Poverty as a Social Phenomenon: From Russian Classical Literature to Contemporary Forms of Vulnerability in Western Societies

This work examines poverty as a structural and historical phenomenon rather than a collection of individual failures. Drawing on nineteenth-century Russian classical literature (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky), the study analyses poverty as an inner human condition shaped by institutional arrangements, cultural norms, and political decisions. The literary analysis is placed within the socio-economic context of the late Russian Empire and compared with contemporary forms of poverty in developed Western societies, including working poverty, social invisibility, and long-term vulnerability. The study argues that poverty persists not despite progress, but through stable mechanisms of inequality embedded in modern social systems.