Entrepreneurship and limited access: rethinking business–state relations in Russia

Abstract

Predominant theories of the Russian political economy explain the vulnerability of independent business to the state, but they do not adequately explain why businesses survive and some thrive. Recent empirical studies of business conditions have not helped in this regard because most focus on ascertaining entrepreneurs’ attitudes rather than observing their behaviour. During ethnographic fieldwork within a Siberian business, the author found that informants were pessimistic about business conditions, but that they did not expect any improvement and had developed pragmatic approaches to securing their position in the local market and competencies required to generate a profit. Their relations with dominant elites were, moreover, cordial rather than antagonistic. To account for these findings, the author draws on Douglass C. North et al.’s Limited Access Order theory and Aleksei Yurchak’s concept of ‘entrepreneurial governmentality’, and seeks to reconceptualise the relationship between business and the state.

Keywords:

• Russia
• entrepreneurship
• business
• political economy
• limited access order
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

The empirical material in this article is drawn from one of the case studies in the author’s PhD, funded by a +3 PhD Scholarship in Language Based Area Studies from the University of Birmingham’s ESRC Doctoral Training Centre, which is gratefully acknowledged. Additional funding and support for fieldwork was provided through a European Commission Marie Curie Research Exchange Scheme ‘EUinDepth’. The author gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the individuals and organisations connected with this scheme. The author is also grateful to the informants in Russia whose kindness made this research possible.

Notes

1. These journals were: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Economics of Transition, EKO – Vserossiisskii Ekonomicheskii Zhurnal, Europe-Asia Studies, Ethnography, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Post-Communist Economies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, Studies on Russian Economic Development and Voprosi Ekonomiki. In an article exploring Russian business values Dufy did claim a methodology of ‘ethnography and pragmatic sociology’ (2015, p. 85), but this work drew on ‘in-depth interviews’, which cannot account for the difference between reported attitudes and actual behaviours.

2. The theoretical framework and empirical material in this article are based on my PhD research. I have changed the names of my informants and their locations to protect their anonymity.

3. To date only Yakovlev has examined the Russian private sector using the LAO framework, in a study to determine the prospects for an improved business climate following the 2008–2009 crisis. He concluded that the stability of the dominant coalition could be improved by including business, but this has been prevented by the siloviki (2015, pp. 62–74). I find this conclusion problematic: it assumes businesses are of one mind (a single entity), willing to be co-opted into state-affiliated business organisations and would join the ruling coalition. This, like theories of hybridity, is based on the idea that the private sector is dependent without reference to empirical data about what businesses are doing. Yakovlev’s study is based on analysis of the ruling coalition; it cannot provide an accurate understanding of the way businesses behave in an LAO.

4. The role of the Old Believers in ‘opening-up Siberia’ is discussed by Roshchin (1995).

5. Contrary to Oleg’s assertion, it is not obvious that Old Believers accessed positions of power in the Soviet bureaucracy, since the ‘vast majority’ was ‘actively hostile to the Soviet regime’ (Humphrey, 2014, p. S218) and they were by definition antithetic to industrialisation (Dunn & Dunn, 1964, p. 478). However, it seems that they were often highly regarded as sober workers and developed personal strategies for dealing with the state bureaucracy (see Paert, 2004, pp. 202–205).