The Crystal factory, 270 kilometres East of Moscow, isn't working at full capacity. Only several hundred of the 6,000 employees who worked here about 15 years ago remain.

Valery Danilov has worked here all his adult life.

He survived the firings of the 1990s, he escaped the crash of 1998, but the global financial crisis has delivered the coup de grace.

"They've been sacking people. Some people have been fired directly, others left of their own will because they were no longer being paid," says Danilov.

After 25 years of work, this Russian was making barely 220 euros a month.

Today, the factory doesn't even have the funds to pay its employee unemployment contributions.

"The country's in crisis," says Danilov. "There are other factories but there too they're laying people off. I think the crisis is everywhere."

The town used to be the centre of the Russian glass-making industry but today all the factories are on their knees, the buildings are in ruins, and nobody has the money to invest in new technology.

Yet the only hope of surviving would be to modernise an infrastructure inherited from the last century.

"People are ready to sign for new orders, they're ready to take our products but have no money to pay for it," says Serguei Tichkine, the Technical Director of the Dzerjinsky Factory. "What can we do? People are working and we must pay them...We must buy raw materials. It's a vicious circle. There's no point drawing you an explanatory picture."

In this factory, as elsewhere, fewer than a tenth of the ovens are functioning. The others are waiting for better days. As for the workers' salaries, they rarely exceed 300 euros - hardly enough to buy the bare minimum.

Valery Danilov survived thanks to his allotment and his mothers' 200 euros worth of disability benefits.

"We don't have enough to buy bread or sugar but we can, however, buy salt," says his mother Galina Danilova.

Fruit and vegetables from his allotment are jarred for the winter. Cucumbers, tomatoes, jam...

"Me, I think we live exactly as we used to. From year to year, it's not better or worse..." says Danilov.

Just enough to subsist but without anything extra to put on the table.

"If we want meat, it's only to prepare kebabs but it's very expensive. We eat it just once or twice a year” he adds.

Danilov must pay for his two sons to study. Today, he's going back to the factory to pick up two months in unpaid back wages.