Везде
Transformations of the Social Structure of Russian Society in late 1980s – late 2010s
Оглавление
Аннотация Оценить Содержание публикации
Библиография Комментарии
Поделиться
QR
Метрика
Transformations of the Social Structure of Russian Society in late 1980s – late 2010s
Аннотация
Код статьи
S013216250016781-2-1
DOI
10.31857/S013216250016781-2
Тип публикации
Статья
Статус публикации
Опубликовано
Авторы
Тихонова Наталья Евгеньевна 
Аффилиация: Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS
Адрес: Russian Federation, Moscow
Выпуск
Номер 8
Страницы
237-245
Аннотация

The article describes specifics of the social structure of Soviet society, three stages of its transformation in the late 1980s – late 2010s, and stratification models of modern Russian society. It is shown that the key foundations of the social differentiation in late Soviet society (merging of power and property, role of non-monetary privileges, etc.) retained their significance throughout this period, although in the 1990s the effect of access to the ‘deficit’ has disappeared, and since the end of the 2000s importance of higher education has also started to decline. Moreover, the role of such factors of social differentiation as accumulated wealth, current income, employment stability and the resource of social networks has sharply increased in the 1990s, and the role of attributes of precariousness in employment and the social origin has increased in the 2000s. It is shown that the social structure of Russian society currently consists of four main macro-groups: the “top” of society where most power and property is concentrated (top 5%), and three opposing strata of the mass population. Among the latter – a stratum privileged against the background of other Russians, accounting for slightly less than 20% of population; the median stratum, which includes about half of the total population and sets the typical standard of life for modern Russia; the lower stratum, uniting about a quarter of population, whose lives are dominated by the deprivations and risks that are atypical for average Russian. In the determination of the place in the stratification hierarchy in the first two of these macro-groups, the volume and type of resources that determine the position in various markets (including labor market) play a decisive role, which allows us to view them as a basis for the formation of the upper and middle classes. However, the inequalities of the non-class type (age, health, family composition, etc.) play a decisive role in falling into the median or lower strata.

Ключевые слова
social structure, social stratification, strata, social inequalities
Источник финансирования
This article is a translation of: Тихонова Н.Е. Трансформации социальной структуры российского общества: конец 1980-х – конец 2010-х гг. // Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia. 2021. No 8: 22–32. DOI: 10.31857/S013216250014308-1
Классификатор
Получено
21.09.2021
Дата публикации
27.09.2021
Всего подписок
6
Всего просмотров
57
Оценка читателей
0.0 (0 голосов)
Цитировать Скачать pdf
1 The last three decades have led to serious changes not only in the economy but also in the social life of the country, and have dramatically changed the structure of Russian society. What did it look like at the beginning of these transformations and how has it changed during this time? Under the influence of what factors did these changes occur? And, most importantly, what does this structure look like today?
2 The main evolution stages of Russian social structure. Soviet society was marked by the merging of power relations with property relations. The real basis of the social structure was, in the first instance, a position in the system of power relations, including control over the distribution of all types of resources. Accordingly, the society was divided into two main groups: 1) "managers" who performed administrative and distribution functions, and 2) "the managed", i.e. ordinary employees, the difference between whom was rather nominal. The scope and nature of the powers that the "managers" had at their disposal were of crucial importance in determining their status. While in determining the status of the "managed" (ordinary population), a job position and employment in priority industries, where significantly more resources were directed to than to conventional ones, played a key role. Both largely depended on the person's education. The region and the type of locality where a person lived were also of great importance in determining their status.
3 All these objective factors influenced the standing of the representatives of the largest population segments in the structure of society, determining the degree of their well-being and employment specifics and the prestige of the position. The specific aspects of the position of ordinary Russians in the stratification system 1reflected primarily in the privileges they had (a prestigious job, good working conditions, better medical care, etc.). These privileges were very different in nature, but they displayed the most important forms of social inequality in employment and consumption that existed in society.
1. In this article, the term "stratification system" is used as a synonym of "social stratification" and "status hierarchy". All of them describe a vertically organised model of social structure, which is relevant for modern Russia as well.
4 The social structure of Soviet society included dozens of groups, but, in simplified form, it consisted of four groups:
5
  1. workers, collective farmers and mass intellectuals, who made up the homogeneous majority of society and whose standard of living was perceived as "typical" for society as a whole. And the countdown on the scale of social statuses began up or down in relation to them. Although the poorest part of them (as a rule, due to the specifics of their family status) had lower income than the rest, they were still able to have a near common lifestyle, and, in this sense, they did not constitute a special social group;
  2. a rather small in number (from 13% to 20–30% of the country's population according to various estimates [see Starikov, 1990; Naumova, 1990]), privileged strata located above them in the social hierarchy, including managers of small enterprises, middle-ranking heads of large enterprises, highly qualified specialists, as well as those whose main activity assumed the possibility of informal redistribution of benefits;
  3. few in number representatives of lowlife (social bottom) located in this hierarchy below the main body of the population;
  4. the "managers" who opposed them all2. In the late 1980s, when representatives of small businesses appeared, they became mainly part of the second group.
2. The division of the country's population in the analysis of the society's social structure into "managers" and "the managed" has been established in Russian science since the late 1980s and has been repeatedly used subsequently becoming well-established. For more information about the social structure of the late Soviet era, see: [Zaslavskaya, 1996; Radaev, Shkaratan, 1996; Tikhonova, 1999; Shkaratan, 2012].
6 The key feature of the social structure with which Russia entered a period of sharp transformations, however, was not only the role of power and privileges as the key bases determining a person's place in the social hierarchy but also the fact that monetary forms of inequality played a relatively small role in determining a person's status. This was largely due to the fact that the degree of these inequalities themselves was rather small. For instance, even in 1992, when large-scale economic reforms began, the R/P 10% ratio demonstrating the depth of the income gap between the richest 10% to the poorest 10% of the population, reached only 8 points.
7 The situation completely changed with the beginning of market reforms. In the 1990s, several processes simultaneously took place in Russia, which influenced the formation of both new foundations and new elements of its social structure. Among these processes were, first of all, the emergence of a free market of goods and services and its gradual saturation with the simultaneous loss of the connection of many non-monetary forms of inequality with the place of work. Secondly, the formation of the private sector, which reduced the protection of workers' rights and increased their differentiation on this basis. Thirdly, the importance of education and qualifications, the economic return from which had increased, significantly rose for the most qualified specialists in the private sector in the 1990s. Fourth, the diversity of social structures of large territorial communities increased. Fifth, there was a colossal deepening of social differentiation and a sharp increase in the number of "social lower classes": the share of the population with an average per capita income of less than one subsistence minimum increased from 2.8% in 1989 to 28.4% by 1999 (according to the data of the Russian Federal State Statistics Service) when it reached its peak values [USSR..., 1990: 79]. Sixth, the restructuring of the economy that was actively going on in the 1990s caused a "downfall" of some industries (e.g., defence industry), including from the point of view of the prestige of being employed in them, and rapid growth of others (e.g., the financial sector). Seventh, "the comparative significance of the components of social status has notably changed. While an administrative and official criterion dominated the stratification of Soviet society, then by the mid-1990s, the criterion of property and income had acquired a decisive role" [Zaslavskaya, 1996: 18].
8 The completion of the first stage of the transformation of the social structure of Russian society was marked by the crisis of 1998–1999 and the change of the country's leadership. The second stage of this transformation, which occurred in the 2000s, was characterized primarily by the completion of the structural reforming of the Russian economy and the activation of the social policy implemented by the government. Under the influence of these factors, several trends reversed in some way. Against the background of stabilisation of all income distribution indicators, poverty has significantly decreased (up to 13.0% even in the crisis year of 2009) and the current consumption of all segments of the population has significantly increased. Thus, it was during this period accompanied by the simultaneous growth of income of the vast majority of the population, when stable proportions for the distribution of this "income cake" between mass groups of the population and the income stratification model of Russian society as a whole were formed [Model, 2018].
9 Simultaneously with the development of positive trends, negative processes had been developed as well, which were not characteristic for the previous stage either. The number of entrepreneurs reduced, the growth of returns on the education of employees stopped [Lukyanova, 2010], the role of the social network resource began to grow for the up-tending social mobility [Tikhonova, 2014]. In addition, although the crisis phenomena in the field of employment were not as global during this period as in the 1990s, nevertheless, a segment of employment emerged which can be characterized by its type as no longer a situational crisis, but as persistently precarious one [Toshchenko, 2018]. Violation of the basic labour rights of employees has become a new norm and not an anti-crisis measure. The stability of the main indicators of the income stratification model was accompanied by a deepening of inequality in accumulated wealth and a strengthened connection between power and property. Even though all the negative trends formed at this stage were mitigated by the general growth of well-being, in institutional terms, the "window of opportunity" for up-tending mobility of Russians or the protection of their interests in the labour market narrowed sharply during this period.
10

The authorities partially realized these problems as evidenced by making the slogans about the need to create 25 million high-tech jobs with high wages and the need to form a mass middle class in the country. Nevertheless, none of these problems have been solved. Consequently, the social structure of Russian society acquired the following form by the end of the 2000s: the top 5% in the social hierarchy were "managers" opposed by the main body of the population, of which the upper third possessed various kinds of resources that yielded, somehow, different returns. As a result, a little less than half of this third could be described as well-to-do, while the rest had a medium income. About 60% were the segments of the population that had few resources or no resources at all. According to the level and quality of life and depending on the place of residence and the family situation (whether there are children in the family, people with poor health, etc.), they were divided into, first of all, "poor lower classes" that united about a tenth of Russians, secondly, another 15–20% of Russians whose situation was not so dramatic but still characterized by the dominance of atypical signs of deprivation for the population as a whole, and, thirdly, a third of the population who had "normal" standards of lifestyle from the point of view of most Russians, which were also inherent to the relatively less prosperous half of the well-resourced part of the population.
11 In the 2010s, the external conditions for Russia's social and economic development deteriorated sharply due to a series of economic crises and sanctions. As a result, at the third stage of the evolution of Russian society's social structure, the effect of some of the previously formed negative trends intensified and new ones appeared. Thus, the growth of real earnings in the main segments of the population stopped, but in 2020, they even decreased compared to the beginning of the 2010s. The share of the poor was no longer characterized by a steady downward trend but remained steady in the range of 10.7%–13.4% fluctuating depending on the economic situation, and its stability was ensured by the development of equalizing trends and "pulling" the groups with the lowest income to the median strata [Model..., 2018]. The situation with the observance of employees' basic labour rights during each new crisis worsened more and more [Tikhonova, 2017] and employment precariatization increased [Toshchenko, 2018]. The role of social origin for being employed to the most attractive jobs in terms of their monetary and non-monetary characteristics continued to grow within any professional group [Tikhonova, 2014; 2021]. This happened against the background of stabilisation (and for some professional groups, reduction) of returns on education that began in the 2000s [Tikhonova, Karavay, 2018]. The connection between power and property continued to strengthen, etc.
12 In general, according to the results of the thirty-year transformation, the most striking changes in the social structure of Russian society include: 1) a sharp "vertical stretching" of the social status scale with a colossal deepening of social differentiation and the separation of the "top" of society from its overwhelming majority; 2) the emergence of previously absent social groups (business elites, small and medium-sized enterprises, etc.); 3) a significant increase in the number and change in the composition of the "lowlife"; 4) an increase in the significance of stratification factors associated with the social origin which determines the increasingly closed nature of social reproduction; 5) an increase in the significance of a person's job in determining their place in the stratification system due to the multiplication of the diversity of forms of labour relations, the weakening of positions in the labour market for the majority of employees and the widespread of precarious employment.
13 In addition, such factors as the region of residence, type of locality, employment sector, etc. exerted a huge influence on the place in the stratification system. The number of those who found themselves in the newly formed positions of the "underclass" turned out to be 10 times more than the number of those who got an opportunity to take new structural positions that appeared at the very top of the "social ladder" [Tikhonova, 2014]. Two key features that determined the model of the social structure in Soviet times (the merging of power and property, as well as the privileged position in the system of monetary and non-monetary inequalities) remained throughout this period even despite the huge increase in the importance of income and wealth inequality for social differentiation.
14 Features of the Social Structure of Modern Russia. The fact that two stratification bases traditional for Russia preserved their importance means that when analysing the social structure that has developed in Russia today, we should distinguish two independent objects and review their internal structures in different ways. One of these objects is the "managers", although now this is a significantly different group in terms of its functions in society and composition than in the Soviet period. The grounds for structuring its members are primarily related to power: political, administrative, economic, symbolic, etc., as well as disposable wealth. The second object is the mass strata of the population, which objectively and subjectively oppose this "elite". They are also structured in a certain way within themselves. The grounds for determining the place of their representatives in the social hierarchy are primarily related to their privileged position in various areas of life, their possession of most of economic, political, qualification and administrative resources.
15 Moreover, "managers" do not comprise the top income decile. People from the lower half of the top decile receive income that differs little from the next decile and have almost the same professional, educational, age and other features. Currently, the upper half of the decile ensures the separation of this decile from the rest of the population in Russia, especially one top percent. In the second half of the 2010s, the share of income attributable to it in Russia was about half of all income of this decile, which is even higher than the same indicator for the United States, and significantly higher than in China and post-communist countries of Eastern Europe [Novokmet et al., 2017]. The trend of the continuously increasing separation of the "upper classes" from the overwhelming majority of the country's population is even more clearly manifested in inequalities in the distribution of wealth. As of 2018, Russia was ranked 8th among 174 countries placed in descending order of this inequality [Credit, 2018: 114–117]. And by the share of wealth owned by the top 5% and 1% (74% and 57%, respectively), Russia held the 2nd place in the world, trailing only to Thailand, by the end of the 2010s [Credit, 2018: 157]. If three-fourths of the wealth is owned by 5% of the population, then this alone indicates that they control the "rules of the game" that exist in the society and, consequently, that it is fair to describe them as the "managers".
16 The "managers" mainly come from the groups that belonged to high-resource groups in Soviet Russia [Tikhonova, 2014]. During the transition to the market economy, they converted these resources into economic capital or used to increase other types of capital, since the process of initial capital accumulation took place against the background of Russia's transformation in the form of rapid conversion of various types of resources into each other with the formation of a new ruling class. One of the forms of accumulation of initial capital was also the legalization of the wealth that was criminally acquired in the 1990s. As a result, the group of "managers" that currently concentrates various types of capital is very diverse both in the origin of their wealth and in composition and includes not only entrepreneurs but also "top echelons" of public officers, representatives of the creative elite and even former criminal gangs.
17

However, not everyone who came from the high-resource groups of Soviet society turned out to be part of the "top" of Russian society as a result of the global transformation of the last thirty years [Tikhonova, 2014]. Most of them, who remained mainly in the positions of professionals and managers, became part of the mass strata. The fact that this part of Russian society is usually covered by representative general Russian sociological surveys makes it much easier to study its internal differentiation from the point of view of empirical data. Nevertheless, methodologically, the analysis of the internal structure of the mass strata of the population in general and this subgroup, in particular, is a challenging task and can be carried out by applying different theoretical approaches. One of them is an approach where groups of the population are distinguished based on the opportunities and life chances their representatives have, on the one hand, and deprivations and risks they experience, on the other hand. This approach, which follows the Neo-Weberian tradition, proceeds from the fact that the place of individuals in the system of social inequalities is reflected in the privileged position of their positions concerning some existing "norm" in various spheres of life or the presence of "excessive" types of deprivation and/or risks in relation to it, i.e. what M. Weber called "negative" privilege [Weber, 1978]. Using this approach to the analysis of the society's social structure, we can inevitably distinguish at least three main strata: 1) characterized by

18 the advantages of its positions to the average "norm"3, 2) characterized by the prevalence of risks and deprivations atypic for this norm, 3) the stratum that lies between them and is the most numerous in its composition, from which the countdown is taken when analysing the status hierarchy4.
3. As already noted above, we can distinguish at least two groups with positive privilege in relation to modern Russian society.

4. This approach was developed by a working group consisting of N.E. Tikhonova (head), V.A. Anikina, A.V. Karavay, Yu.P. Lezhnina, S.V. Mareeva and E.D. Slobodenyuk. Four areas of life were identified as the main "axes of social coordinates" of the multidimensional space of opportunities and risks that characterize the life of the Russian population today: economic situation, working conditions, opportunities for preserving human capital, the sphere of consumption and leisure. The relevant indicators were calculated based on 3 positive privilege indicators and 3 negative privilege indicators for each of these areas. For information about theoretical and methodological foundations of this approach to social stratification, as well as a description of the strata of Russian society obtained using it, see: [Karavay, 2019; Lezhnina, 2019; Mareeva, 2020; Slobodenyuk, 2019; Tikhonova, 2018; 2020], etc.
19 When5 applying this approach empirically to the conditions of modern Russia, it turns out that the privileged stratum as part of the mass strata of the population (i.e., without taking into account the "managers") accounted for less than 20% of Russians at the end of the 2010s6. Most of its representatives (see table) have higher education and come from families where their parents had higher education. The overwhelming majority of them are employed, they are mostly professionals and managers. The specifics of their workplaces indicate their relatively more prosperous position in the system of labour relations, however, around a third of their representatives have signs of precarious employment (not fully declared salary, incomplete paid holidays, etc.), although, against the background of the majority of Russians, their position is still quite safe. The prosperity of this strata is also manifested in the fact that most of its representatives assess their status in society as good and believe that their life is going well in general.
5. The empirical basis of the study was the data of the 3rd and 8th Monitoring Waves of the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FCTAS RAS) for October 2015 and April 2018 (N = 4000), representing the population of the country from 18 years old and older by region of residence and within them by gender, age and type of locality. The control of the obtained results was carried out based on the data of the 24th (October 2015 – January 2016, N = 10209) and 28th (October 2018 – January 2019, N = 9857) Waves of the Russian Monitoring of the Economic Situation and Public Health of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (RLMS HSE).

6. In 2018, this stratum numbered 19.6% of representatives of the population mass strata according to the data of the 8th Monitoring Wave of the Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, and 19.2% according to the 28th wave of RLMS HSE.
20 The lower stratum as part of the mass strata of Russian society, which includes about one-fourth of the mass strata7, can be characterized by the inability to maintain the standard of living that is typical for the average Russian, and in this respect, corresponds to the "deprivation" meaning of poverty. According to the specifics of the risks and hardships experienced by its representatives, the lower stratum is similar to the most numerous8 median stratum, although their concentration is higher in it. Among its main features are a large share of elderly people and rural residents, relatively worse health of its representatives on average, the presence of disabled people in many of their households, but not the place of the representatives of this stratum in the labour market.
7. In 2018, this stratum numbered 29.4% of representatives of the population mass strata according to the data of the 8th Monitoring Wave of the Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, and 23.8% according to the 28th wave of RLMS HSE.

8. In 2018, this stratum numbered 50.9% of representatives of the population mass strata according to the data of the 8th Monitoring Wave of the Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, and 57.0% according to the 28th wave of RLMS HSE.
21 The three main strata that make up the mass strata of the population of Russian society have distinctive features of identities, attitudes and ethical value systems as well. In this respect, the median and lower strata are also closer to each other than the median and the upper strata [Tikhonova, 2020].
22

Table

Certain Features of Representatives of Different Strata (%)

Indicator Lower stratum Median stratum Upper stratum Gap between polar strata (Number of times)
Employment (% of employees)
Self-assessment as having good working conditions 9.6 24.3 58.5 6.1
Professionals and managers 10.8 29.9 65.5 6.1
Workers, ordinary workers of trade and customer services 74.7 48.1 18.1 4.1
Availability of at least one sign of independent labour 32.6 49.1 67.4 3.6
All basic labour rights are respected (official employment, officially declared salary, payment of sick leave and vacation, timely payment of wages) 20.4 51.6 72.1 3.5
Economic status
Self-assessment as having good leisure opportunities 8.6 27.4 57.6 6.7
Self-assessment as having good living conditions 14.3 31.7 62.2 4.3
The average per capita income is more than 1.25 of the country median income distribution 18.4 36.0 66.1 3.6
Have savings 15.2 30.2 54.1 3.6
Social and mental well-being
Believe that life as a whole is going well 8.3 24.6 60.1 7.2
Assess their status in society as good one 8.4 25.8 55.0 6.5
Being in a state of indifference, apathy or feel anxiety, irritation, anger, aggression 58.2 38.1 15.6 3.7
Other characteristics
At least one of the parents has a higher education 15.6 30.4 51.9 3.3
According to self-assessment, life has worsened compared to the period before the crisis of 2014–2016 78.1 55.7 34.7 2.3
For reference: percentage of unemployed, 33.7 28.0 15.5 2.2
including:        
unemployed 7.8 2.0 1.0 7.8
students 1.7 7.6 9.8 5.8
retired people 24.2 18.4 4.7 5.1

______________ Note. The cells with indicators exceeding 50% are highlighted in grey, i.e. they are typical for the corresponding stratum. Source: 8th Monitoring Wave of the Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, April 2018.

The habit of planning their lives and taking responsibility for it, which is characteristic of the majority only in the upper stratum, significantly expands the life opportunities of its representatives, as well as having high qualifications and high-potential social connections, which is typical only for them [Karavay, 2020]. The accumulation of resources, including in the intergenerational context, results in a wider range of behavioural strategies among the members of this stratum, which are aimed at preserving and improving the level and quality of life, increasing the opportunities to use the most effective of them. In this respect, representatives of the median stratum are closer to the lower stratum than to the upper one [Karavay, 2019].
23 All the above differences are especially vivid between the cores of different strata, which retain their belonging to them year after year. The probability of moving to another stratum by their own efforts is relatively small for Russians, although such opportunities still exist9. The composition of the unfavourable lower stratum is renewed to the least extent, while the upper stratum can be characterized by the high instability of its composition. This means that the behavioural strategies of Russians are not able to cancel the "sticky floor" effect at the moment, while the "sticky ceiling" effect is much weaker for mass strata [Slobodenyuk, 2019].
9. For instance, according to RLMS HSE, 23.6% of Russians moved to a higher stratum in 2013–2018 [Slobodenyuk, 2019: 61].
24 Conclusions. Social inequality in modern Russia is a logical consequence of the fact that at the time when the 1990s reforms began, different groups of population had a diverse amount of resources that had been largely accumulated over generations. In the era of the state-planned economy, when these resources could not work as capital, the difference in availability of resources did affect the living standards of various groups but could not lead to serious social differentiation. During the transition to the market economy, they were converted into economic capital or used to increase other types of capital, which ensured that groups with initial advantages retained a privileged position in modern Russian society. Then, they were joined by people from other strata (including criminals), who used the 1990s to accumulate initial capital too.
25 While some people from the high-resource groups of Soviet society ended up at the "top" of the social hierarchy in the new Russia as a result of the transformation, others formed the backbone of the privileged part of the mass strata (their upper stratum). The combined number of these two groups roughly corresponds to the share of the privileged population in the late Soviet period, although their internal differentiation has become incomparably deeper.
26 In the social structure of Russian society, these two groups are located next to the median and lower strata that make up the majority of the population, the differences between which are mainly explained by the features of the dependent burden, health, age and place of residence of their representatives. Therefore, the majority of the population, which occupied relatively homogeneous status positions in Soviet society and formed a generally common standard of living in the USSR, was divided into two strata with qualitatively different positions against the background of a sharp deepening of social differentiation. At the same time, about half of the population constitutes the median group, which sets the standard of living for the mass strata, but approximately every tenth Russian is in a position that simply did not exist in the USSR, and another 15–20% are balancing on the verge of this position.
27

If we talk about the basic characteristics of the very stratification model of modern Russian society, and not only about its constituent elements, it should be noted, first of all, that the list of grounds that determine the status of individuals in the stratification hierarchy has significantly expanded. Income and wealth inequality, the specifics of social origin, etc. began to play a much larger part in it. Secondly, the model of social structure that has developed in Russia is characterized by an enormously vertical stretching of the status hierarchy, and the "top" of society in it is not just disengaged from the rest of Russians but also opposes them. Thirdly, the mass strata of Russian society are increasingly gravitating towards "equaling with the average". This equaling trend has intensified under the influence of recent economic crises, which contradicts the trends in the evolution of the social structure in developed countries, which, on the contrary, are defined by an increasing polarization of the mass strata of society. Fourthly, the model of the social structure in Russia is marked by an average degree of status consistency. If power and economic resources are mainly concentrated in privileged groups, then the situation with social and qualification resources is far from being so unambiguous. And finally, fifthly, the specifics of the market positions of individuals, including in the labour market, now play a crucial role in determining their place in the social hierarchy in Russia. However, the importance of these factors, which are typical for class-type structures, is primarily distinctive of privileged groups. As for the majority of the population, it is largely levelled by their family situation and imbalances in the development of various industries, regions and types of localities inherited from the USSR and reflecting the still very significant role of non-class social inequalities in modern Russian society.
28

This model of Russian society's structure is quite stable, but from the point of view of the future of Russia, it is fraught with additional problems rather than any competitive advantages. High risks of increasing social tension in the conditions of the excessively deep gaps between the "top" of society and its mass strata, reduced incentives to "working to improve oneself" in the conditions of the growing significance of a social resource with low returns on education, the threat of destabilisation of the situation by reducing the number of relatively prosperous part of the mass strata mainly in the largest cities in the second half of the 2010s, and other negative features of the stratification model that has developed in Russia require immediate action not only in the fight against poverty but also in reducing illegitimate inequalities and expanding the system of social mobility.

Библиография

1. Anikin V.A. (2018) Social Stratification Based on Life Chances: Operationalization for Mass Surveys. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskiye i sotsial'nye peremeny [Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes]. No. 4: 39–67. DOI: 10.14515/monitoring.2018.4.03. (In Russ.)

2. Credit Suisse. (2018) Global Wealth Databook 2018. Credit Suisse group AG. Switzerland.

3. Karavay A.V. (2019) Basic Models of Socio-economic Adaptation in Different Strata of Russian Society. Terra Economicus. Vol. 17. No. 3: 128–145. DOI: 10.23683/2073-6606-2019-17-3-128-145. (In Russ.)

4. Karavay A.V. (2020) Factors of Inequality of Russians’ Life Chances (Empirical Analysis). Sociologicheskaja Nauka i Social’naja Praktika [Sociological Science and Social Practice]. Vol. 8. No. 1: 63–78. DOI: 10.19181/snsp.2020.8.1.7095. (In Russ.)

5. Lezhnina Y. (2019) The Risks and Capabilities of Russians as a Base for Social Dynamics. Zhurnal issledovaniy sotsialnoy politiki [The Journal of Social Policy Studies]. Vol. 17. No. 2: 207–222. DOI: 10.17323/727-0634-2019-17-2-207-222. (In Russ.)

6. Lukyanova A.L. (2010) Returns to Education in Russia: Evidence from Meta-Analysis. Ekonomicheskiy zhurnal Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki [HSE Economic Journal]. Vol. 14. No. 3: 326–348. (In Russ.)

7. Mareeva S.V. (2019) Inequality of Life Chances in Work-Life Balance of Russians. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskiye i sotsial'nye peremeny [Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes]. No. 3: 324–344. DOI: 10.14515/monitoring.2019.3.18. (In Russ.)

8. Naumova F.M. (1990) Transition Period: World Experience and Our Problems. Kommunist [Communist]. No. 8: 3–14. (In Russ.)

9. Novokmet F., Piketty T., Zucman G. From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905–2016. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper 201709. DOI: 10.3386/w23712.

10. Radaev V.V., Shkaratan O.I. (1996) Social Stratification. Moscow: Aspect Press. (In Russ.) Shkaratan O.I. (2012) Sociology of Inequality: Theory and Reality. Moscow: VShE. (In Russ.)

11. Slobodenyk S. (2019) Stratification of the Russian Society by Life Chances and Risks: The Dynamics of the Structure and Mobility of Russians. Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya. Dannyye. Analiz. Diskussii [The Russian Public Opinion Herald. Data. Analysis. Discussions]. No. 3–4(129): 57–68. (In Russ.)

12. Starikov Ye.N. (1990) Does the Emergence of a Middle Class “Threaten” Us? Znamya [Banner]. No. 10: 192–196. (In Russ.)

13. Tikhonova N.E. (1999) Factors of Social Stratification in the Context of Transition to a Market Economy. Moscow: ROSSPEN. (In Russ.)

14. Tikhonova N.E. (ed.) (2018) Income Stratification Model of Russian Society: Dynamics, Factors, Cross­ country Comparisons. Мoscow: Nestor-Istoriya. (In Russ.)

15. Tikhonova N.E. (2021) Intergenerational Reproduction of Professional Statuses and Class in Modern Russian Society. Voprosy teoreticheskoy ekonomiki [Theoretical Economics]. No. 2: 61–78. DOI: 10.52342/2587-7666VTE_2021_2_61_78. (In Russ.)

16. Tikhonova N.E. (2018) Stratification by Life Chances of Mass Strata in Modern Russian Society. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. No. 6: 53–65. DOI: 10.7868/ S0132162518060053. (In Russ.)

17. Tikhonova N.E. (2014) The Social Structure of Russia: Theories and Reality. Moscow: Novyi khronograf; IS RAN. (In Russ.)

18. Tikhоnova N. (2020) The Worldviews and Identities of the Mass Strata of Modern Russian Society. Mir Rossii [Universe of Russia]. Vol. 29. No 1: 6–30. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2020-29-1-6-30. (In Russ.)

19. Tikhonova N.E., Karavay A.V. (2018) Dynamics of Some Indicators of Russians’ General Human Capital in 2010–2015. Sotsiologicheskiye issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. No. 5: 84–98. DOI: 10.7868/S0132162518050082. (In Russ.)

20. Tikhonova N.E., Karavay A.V. (2017) The Impact of the 2014–2016 Economic Crisis on the Employment of Russian. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskiye i sotsial'nye peremeny [Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes]. No. 2: 1–17. DOI: 10.14515/ monitoring.2017.2.01. (In Russ.)

21. Toshchenko Zh.T. (2018) Precariat: From Protoclass to a New Class. Moscow: Nauka.

22. USSR in Figures in 1989. (1990) Moscow: Finansy i statistika. (In Russ.)

23. Weber M. (1978) Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

24. Zaslavskaya T.I. (1996) Transformation of the Social Structure of Russian Society. In: Where is Russia Heading? Social Transformation of the post­Soviet Space. Iss. 3. Moscow: Aspect Press: 11–21.

Комментарии

Сообщения не найдены

Написать отзыв
Перевести