Husband-Wife Doctors Join Russia’s Poor

Yefim Hayut, an internist at this central Russian city’s Hospital No. 6, suddenly became poor this month.

A two-pound chunk of butter in his neighborhood grocery store, which used to cost about his hourly wage, now costs more than a week’s salary. Buying a two-pound link of smoked sausage would consume half his monthly pay, while the purchase of a new dress for his 8-year-old daughter, if it had not been crossed off the family budget, would take the rest.

Hayut and his wife, Olga, also a doctor, earn a combined monthly salary of 1,000 rubles--a sum that would have been considered princely five years ago. But now it converts to less than $10 a month, making the Hayuts, and millions upon millions of Russian white-collar workers like them, some of the poorest people on Earth.

Although never well-off, the Hayuts did not seem so impoverished last year, when they could still buy most staples at prices kept artificially low by the state. But since Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s government freed virtually all prices on Jan. 2, costs have shot upward toward Western norms--to 3, 5, 10 and in some cases even 50 times their former levels.

“We went to school for 16 years in order to end up without the ability to feed ourselves normally,” said Yefim, the natural humor in his luminous eyes giving way to chagrin. “We’ve never experienced hunger, but we don’t know what will happen now.”

Aside from the several hours of moonlighting per week he already puts in, Yefim, 30, sees no other way to earn extra income. He knows no other profession, and Olga must take care of Alla, 8, and Misha, 4.

And so, in a decision that bodes ill for the Russian government, Yefim and thousands of doctors like him are planning a strike today. They intend, he said, to stop all work except emergency care to press their demands that Russia shift from socialized medicine to national health insurance and that doctors receive major raises.

“We know all this can lead to hyper-inflation, but why should we be the first people to suffer? We want to save ourselves,” he said. “We can’t demand money from patients, we can’t engage in such extortion. The only hope for us is our own government. That’s why we’re striking.”

Olga was skeptical about the walkout, but she faced the imminent future with cold realism.

“Let’s count,” she said. “We have 1,000 rubles of income a month, and we spend it all on food. That’s 250 a week--that comes to about 2 kilos of meat a week (4.4 pounds) divided among four people, plus a little bread. We haven’t drunk milk in a long time because we can’t get it.” (Moscow officials estimate that residents of the capital need a minimum of 2,000 rubles per person to buy a basic market basket of goods each month.)

Soon, even the Hayuts’ last buffer against the haywire economy--the stockpiles of food and goods they accumulated before the prices increased--will be gone.

“This is all we have left,” Yefim said, opening his refrigerator to reveal largely empty shelves holding four containers of cooking oil sent from his parents in Moldova, a few hunks of frozen meat, three small jars of mayonnaise, some eggs and a leftover half-pound of butter. “Now it’s running out and we don’t know what we’ll do next.”

Since Jan. 2, the Hayuts have bought virtually nothing but bread and eggs. Olga and Yefim refrain from eating the mandarin oranges they bought for about 13 rubles a pound, saving them for the children. They do the same with the remaining butter. “We suddenly decided we can’t stand it,” Yefim joked.

Since the price of school breakfasts and lunches quintupled, Olga has taken to feeding the children at home, and Yefim has noticed that many doctors at the hospital also seem unable to afford cafeteria lunches. Olga has started making clothes at home because buying them is out of the question--unless they sell some of their other possessions to a secondhand store. She stopped baking because it requires butter.

On an afternoon round of the stores where he and Olga shop most often, Yefim and the dozens of other customers performed a sad new kind of two-step: a walk up to the counter to gaze at the appetizing bounty that has appeared on the shelves after a long hiatus; a glance at the price and an immediate step back, and onward to the next counter.

“I’ll have to buy something eventually--but not yet,” Yefim said, eyeing the exorbitant prices of the chicken, cheese and chocolate.

An elderly woman shopper in a cloth coat, seeing Yefim escorting obvious reporters with pad and camera, launched a loud, unsolicited tirade against life under the Russian government’s painful reforms.

“This is not life, it’s some kind of nightmare!” she said. “You go to sleep and you don’t know what will be when you wake up! Now there’s only bread left--and that at five rubles a loaf! Soon we’ll be going barefoot too and we’ll have to learn how to weave lapti (traditional Russian shoes made out of woven birch bark).”

Yefim moved stolidly on. He and Olga, as cultured members of the intelligentsia, would never indulge in such public hysteria. But, quietly, they acknowledge that they are living a life utterly without guarantees, with nothing, not even their respected profession, to fall back on.

“Our profession will always be needed,” Yefim said, “but I’m not sure this profession will always be able to feed me in this country.”

Perhaps most disconcerting for Yefim is that when he makes house calls, he sees how other needy Russians are living in what could turn out to be a preview of his own family’s fate. “I can name you 10 families who are malnourished,” he said. “These are people who aren’t hungry but who systematically don’t get enough to eat.”

Doctors in Tver have also noted, although they have not documented it, an increase in cases of anemia, he said.

Politically, the astronomical new prices have most people on the edge of explosion, even in quiet Russian provincial cities like Tver, Yefim believes. “People here just need a spark,” he said. “If today there were some clashes, people would go out and support them.”

But not the Hayuts. For all the deprivation they face, they plan to keep on working and give Yeltsin’s reforms a chance to make things better. “I can’t say I’m happy about how all this is affecting me and my family,” Yefim said. But “I can’t always heal a patient in three weeks, so how can you heal a country?”