Elena M. Avraamova

Capacity of the Russian Population for Adaptation to the Market Environment

No abstract available.

The formation of a middle class in Russia: Definition, methodology, and quantitative assessments

The Russian public is gradually beginning to envision the category of a middle class. Its problems are discussed actively in society, and numerous articles are devoted to it in the press. Certain consumption standards are attributed to this virtual middle class (for example, it is thought to include everyone who owns a car, can travel abroad, pays with plastic credit cards, etc.). People tend either to declare it dead, as reflected in articles from the autumn of 1998, or to bring it back to life, as reflected in articles published six months later. It inspires hope when seen as the bulwark of democracy or annoys people by its selfishness. What emerges from press materials, therefore, is an indistinct and fragmentary, not to say distorted, portrait of a vague social group. It is difficult to make that a basis for constructing ideas about the size, composition, and character of the population in question.

Social Transformations and Elites

Revived interest in theoretical analysis of the social processes taking place around us seems to have replaced the journalistic tones that formerly predominated. However, the initial studies indicate that the investigators have not developed sufficiently precise political or economic categories. For example, current debates on the ways and means of Russian reform and on the development of society in general tend to focus on macroeconomic problems, and discussions revolve around the importance of a harmonious combination of macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis. But the question of the macrosocial premises behind the transformations and their corresponding theoretical meaning is left almost entirely out of the discussion.

Areas of Vertical Mobility of Young Specialists

Russian students have successfully adopted a strategy of linking their educational choices to labor market possibilities as the market economy has taken hold in Russia. The current economic downturn, however, has not been met on their part by a rethinking of their strategies for employment, and this could cause problems in the coming years.

Prospects for Mortgage Lending Development in Russia

The situation with mortgage lending in Russia is paradoxical. On the one hand, statistics and surveys usually show that people suffer from a shortage of housing, and there has been rapid development of the housing market. On the other hand, mortgage lending programmes have failed to become widespread in Russia. Causes of this failure and their nature (economic, legal, social, mentality-related) need to be identified.

Social and Economic Adaptation Resources and Possibilities

The continuing reforms of the economy and society that have been taking place in Russia since the early 1990s have inevitably had an impact on the whole population of the country, forcing people to change their customary models of social and economic behavior in accordance with the new requirements of the institutional environment that has been taking shape. People’s knowledge and skills as well as labor motivations and models of communication have had to be reshaped. People’s professional status that they attained in the period prior to the reforms has no longer guaranteed their former standard of living. Maintaining or, especially, increasing people’s level of material well-being has demanded that they make considerable effort involving the mapping out of strategies