The Formation of a Middle Class in Russia

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

Art history · Democracy · Epistemology · Middle class · Political science · Politics · Population · Portrait · Public figure · Selfishness · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Upper class · Demography · History · Law · Philosophy · Russia and Soviet political economy · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia