The labor market in Russia has changed significantly during the last decade. This transformation has resulted in notable changes in employment and unemployment patterns, and in labor mobility, flexibility and insecurity. One critical question is whether these changes signal important differences in labor market outcomes by gender. The approach taken here is to focus on the Russian industrial enterprise. In our study, we find that women experience different internal labor market opportunities and external job prospects than men and those differences in experience are reflected in the actual hiring practices at our firms, with men substituting for women, and women finding it particularly difficult to negotiate the increasingly closed labor market in Russia. At the same time important differences persist among women, differences that do not exist for men.

Students of post-communist labor relations have argued that the social contract would deteriorate with privatization, as managers secured ownership rights and enterprises reoriented toward the market. To examine this expectation, we investigated the state of labor relations in two enterprises in the metallurgical industry. In St Petersburg, marketization brought little positive change in production and the social contract decayed, while Tula's management embarked on an ambitious reform program, rewriting the social contract. We attribute the variations in the outcomes to differing regional conditions that affected the mutual dependence of labor and management and, hence, “exit options” of both parties.

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In December 1993, observers of Russian politics were surprised that Vladimir Zhirinovskii and his party performed so well in the parliamentary elections and that the reformers did not attract more voters. Two explanations for this outcome have become widely accepted. The first maintains that Russians were expressing their discontent with economic hardships, while the second contends that the balance of political forces accounts for the reformists' defeat. To the contrary, it appears that it was not the unwillingness of Russians to participate in market reforms and to accept key aspects of the government's programmes, nor was it the combination of the division of the democrats, the invisibility of Yeltsin and the unity of the right wing that produced the unexpected results. Rather, the arrogance of the reformers and the alienation of the Russian public explain the election outcome. These two factors explain why the democrats split as they did and why the type of campaigns waged had such an impact on the fortunes of the political groupings. The inclusion of the populace in economic and political decision-making is therefore vital; only with the development of meaningful links between the elite and the grassroots can support for the market and democracy be built in Russia.