The Evolution of the Middle Class: Missions and Methodology

Abstract

Studying the processes of the formation and development of the post-Soviet middle class, the authors compare the stages of its transformation using methodological approaches.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2014 “Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’.” “Evoliutsiia rossiiskogo srednego klassa: missii i metodologiia,” Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, 2014, no. 4, pp. 5–17.

Elena Mikhailovna Avraamova is a doctor of economic sciences, professor, and head of the laboratory of the Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration of the Russian Federation. Tat'iana Mikhailovna Maleva is a candidate of economic sciences and director of the Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting, in the same institution.

Translated by Kim Braithwaite. Translation reprinted from Sociological Research, vol. 54, no. 5. doi: 10.1080/10610154.2015.114847 3.

^1. Graphic evidence of this is provided by R. Kapeliushnikov's work “Behavioral Economy and the New Paternalism”; available at http://polit.ru/article/2013/11/12/paternalism.

^2. The final assessment of the results of the adaptation (in material and status terms) was based on subjective self-assessment, as follows. A high level of adaptation: one of the determinants of successful adaptation (material or status) is rated as “high,” provided another determinant is rated as “high” or “medium.” A medium level of adaptation: both determinants of successful adaptation have medium numerical values. A low level of adaptation: one of the indicated determinants of successful adaptation is rated as “low,” while the other exceeds that value. Dysadaptation: both determinants of successful adaptation are rated as “low.”

^3. Cited here are the data of a longitudinal monitoring survey by the Institute for Socioeconomic Problems of the Population, Russian Academy of Sciences, “The Social and Economic Adaptation of the Population,” in the course of which 1,200 respondents were surveyed in a megalopolis (St. Petersburg); an oblast city (Nizhnii Novgorod in 1994, Vologda in 2004, and Voronezh in 2004); and a small town (Dmitrov in 1994, Dzerzhinsk in 2004, and Dedovsk in 2012).

^4. This portion of the stratification scale was singled out as the “base” stratum in the middle of the 1990s by T. Zaslavskaia (1997).

^5. The Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, carried out a survey of 4,000 respondents in cities, communities, and rural settlements in 81 entities of the Russian Federation.

^6. The fact that formal attributes attesting to a particular level of education dominate over its real quality in the system of connections today has been mentioned, in particular, by N. Pliskevich: “In this case human capital does not perform its essential role but serves as a formal attribute. As a result, it is not so much knowledge that represents value but instead, rather, a document that symbolizes it and makes it possible to occupy a higher position in the social network. Formal indicators of the development of human capital are taking on self-sufficient importance” (Pliskevich, 2012, p. 205).