We exploit panel data from the second phase of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to investigate the household characteristics that explain saving during a period of extreme dislocation. Among our more noteworthy findings, we find evidence of short-term consumption smoothing behavior as households respond to temporary income shocks. Conditional on income level, we find that savings rates are higher in households benefiting from non-standard (likely transitory) sources of support such as private transfers and sales of home produced food; savings rates are lower, moreover, in households suffering from unemployment or payment arrears. We also confirm the robustness of an atypical U-shaped age-savings relationship to multivariate specifications. And finally, we turn up strong support for an inverse relationship between the household’s stock of durables and its saving rate.