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The Sarmatian Review Index

April 2002

Volume XXII, No. 2

War and Peace

Amount of the world's produced oil consumed by Americans: 25 percent.

Amount of the world's proven oil reserves in the United States: 3 percent.

Source: Elliot Negin in Washington Times, 1 November 2001.

Misery

Percentage of working Poles who make between $125-$250 (Zl 500-Zl 1,000) per month: 78.7 percent.

Percentage of working Poles who make less than $125 per month: 13.4 percent.

Source: Edmund Szot, "Zwyczajna polska bieda," Rzeczpospolita, 24 January 2002.

Average salary of a medical doctor in Poland: $275 (Zl 1,100) per month.

Average nurse's salary in Poland: $210 per month.

Source: AFP, 24 January 2002.

Salaries and taxes

Monthly salary of deputy heads of the Polish National Bank: $8,250-$9,000 (Zl 33,000 to 36,000).

Monthly salary of members of the Currency Board in Poland: $6,250 (Zl 25,000).

Monthly salary of deputy head of a large Polish bank: $42,500 (Zl 170,000).

Approximate rate of exchange in Fall 2001: $1=4.1 Zl.

Source: Michal Pawlak in Donosy, 2 November 2001.

Monthly income of members of Parliament in Poland: salary $2,240 (Zl 8,980), reimbursement for office expenses $2,350 (Zl 9,320). Additionally, the MPs receive $1,900 (Zl 7,600) per year for hotel expenses outside Warsaw and free travel on Polish railways, bus lines and airlines.

Source: Michal Jankowski in Donosy, 25 January 2002.

Percentage of Poles who pay the lowest rate of income tax due to smallness of their income (under $8,150 (Zl 32,736) per year: 94.6 percent.

Percentage of taxes paid by this group: 52.3 percent.

The remaining taxpayers (5.4 percent) pay 47.7 percent of all taxes.

Source: Polish Finance Ministry, as reported in Donosy, October 2001.

Life under Soviet-imposed socialism

Number of pairs of shoes per inhabitant (Poland's population in 1980 was 36 million) in 1981: 1.6 pairs.

Source: Michal Radgowski, Rzeczpospolita, 17 November 2001.

Church finances in Poland

Average monthly salary of employees of the Lublin Diocese in 2001: $240 (Zl 957).

Total budget of the Diocese (consisting of the Curia expenses, diocesan seminary and charitable work) in 2001: $2.2 million (Zl 8.7 million).

Budget deficit for 2001: $5,450.

Source of income for the Diocese: per-person tax assessed by the bishop from the larger and richer parishes.

Size of tax: one to one-and-a-half US cents per person per week

Source: Archbishop Józef Zycinski, as reported by Lena Bialkowska in Donosy, 7 January 2002.

Migration

Number of immigrants in Russia (pop. 144 million) in 2001: 8 million.

Of these, number of legal immigrants: 800,000.

Source: www.gazeta.ru, 24 October 2001.

Number of immigrants in the United States (pop. 280) in 2001: 7-8 million.

Source: 2000 census estimate, as reported by Houston Chronicle, 25 October 2001.

Demography

Percentage of Poland's 39 million inhabitants employed on the land in 2001: 18 percent.

Source: AFP, 8 November 2001.

Number of citizens of the Russian Federation who are Muslims: 22 million, or almost one in six.

Source: Abdul-Wahid Niyazov of the Russian Duma, as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (http://www.rferl.org/newsline), 29 November 2001.

Number of Ukrainians estimated to have worked illegaly in Poland in 2001: 300,000.

Source: AFP, 7 December 2001.

Corruption

Transparency International’s ranking of Russia in the global corruption survey of 91 countries: 81, below Pakistan and above Tanzania.

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 18 October 2001.

Gold and money

Number of tons of gold the Bolsheviks found in the Moscow treasury when they assumed power in 1917: 1,300.

Number of tons of gold the Yeltsin government found in the Moscow treasury in 1991: 280.

Source: Yeltsin’s collaborator Gennadii Burbulis, in an interview with Rzeczpospolita’s Karol Wrubel, 15 December 2001.

Estimated amount of foreign currency Hungarians held in savings accounts in September 2001: $2.5 billion.

Percentage of holdings in DM (German marks) of all Polish savings held as foreign currencies: 90 percent.

German officials’ estimate of the percentage of DM circulating outside Germany as of 2001: 30­40 percent.

Source: Geza Molnar of AFP, 26 December 2001.

Economy

Size of Russian GDP in 2001 by comparison to 1990: 64 percent of the 1990 level. Size of the CIS GDP as compared to 1990 level: 62.7 (35 percent in Moldova, 43 percent in Ukraine and 90 percent in Kazakhstan).

Source: World Bank figures as of January 2002, as reported by AFP, 25 January 2002.

The total of loans granted to individuals and companies in 2001: Russia, 12 percent of GDP; Poland, Hungary, and India, 25 percent of GDP, Brazil, 35 percent; Czech Republic, 57 percent; United States, 145 percent of GDP.

Source: Marielle Eudes of AFP, 16 January 2002.

Religions

Percentage of Muslims in France in 2001: 10 percent.

Source: Alain Besançon in Znak (Kraków), January 2002.

Voter turnout

Voter turnout in elections to district councils in Moscow on 16 December 2001: 25 percent, or a minimum threshold necessary to validate the elections.

Threshold for validating local elections in the Leningrad district, in the Tomsk district, and in the Altai republic in southwestern Siberia: zero percent, ten percent, and 50 percent, respectively.

Source: AFP (Moscow), 16 December 2001.

Voter turnout in the elections for newly-created regional assemblies in Slovakia in December 2001: 26 percent in the first round, and 22.61 percent in the run-off.

Source: AFP (Bratislava), 16 December 2001.

Suicides

Number of suicides in Russia in 2001 per 100,000 inhabitants: 32.

Source: Zhan Tekei, Kavkaz-tsentr (www.kavkaz.org/news/2001/12/14/news1.htm), 17 December 2001.

Legacy of Soviet Russia

Percentage of ethnic Kazakhs who perished during the Moscow-imposed collectivization in 1929­1932: 34 percent.

Number of the Kazakh intelligentsia members executed on Moscow’s orders in 1937: 30,000.

Source: Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 21 December 2002.

Prisons

Polish prison population in 2001: 80,000, or up 25 percent from the year before.

Source: AFP, 6 December 2001.

War prisoners

Number of Taliban prisoners being held by Americans in the prison at Shibarghan, Afghanistan, in December 2001: 3,500.

Breakdown of prisoners by nationality: 2,000 Afghans, 700 Pakistanis, with smaller numbers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq, the Muslim republics of Russia, and the countries of Central Asia.

Number of Chechens among them: none.

Source: New York Times, 1 January 2002.

Languages

Number of students who graduated in Arabic from universities in the United States in 2000: nine.

Source: Economist, 20 December 2001.