for the postponed publication of this data to Rosstat “got”: “The authorities think: we are doing well, and you show falling income there.” “There is always the problem of the one who brings bad news,” said the former deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Council Andrei Klepach.

However, officials put pressure on Rosstat, not only forcing the agency to move the data from the publication of data, the interlocutors of the “project” say.

How to reduce mortality

“Once they called us from the local Ministry of Health with the question:“ How can we reduce mortality? ”,-an employee of one of the territorial statistics in the Far East tells the“ project ”. - Is this a normal question? Not the Ministry of Health must do something in order to really reduce it, but, apparently, the statistics organ on paper. And so in almost everything - claims not to their inaction and illiterate ministers, but to statistics.

The topic of demography is important for officials, and in it they are especially actively trying to manipulate numbers. Moreover, it is very difficult for them to carry out the “May decree” of the president in this area.

That Putin requires demography

After last year’s “zeroing” of the Constitution, Vladimir Putin signed a new decree on the national purposes of Russia's development until 2030.

Now, according to the presidential decree, the expectation of life should increase until 78 years by 2030. By this time, the government should ensure a steady increase in the population of the country.

Officials cannot cope with these goals - in Putin’s previous decree, the same indicators had to be achieved by 2024. But in 2020, the expectation of life in Russia, according to preliminary estimates, decreased to 71.1 years against 73.3 years in 2019. And the population of Russia for the first time in 17 years decreased by 577 thousand people and as of January 1, 2021 amounted to 146.17 million people.

How the population of Russia has changed during the reign of Putin

Thousands of people

Rosstat data

Former adviser to the demographic calculations of Rosstat Alexei Raksha told the project: in 2019, the three largest regions - Moscow, Moscow Region and Tatarstan - came up with their own way to fulfill Putin’s decrees. To do this, they asked Rosstat to underestimate them a forecast for the expected life expectancy and overestimate the expected mortality - so they could easily fulfill the tasks. The demographic forecast of Rosstat is the calculation of the expected population of Russia in three versions (low, medium and high) based on the prerequisites for the dynamics of birth rate, mortality and migration. On its basis, all socio-economic forecasts and the demographic policy of the government are developed. True, according to Raksha, this is a difficult manipulation - if you underestimate the forecast for some regions, then it is necessary to increase it for others, otherwise it is impossible to fit into the already agreed general forecast for the country as a whole.

“At first I refused to do this, but then the authorities said that we would all be fired here now, including the leadership of the department, if we do not. The main feeling that an employee of Rosstat must experience is fear, especially recently, ”he admits.

As a result, the regions went towards, but because of this it was not possible to balance the demographic forecast. Raksha even believes that he turned out to be so distorted that now officials cannot focus on him, including when developing the budget. The Rosstat emphasized that the preparation of a demographic forecast is an exceptional function of Rosstat and "regional leaders are not able to influence the results of calculations." “There is no real demographic forecast in principle now. It has yet to be done, ”a federal official confirms on the terms of anonymity.

For which Alexei Rakshu was fired

Raksha has been working in Rosstat since 2014. He publicly expressed doubts about the reliability of the mortality data published by the authorities from the Covid-19. In particular, in a conversation with The New York Times, Raksha said that Moscow does not report about 70% of the deaths associated with coronavirus, and the regions - about about 80%.

According to the demographer, the conflict with the leadership of Rosstat began before the Pandemia, after he came to the department of the new PR team, led by press secretary Igor Vagan, who asked for the preliminary coordination of all the personal comments of the demograph in the media, despite the fact that Raksha never indicated his place of work. The “last straw”, according to the demograph, became posts on social networks. He wrote on his Facebook that the authorities supposedly hide information about how to consider and publish covid statistics under the chipboard, “for official use”; Now the post is not available. Rakshe, according to him, was threatened by the initiation of a criminal case for the disclosure of personal data that he had in the depersonalized form, as well as problems with his leadership. In July 2020, Raksha left the department. The Rosstat “Project” reported that the demographer quit on his own “until the moment of dismissal, he played in the media more than once, expressing a personal position on certain issues, using the data of the Federal State Statistics Service. The service did not prevent his desire to increase his expert status in public space, ”the statistical department emphasized.

Manipulation of mortality statistics took place during the pandemic, a source of Project, close to the government, and a federal official who asked for confidentiality told. From the final data of Rosstat for 2020, it turned out that the mortality rate last year increased by 340.3 thousand people, but of them, formally on the Covid-19, only 42.5%of cases (144.7 thousand people) were on the pneumonia (growth of 2.4 times), diabetes (+26%), diseases of the nervous system (+21%), but the most), but the most), but the most It is amazing that mortality “from old age” increased by 20% over the year, although this cause can be indicated only in rare cases. According to the explanations of the Ministry of Health, only if the deceased was more than 80 years old, and in his medical documents there was no information about chronic diseases, injuries or their consequences that could cause death. In these categories, the interlocutor of the “project”, which was close to the government, was written by the victims of the coronavirus. The federal official in a conversation with the “project” agreed with this assumption, although he emphasized that mortality from other diseases could jump due to a lack of necessary medical care during the pandemic.

It is impossible to understand what is happening with mortality this year-Rosstat stopped publishing information every month about what diseases, except for coronavirus, Russians die, annual data for 2020 were published in June 2021, but information for each month is still inaccessible. All death statistics, most likely, will be published only in the summer of next year, the interlocutor of the “project”, close to the leadership of Rosstat.

Grunt falsifications with demographic data could occur in Sevastopol. According to Rosstat, this is the only region of Russia where, according to the results of the 2020 pandemium, the expectation of life has increased by +0.05 years, despite the fact that according to preliminary data, it should have fallen by -0.6 years. A very simple manipulation could help the authorities of Sevastopol to the authorities of Sevastopol - on paper they increased the population in 2020 by 60 thousand people, due to which the indicator of life expectancy increased, Raksha said. This assumption is partly confirmed by other public data of Rosstat - the population of the city, despite the increase in mortality against the backdrop of pandemia in 2020, by 13.5%, or the same 60 thousand people. In the Federal State Statistics Service, the growth of the population of Sevastopol was explained by the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs provided the department with specified data on the number of migration to the region from 2015 to 2019. "Project" sent a request to the Government of Sevastopol.

The dynamics of the population of Sevastopol

According to Rosstat, growth in %

Such falsifications of data, according to demographers, can allow the regions to get more money from the state budget: national republics, for example, Chechnya, Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia and others. They receive subsidies from Moscow based on the population, so how to overestimate the number of inhabitants is beneficial for them.

No one in Rosstat wants to falsify the data, but employees are forced to “compromise”, said the interlocutor close to the leadership of the department.

As a fall in the income of Russians, they turned into growth

Rosstat hides not only demographic statistics. After the Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin arrived in the government, the department hid data on the average salaries of employees of the presidential administration, government apparatus and federal ministries and departments. For example, according to the results of 2018, it became known that the average salary in AP was 237 thousand rubles, in the government apparatus - 240 thousand rubles, and in the Ministry of Defense - 105, 3 thousand rubles. Thus, one can easily notice that the employees of the Kremlin and the White House live especially well in comparison with other officials. But the same information for 2019 is already not available. Now there is only a total figure: the average salary of federal civil servants amounted to 140 thousand rubles. , some indicators calculated by Rosstat are meaninglessly closed and not published since Soviet times: non -ferrous metals production data are considered secret to state statistics, but Russia as a state provides the UN, the head of the analysis department of the real sector and foreign trade at the Higher School Center, Vladimir Bessonov, told the project.

Manipulations of statistics became possible, apparently, after Rosstat was deprived of independence. Most of its existence, the department was subordinated directly to the government, but in 2017 it was once again sent to the Ministry of Economic Development, under the Ministry of Rosstat was about three months in 2004, as well as from 2008 to 2012 and at the head of Rosstat, a native of the Ministry of Paul Malkov was at the head of Rosstat.

Rosstat indicators according to the old and new methodology

The dynamics of real disposable income of Russians, %

Old

New

После этого статистики так поменяли методологию расчетов располагаемых доходов россиян, что их падение в позапрошлом году превратилось в небольшой рост (вместо -0,1% стало +0,1%; по последним оценкам Росстата, в 2018 году располагаемые доходы выросли на +0,4%) , хотя премьер-министр Дмитрий Медведев анонсировал более интенсивный рост доходов россиян. Новые расчеты показали, что и располагаемые доходы россиян с 2013 по 2018 год снизились не так значительно: по сравнению с 2013 годом показатель упал на 8,3% вместо прежних 10,9%. Правда, и это не устроило начальство — в этом году министр экономического развития Максим Решетников поручил Росстату еще раз изменить методику.