Izvestia No. 146 August 20, 2002 [translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only] WILL THE MIDDLE CLASS BECOME A POLITICAL PROP OF THE RUSSIAN STATE? Yekaterina GRIGORYEVA, Svetlana POPOVA, Natalia RATIANI
In August 1998, the Russian middle class was hit hard. However, contrary to forecasts, it hasn't died but learnt to win in the new circumstances, with the default becoming for it a necessary factor of growth, a stimulus for survival.
During the four post-default years, political and expert circles have been very active in their searches for a new Russian middle class and attempts to describe it. The thing is that the middle class of Soviet society uniting researchers, engineers and technicians, skilled workers and lower layers of the party and state bureaucracy has disappeared. Nevertheless, it played its own, rather significant role in economic and political changes taking place at the turn of the 1990s.
So far, experts have failed to create a single and clear portrait of the Russian middle class. They have managed to define, more or less correctly, its most frequent professions and occupations: they are representatives of Russian medium-sized business, companies' employees and even some categories of state officials.
Most experts share the view that a person with an average monthly income of 200-300 dollars can consider himself to belong to the middle class. This amount of money, which is quite decent for many Russian regions, is too small for a Muscovite. Such earnings will not allow him to ensure average living standards for himself.
According to the results of various studies, the middle class in Russia embraces from 6 to 8 percent of the population in one version, and from 20 to 25 percent, in another. It is interesting that both figures, being as tentative as they are, could be called correct. The first one is a moral-statistical yardstick, while the second one is an economic yardstick.
At the same time, many Russians in the above income group are afraid to call themselves "middle class" thinking that in impoverished Russia prosperity is a circumstance which should better be concealed.
Sociologists find it difficult to study not only their respondents' incomes (which are understated by 20 percent at least), but also their political preferences. As a rule, the notion of the middle class is often met in studies of the consumer market and is absent when the talk is about the country's current political situation.
Nikolai Brusnikin, deputy chairman of the State Duma finance committee, is convinced that "the middle class has not yet become a critical mass in Russia, a layer capable of influencing the processes occurring in the state. Therefore, the state cannot yet rely on it as an isolated electorate. The task is not only to find the middle class on our country's map, but to motivate it, to make it interested in reforms both economically and politically."
Some analysts believe that, by improving their financial situation, the middle class has come close to taking a new decision as to whether it will still exist in isolation from the state (which is possible only with incomes of no less than 20,000 roubles a month), or it will start a political dialogue with the powers-that-be.
However, there is no structure on the Russian "party fair" which is ready to offer the middle class an ideology which might appeal to it. The Yabloko party is mostly supported by the "remains" of the Soviet middle class. The Union of Right Forces (SPS), which uses the middle-class ideology as a cover, protects the oligarchs who have long forgotten that they once belonged to the middle class. Or they had no time to belong to it at all. The United Russia party has turned towards budget-sector workers and pensioners.
The middle class is afraid of politics and does not want to participate in it. It doesn't believe that it is still possible to make this state its own, understandable and transparent. It continues to stay in isolation, and this is not its fault, Brusnikin believes, for the state hasn't made business a notion embodying the country's development.
The state is not hurrying towards the middle class. Engrossed in problems of budget sector workers and pensioners, concerned over how to urgently plug up holes, it has no time to think about building its own political prop.
Izvestia's reference note
According to sociological survey data, a representative of the middle class is about 33 years old. He has a privatised apartment, a car and a university diploma. He is chief of a 20-strong team in a small company.
Some 10 percent of the country's population belonging to the middle class are concerned over such problems as taxes, personal safety, ecology, drugs, education and orphans.
For 95 percent of respondents of the Komkon-2 research firm, money is one of the main things in today's life. Some 62 percent of middle-class Russians think that it is "hard to survive observing all laws" in Russia, and that "strong leaders can do more than all sorts of laws."
Lilia OVCHAROVA, director of research programmes of the Independent Institute of Social Policy:
In terms of material well-being (income, ownership of real estate, savings, bank accounts, a car and luxuries), professional qualification and self-identification, about 10 percent of Russians have no prospects to find themselves in the middle-class category. For them, the possibility to get higher incomes and higher qualification is close to zero. They feel they belong to the poor strata.
A considerable layer of the population (about 40 percent) could be included in the so-called proto-middle class, i.e., to those who could find themselves in that category in future. These are, for instance, students receiving a qualification which could ensure a normal level of incomes for them. About 50 percent of Russians have one or two features characteristic of the middle class, but not all of them could be referred to the middle class. For instance, teachers have low incomes despite their high qualification. Some 5-6 percent of Russians have most of these features, but only 20 percent of Russians could be referred to the middle class.
_________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx