Brian McDonald: Do Russians have toilets? Why that question tells us more about you than about them

By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/9/25

Brian McDonald is an Irish journalist long based in Russia.

You see it all the time on X. Some blue-check warrior parroting a long-dead statistic, grinning to themselves as they jab out: “Russia doesn’t even have toilets.”

It was out in force again this weekend, stirred up by my Substack post, “Is Russia’s Economy Really Just Spain and Portugal? Let’s Do the Math.”

It’s the kind of smirk that aims to end debate before it begins—as if flushable porcelain were the final measure of geopolitical relevance. The reasoning, such as it is, runs like this: if some Russians use outhouses, then Russia is primitive, and therefore nothing it does can matter.

It’s rubbish. Lazy, brittle rubbish that should have been flushed long ago. But since the u-bend of discourse keeps spitting it back up, let’s deal with it properly.

Fresh from Rosstat—Russia’s state statistics agency—we now know that 91.8% of Russian residences have indoor toilets. That’s more than nine in ten homes, across a landmass that stretches from the Baltic to the Bering Sea, Arctic tundra to Caucasus ridge.

Of these: 77.1% are hooked up to centralized sewerage; 6.2% use septic tanks or the like; 13.7% rely on piped cesspits. Meanwhile, just 0.4% said they had no toilet at all.

These aren’t guesses pulled off a Reddit thread. They come from a rigorous, face-to-face survey of 60,000 households across every region of the Russian Federation in 2024.

So where does the myth come from?

Simple: Russia is vast. It contains some of the most remote, unforgiving terrain on the planet. In places like Yakutia, where the mercury dives to -50°C, laying sewer pipes is less public works and more madness. The same goes for highland hamlets in Dagestan or indigenous settlements hugging the Arctic rim. Infrastructure there isn’t about budget. It’s about thermodynamics.

And then there are the dachas—summer cabins, deliberately spartan, where urbanites escape the city and embrace simplicity. Plenty of Moscow professionals are content to use an outhouse for two weekends in July. That doesn’t make Russia a basket case any more than it makes Finns barbarians for loving a cabin sauna.

Still, the trope hangs around. Its chief propagator? A 2019 article from The Moscow Times (a Dutch outlet, despite the name) that wouldn’t pass inspection in any functioning bathroom.

There’s also a shift happening. More Russians are trading flats for homes, moving to the suburban edges. Many choose septic systems not because they’re forced to, but because they prefer autonomy. It’s the same setup you’ll find in most of rural Ireland.

We can have a serious debate about Russia—its politics, economy, war, or trajectory. But we cannot have that debate if the opening gambit is, “They don’t even have toilets.”

It’s not just false. It’s cowardly. A smirk in place of a thought. A meme instead of a fact. It says: Don’t analyse. Don’t map. Don’t think. Just laugh and move on.

To which the only proper response is: grow up. The world is more complicated than your favourite punchline.

Russia has toilets. Russia has sewerage. It also has oil, wheat, reactors, satellites, aircraft, and yes—some furiously cold villages.

If your best contribution is an outhouse gag, then maybe your whole worldview belongs in one.