Findings: State Efficacy
For issues related to state efficacy, results were again roughly the same across middle-class groups, with slight variations in responses from residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and across the general population. All middle-class groups felt that the situation in the sphere of housing and utility services, the situation in the health sector, and the situation in the education sector were of increasing concern (Figure 6).
The prominence of the housing, health, and education sectors may be linked with a greater concern for the provision or poor quality of state services. Alternately, it could reflect a concern with the costs or perceived value of these services if the quality were low or decreasing while the cost was high or increasing; this explanation might best apply to housing and utilities. By far the biggest issue in state efficacy—as well as one of the most significant in the survey as a whole—was the situation with housing and utilities. Beginning in January 2011, the concern of all groups and the general population over housing and utilities greatly increased, growing from an issue for about 25 percent of people in September 2010 to an issue for about 50 percent of people in January 2011. It thereafter remained approximately constant.
Concern for the health care sector also increased at a similar rate across middle-class groups and the general population over the period in question. Moreover, health care was a concern for a nearly identical share of respondents from middle-class groups with higher education, private-sector professionals, those earning 50,000 or more rubles per month, and the general population. Respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg assessed health care much more negatively than did other groups beginning in April 2011. At that time, all groups increased their negative evaluations of the health care sector, but the increase was greatest for residents of the capital cities, for whom concern about health care increased by 22 percentage points to 50 percent.
Education exhibited the weakest increase of the three, increasing by around 10 percentage points for all groups between January 2009 and March 2012. Of all middle-class groups and the general population, education was of most concern to respondents with higher education and private-sector professionals with higher education, which is in line with expectations. Of all groups, respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg found education to be of least concern.
Concerns in the Capitals
Respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg were generally more critical than members of other middle-class groups. A larger percentage of respondents from the capitals tended to identify an issue as a problem for the country, and they were frequently the most negative of the middle-class groups. For example, concern for the standard of living of the population significantly increased for all groups, including the general population (Figure 7). Although this issue was of concern to a large segment of respondents, it was typically of higher concern to residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The same is true of responses to the issue of corruption. This suggests that residents of the major cities are more likely than members of the middle class to identify problems for the country and to be critical of the state.
Residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg also showed more precipitous increases in concern for several issues over the course of 2011. An example of this is the 20 percentage point increase in concern for the standard of living in April 2011. This trend suggests that residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg might be more reactive to news or current events and may thus be better informed than others. Alternatively, they may be more networked and more willing to speak to others about their concerns, which could amplify an increase spurred by a news event.
The experience of living in a major metropolitan capital has a greater impact on one’s political views and perception of the state than do indicators of middle-class membership like higher education or higher income. It is therefore possible that residents of major cities might one day assume the responsibilities of constraining government power and advocating for political rights, which is in some theories the purview of a strong middle class. Such a role would make use of the outsize political weight and social capital carried by residents of the capitals, particularly those in Moscow.
Conclusions
During the period in question, the following problems concerned the Russian middle class: standard of living, corruption, housing, health care, education, and the influence of oligarchs. There are two explanations for rising concern for these issues between 2008 and 2012. First, these issues might relate to an overall failure to meet middle-class expectations of a higher quality of life. Second, they might pertain to rising frustration with the interference of corruption in daily life and the state’s inability or unwillingness to mitigate corruption. Both explanations suggest that the theorized social contract between the middle class and the state was sundered before the outbreak of protests following the fraudulent Duma elections on December 4, 2011.
Respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg felt more strongly about problems in Russia. They were also more reactive than other groups, repeatedly displaying a steep increase in concern for a problem over the previous survey round. Particularly, they were more concerned than other group with the standard of living and corruption. Furthermore, though most survey respondents did not see democracy and human rights as a problem, respondents from Moscow and St. Petersburg displayed increased interest in this issue around the time of the election protests. This suggests that they use these ideas as a framework to understand events in instances where they might directly impact the state, but not as a general mode of relating to the state.
In interviews conducted by the author, the organizers of the 2011–2012 protests repeatedly expressed anger, shame, and a sense of insult that although Russia is formally a democracy, those who truly hold the power decide the outcome of the parliamentary and presidential elections behind the scenes. Their votes, the fraud revealed, count for nothing. The idea that their votes should all be counted equally, and that they as a group should have some political power, was a motivating idea for the protestors. The greater landscape of pervasive and ever-more troubling inequality helps to explain why that political concern became relevant when it did, and why it brought so many people out into the streets to advocate for their democratic rights.
Works Cited
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Endnotes
[1] Surveys also included five additional answers representing social problems: alcoholism and drug abuse, crime, demographic crisis (births and deaths), state of morality and ethics, and youth development. These responses are excluded from the following analysis, because they encompass issues over which the government has no specific control. While the state has attempted to address all of these issues in some respect, from restricting access to alcohol to offering incentives for having larger families, these problems cannot purely be attributed to the state. Some of these problems may also reflect the continuing challenges of the post-Soviet transition; for example, concern over the state of morality and ethics in society has been linked to the end of the state’s authority over moral issues (Gorshkov 2011–2012: 85).
[2] For the purposes of this study, responses were classed in the state efficacy category only if the state has direct control over the problem in question. In the economic category, the greater systemic issue of the global financial crisis underpins the responses. While unemployment and inflation clearly can be helped or hindered by government policies, the increase in both was the result of the crisis. Likewise, the late payment of salaries may be attributed to the management or owners of firms but in a broader sense is only an issue because of the crisis.
[3] http://data.worldbank.org/country/russian-federation
[4] Respondents selecting the most negative option for the questions, “In your opinion, the current state of the Russian economy [is] good, fair or poor?” “Do you think the state of the Russian economy over the past year has improved, worsened or did not change?” “Do you think that in the next year the Russian economy will [be] better, worse or unchanged?” (see http://fom.ru/indikatory.html#?vt=37,47,128,161,164,185,113&s=125,140,121,117,128)
[5] The FOM protest sentiment index is based on responses to five questions: “In the last month did you notice or not notice dissatisfaction, or the willingness of people to participate in protests?”; “Do you think that in the last month, discontent or people's willingness to participate in protests has been growing or declining?”; What percentage of Russians do you think are now discontent, or willing to participate in protests?”; “Do you personally feel or not feel resentment, or the willingness to participate in protests?”; and “If next Sunday, where you live, there are rallies, demonstrations and protests, would you take part in them or not?”
[6] Levada Center, “Do you think it can be said that Russia is a democratic society?,” (Kak Vyi dumaete, mozhno li skazat’, shto v Rossii seichas <>?)October 2010 (accessed at http://www.levada.ru/archive/gosudarstvo-i-obshchestvo/rossiya-i-demokratiya/kak-vy-dumaete-mozhno-li-skazat-chto-v-rossi).
[7] Anti-corruption campaigns themselves can have negative effects on corruption perceptions as well as on attitudes toward the state. Coulloudon suggests that when regimes are characterized by institutionalized corruption, anti-corruption campaigns can simply raise awareness of the problem, essentially demonstrating the state’s inability to address the problem and contributing to impressions of state weakness (2002: 188).
[8] See Sharafutdinova (2010: 156) on factors affecting corruption perception in hybrid regimes.
[9] Social problems (alcoholism and drug abuse, crime, youth development, morality and ethics, and demographic crisis) were generally of high concern to middle-class groups as well as the general population, but concern over such issues exhibited little change over the time period in question and was not considered in this study.
