Russia: The class world is possible

According to the Levada Center, Russian society already in 2006 overcame its attitude towards entrepreneurs, which arose after the “case of Yukos”.

Before the default, in 1997 this attitude was generally negative: 34% of Russians believed that businessmen’s activities were for the benefit of Russia, and 49% - which harms it. By 2000, the situation has improved: the share of those who count the business has grown to 40%useful, the negative balance of opinions has been reduced three times -from -15 to -5 percentage points. This is largely caused by an improvement in the position of the population: if in 1999 the economic growth also went through the reduction of its real income, then in 2000 they grew by 12%. It was 2000 that laid the foundation for their confident rise and the social optimism on which modern Russian statehood is rested.

By 2003, the attitude to business, due to the general improvement of living conditions, was broken: 45%became positive about it, and the balance of relations became positive and amounted to +6 percentage points.

The “case of Yukos”, accompanied by energetic anti-entrepreneurial propaganda of the state, discarded the company almost to the level of 2000: the share of approving business activities decreased to 41%, and the total balance became negative (-3 percentage points). But then the situation began to improve - simply due to economic development and growth of welfare. In 2005, the negative balance reduced to -1 percentage points. And in 2006, a fracture occurred: the share of those who count the business increased from 43 to 47%, the share of those who believe it decreased from 44 to 37% (the balance became positive and jumped to +10 percentage points).

In 2007, the trend was fixed: the business has considered 50%, the harmful - 33%, the balance has improved to +17%.

It is important that this improvement is observed against the background of the growth of social differentiation. Only according to official statistics, the gap between income of 10% of the richest and poor grew from 13.5 times in 1995 and 13.9 times in 2000 and 2001 to 14.9 in 2005 to a record 16.0 times in 2006 and phantasmagoric 16.8 times in 2007.

The growth of differentiation naturally generates the growth of social tension, in particular, envy of the rich and protest against the unjust distribution of national wealth.

Improving the attitude towards business, observed recently, proves, despite the obvious growth of the strike movement, the real presence of the class world in our country.

It is based, as you can understand, there are respect for the organizational function of the businessman and his qualifications, the understanding that it is better to have a work in an unfairly rich person than not to have it at all, and also, paradoxically, a certain class solidarity of workers with business. It is caused by the understanding that the business, even quite large, is almost as defenseless before the arbitrariness of the ruling bureaucracy, like ordinary people, and (in Marxist terms) itself is exploited by this bureaucracy in the form of a variety of requisitions, or even a direct power racketeering.

Interestingly, the situation has changed due to improving the attitude to large businesses; The attitude to the small and medium paradoxically deteriorated in 2007.

The attitude of Russians towards large business (associated with the oligarchy) was generally negative until 2007, but it improved steadily, despite the “Yukos case”. In 2003, 37% and a harmful 51% were considered it to be useful (the balance is negative, -14 percentage points), in 2005 the balance improved to+39-49 = -10, in 2006 it became almost neutral (+43-44 = -1), and in 2007-clearly positive (+44-40 =+4).

The attitude to small and medium -sized businesses, not associated with the oligarchy, is as positive as possible as possible in our society. In 2003-2006, it considered it 62-63%useful to the country, and the share of those who consider it harmful to decreased from 25 to 23%.

But in 2007, the attitude to small and medium -sized businesses unexpectedly worsened: while maintaining a negative attitude at the level of 23%, the share of those who consider it useful decreased from 63 to 59%, reducing the positive balance from +40 to +36 percentage points.

It seems that this is caused by state propaganda in favor of a large business, associated not with oligarchs, but with state -owned companies “forming a freezer ridge”, as well as high salaries in these companies (work in them has become extremely prestigious in recent years).

At the same time, the population feels the strategic futility of small and medium -sized businesses in the context of stimulating the development of state -owned companies and, mainly working in it, acutely experiences its defenselessness before the arbitrariness of the ruling bureaucracy. Finally, state propaganda is implicitly and, possibly, unconsciously, but effectively associates with it the negative features of market relations (for example, overestimation of trade prices, the provision of poor -quality goods and services).

Author - Director of the Institute of Problems of Globalization, Doctor of Economics