Unfortunately, it is otherwise in Russia – for a variety of reasons. Therefore, the image of business as a whole in this country is extremely low. First on the list of these reasons is the inertia of mass consciousness. Throughout several generations, the spirit of unacceptability of market relations has been brought up. The second reason is the behaviour of domestic businessmen, resulting in the negative image of entrepreneurship. The third is a certain selectivity of Russian mass media as to the activity of domestic businessmen, which supports the widespread prejudice that private business is a “dirty thing”. Surely, in the existing circumstances we shouldn’t ignore the factor of unfair competitive struggle and the so called anti-PR. And the fourth reason is a kind of “illiteracy” of Russian businessmen, expressed in the absence  of any recognition of social responsibility before the consumer, and in ignoring the severe social situation in the society.

Much that has been taking place in today’s Irkutsk is quite typical for cities of post-Soviet Russia. Irkutsk is suffering from drastic structural changes: in its macro-geographic position and international links, in the structure of production, in its postindustrial (non-production) functions, in the system of regional development. The total estimation of changes should be positive. But we can see a lot of losses. Some of them seem to be temporary, but there are also losses caused by the market character of the reforms themselves.

Some problems of transition to post-industrial development in the Siberian region Irkutsk Oblast of the Russian Federation is usually regarded as an industrial region. Its economy is oriented predominantly at extracting industries (coal, gas, iron ore, gold, salt, mica, timber cutting, hydropower) and first stages of processing (including petrochemicals and aluminium using imported raw materials). The principle proprietors (earlier sectoral ministries, now trans-national corporations) have their headquarters very far from Siberia and their interests are rather alien to the region. In fact, such a picture makes even the given definition ("industrial region") somehow doubtful and too optimistic. However, it can be said that we deal here with an early stage of industrialization, far from post-industrial development. Still, all this does not mean that such functions as science, education, or culture do not exist here. They do exist but are not used as "locomotives" of regional economy. In the last several years, the authors of the report have taken part in investigations and discussions on strategic planning of regional development in Irkutsk Oblast for the first half of the 21 st century. Three scenarios were analyzed in details. One of them, the conservative one, is based on the existing trends of development. It means that further development of the region will be resource oriented (power, aluminum, timber, etc.) as it has been for decades and even for centuries. This scenario is the least efficient and promising but it requires minimum efforts from the regional administration. The second scenario is called "New Industrialization". It includes restructuring the regional industry through extending natural resources processing. That is, producing aluminum alloys and products instead of raw aluminum, or plywood and furniture instead of timber. This variant is the most balanced but at the same time rather risky from the environmental point of view. The third scenario is based on the idea of transition to post-industrial economics. It means the leading role of services in the development of the regional economy. In this variant, the role of the intellectual activity grows immensely. While modern industrial technologies in today's world come usually from remote global centres, in the sphere of services it is impossible. For example, the development of the most promising tourist sector requires taking into account the unique specificity of the local system of the geographic position, climate,

The market system is imperfect from the point of view of improvement of quality of life, the basic components of which are: population health, education, quality of human resources, environmental safety, etc. The market is not focused on manufacturing socially important goods, it has no perfect economic mechanism for securing environmental safety. The search of new ways of economic development has led to recognition that only quality of life can express to the greatest degree the society purposes, as well as the competitiveness of the countries in the world market. Among obvious defects, preventing to determine of problems of the quality of life in Russian Federation, there are: insufficient normative and legal space in the sphere of evaluating quality of life, poor estimation of the development purposes and directions, and poor economic support. For solving each task, it is necessary to develop a socio-economic program with a corresponding financial maintenance, as well as the criteria of estimating the advancement of these programs to the planned purpose – which is the maintenance of the quality of life.