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This article reveals that, during the last 15 years, drastic shifts have occurred in the subjective social structure of Russian society: the people for the most part no longer consider themselves to be “social outsiders”, while Russian society itself has become a society undoubtedly dominated by a subjective middle-class, albeit predominantly a lower middle-class. However, such a positive shift does not equal Russians being completely satisfied with the situation at hand when it comes to stratification, since their actual position in the status hierarchy is currently much lower not only than desired, but also lower than those status positions which they reckon they should be occupying in this hierarchy “in all fairness”. Russian people’s dissatisfaction is mostly a result of them considering opportunities for success and prosperity to be associated with the social, economic and cultural capital of one’s parents, as well as with various unlawful practices (such as corruption, bribery), not only with one’s hard work or quality education. These views seem to be stable over time, and to some extent they are similar to the views of German people. However, in the eyes of Russians various unlawful practices (primarily bribery) play a greater role when it comes to achieving success in life. In addition to that, one’s parents’ education, as well as one’s own education, hard work and ambition play a slightly less significant role (which is decreasing year after year) in Russia. This means that, as time passes, more Russian people are becoming convinced that a person’s personal efforts and goals are not a key factor in achieving life success and high status positions in Russian society. Statistical verification indicates that these views are objectively justified, since, according to the former, upper strata of Russian society are becoming increasingly more closed, with lower strata starting to close as well. High indexes of self-reproduction of opposing status groups within mass layers of the population, together with an increasing polarization of the population (primarily young people) – these are all dangerous tendencies in terms of their socio-political and economic consequences, which lead to authorities being delegitimized, as well as Russian people losing their motivation to achieve success in life through their own efforts.

The economic crisis caused by the pandemic has had a profound impact on the economic situation and the employment of Russians. However the most common among its consequences appeared to be pay cuts and increased workload rather than the transition to telecommuting. The social security of employees has also decreased. Meanwhile certain effects of the crisis were present within different professional groups to varying degrees. Manual workers, especially those employed in the private sector of the economy, were, relatively speaking, more prone to face the most severe consequences. Working Russians’ situation deteriorated parallel to a further decline in their resourcefulness. From this perspective, the working portion of the general population is divided into three groups: high-resource managers and professionals; semi-professionals and ordinary office personnel occupying an intermediate position in terms of their recourses; mostly low-resource and no-resource trade and manual workers. Since the gains on resources in Russia for members of the mass layer of the population are relatively small and tend to decline in all of them, the role of the labor market in the strategies that Russians employ in order to improve their well-being is gradually decreasing, while the spread of passive and non-constructive strategies is growing. The low resourcefulness of the country’s general population also causes universality of means to improve material status among members of different professional groups. At the same time, within the different professional groups individual resourcefulness significantly affects the choice of means for improving material status, or the refusal to take any actions for that purpose. This, taking into account the specifics of the resources possessed by members of different professional groups, ensures their unequal resistance to consequences of the crisis and different effectiveness of their actions when it comes to improving their situation, which leads to the differences between them deepening even further.

Цитирование: Тихонова Н.Е. (2020) Средний класс в фокусе экономического и социологического подходов: границы и внутренняя структура (на примере России) // Мир России. Т. 29. № 4. С. 34–56. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2020-29-4-34-56 Основные подходы к изучению среднего класса – экономический и социологический – исходят из разных теоретических предпосылок и используются для решения различных исследовательских задач. Если экономический подход важен прежде всего для целей социальной политики, то социологический позволяет лучше понять сущность определенного социума и характер его социальной структуры, выявить основные противоречия в развитии последней. Каждый из них существует во множестве вариантов, однако выделенный в рамках экономического подхода средний класс – это всегда средние по их благосостоянию или текущим доходам слои, включающие нижний средний и собственно средний классы. В России понимаемый таким образом средний класс составляет около двух третей населения. Выделенный в рамках социологического подхода средний класс, напротив, объединяет индивидов, занимающих срединные позиции в основных иерархиях социальных статусов, различающихся престижностью различных позиций в них. Ключевыми из них являются иерархии власти, собственности, текущих экономических возможностей/образа жизни и определяемого ими престижа. Как всякая социальная группа, средний класс характеризуется наличием в нем ядра и периферии этого ядра, но может быть структурирован и по слоям (в рамках вертикальной модели стратификации). В статье показано, что срединные позиции сразу во всех основных статусных иерархиях сейчас занимает сравнительно небольшая (около 8%) часть массовых слоев российского общества. В силу консистентности их статусов можно говорить о них как о ядре среднего класса. Однако более типичной для современной России является ситуация, когда эти позиции в большей или меньшей степени не совпадают (неконсистентны). В этом случае важно понять, какие из групп с неконсистентными статусами могут быть отнесены к среднему классу и почему. Пример такого анализа, приведенный в статье, демонстрирует, что в России численность среднего класса составляет сейчас около 40% населения.