Novaya Gazeta continues building up a generalized portrait of the Russian citizen jointly with the leading specialists from the poll researching Levada-Center: Director of the Center Lev Gudkov, chief of the social and political research division Boris Dubin, and chief of social cultural research Alexei Levinson. The previous séances of reconstruction of the Russian average citizen image were held in the issues #23, 40 for 2008 (“Adaptation to the repressive state” and “Reforms or stability”).      

Career

Lev Gudkov: Particularities of organization of the Russian state and the culture of society itself cause the oppression of one’s striving for the best as there are no conditions for honest and just recognition of one’s achievements. It’s only the authority (bureaucracy) that defines what can be recognized to be a success in economics, science, and public activities. There are no independent mechanisms of rewarding for achievements in this or that area. This means that any public success and recognition are doubted in the society, become ambiguous or get perceived as a sign of a special servility. Due to that fact the wealth, academic honors or state decorations lose its legitimacy and dignity. The consequence here is the reduced motivation for honest competition and intensive working. Absolute majority of Russian citizens are oriented not to career and success but to preservation of what they have at the moment. People do not want and are not willing to work more, better, harder as they believe such a working cannot bring any significant outcome under existing conditions. Two thirds of the population reason this way: let the salary be not sizable but guaranteed, while the work be easier and less nervous. Only 15-18% would like to work more intensively and get better earnings without putting a stress on the guarantees, thus showing readiness for risk. Only 4-5% of the interrogated are ready to start their own business.    

At the same time, one may see a deep discontent with one’s material possibilities in the mass feeling. More than a half of the interrogated believe that their colleagues get more than themselves while working less hardly. During all the duration of our measurements (since 1993) people consider that they must be paid normal wages, and according to them the normality means that the wages should be increased twice and a half as much. In other words, people are featured with a constant “chronic” feeling of being underestimated their labor and hence with a feeling of undeservingly low social status.   

Boris Dubin: Along with that, they do not aim at passing to another social level. What they mean is settling as good as possible on the “floor” they live. The most popular answer to a question of “what are you going to do with extra money?” is “I will use it for repairing my dwelling”.    

Talking of success we always deal with an adapting society that does not trust any institutions. This total mistrust is an indication that people do not feel the system in which their previous success was built in and where their next success could be guaranteed (like it is in the West where in people’s minds one success brings another). Actually, this mistrust is not just an outcome of experience like “I applied to court and failed to get justice”. It is rather mistrust in advance like “I won’t go to court as I’m not going to get anything good there”. And if I manage to solve my problem through giving a bribe, then I wouldn’t respect and trust this court all the more so.    

Two thirds of the population do not trust permanently to any state institutions – courts, police, trade unions, parties. This means they do not believe in this system. And so they do not believe that their success will be stable and passable to their children.    

Corruption

Alexei Levinson: Talks about stability is also an attempt “to put a spell” on the current situation, as it satisfies everyone in a sense that there are no sharp drops and abrupt changes. This is appreciated. Doctors and teachers have low wages, but they are paid additionally by students and patients. It turns out that corruption is an effective instrument of adjusting the society to existing life circumstances.

Boris Dubin: The arrangement of interests, provided here with corruption, is provided with institutional trust, in normal societies. Such a trust is to secure the link between different institutions and confidence that the system will help you. Otherwise, you only can help yourself using the only “acid” that is capable of penetrating anywhere through any obstacles – that’s money.  

Alexei Levinson: In the late 80’s I had an honor to write jointly with Yuri Levada a work about shortage and string-pulling. We considered then that those were two features of one system and we concluded that when the times of shortage were over, the pull would be over too. However, it turned out that the pull is back and is an invariable instrument being combined with corruption. Although corruption uses a universal tool in a form of money, still it can be realized through a very particular instrument: one must know to whom, how much and which way one should give bribes. Just a man with money can do nothing in the field.  

Lev Gudkov: A feature of the planned economy, consumer’s deficiency was replaced with institutional deficiency – the lack of law, justice, guarantees for private property. Complex relations characteristic of modern societies do not appear with us.    

Alexei Levinson: We have enclaves, ‘islands’ with highly developed systems and institutions where there is little of corruption (financial system, for example). But along with that, the most part of the population live under conditions featured with the institutional deficiency.  

Boris Dubin: The mass of people have no opportunity of arranging, they do not have status, money and information on whom the bribe should be given to. Hence, there is a constant feeling of confusion, lawlessness, and one’s own vulnerability. “I am not the master of my own life. I can change and influence nothing” – 60-75% of the respondents stick to similar assessments.   

Alexei Levinson: The masses of population, common families are not featured with constant desire for changing their status. This is why they do not contact with authorities and do not experience too much the phenomenon of corruption, as businessmen do. But still there are turning points in their lives: entering their children to kindergarten, school, institute, getting serious medical care. It’s there that collision happens with some structures and the corruptional phenomena appear. It is such people who do not know how much to pay and to whom, it is them to turn out to be most vulnerable. And it is them to show the reactions of despair.   

Social lifts

Lev Gudkov: Now let’s see the educational system as a mechanism of vertical mobility. On the whole, its structure remains same. Non-government universities graduate 10-13% of the general number of students. Almost half of this figure is not young people but those needing the second education or postal tuition giving just certificates necessary for filling certain positions, and not real knowledge and qualifications. Of course, there are quality non-government universities, but they are very few. The demand for higher education is very high nowadays. We have been experiencing the real educational boom recently. The number of students that reduced in the mid-90’s, compared to soviet times, began to grow and today it has increased two and a half times as much.    

However, high quality education is not demanded too much. No more than 15% of people are orienting to this kind of instruction; this corresponds with the number of people willing to get serious success in this life, and a bit more than the number of those ready to start their own business. Incidentally, this coincidence of figures is not accidental. Getting success requires a very strong personal attitude and readiness for productive inner working, intensive self-preparation, self-restraint and ability to work, i.e. qualities that are provided – from sociological point of view - with cultural capital, certain family atmosphere, and upbringing. Those conditions do not appear by themselves; they are developed with many generations. And for the major mass of people education only means getting certificates as confirmation of passing to the sphere supported with the state certification of instruction. With a certificate, you look like a real specialist and that fact is to provide you with some employment opportunities.     

Boris Dubin: You study five years in a big city, you get connections, and you marry. I mean something happens to you during the process of study, and you can get some use out of this spent time. However, while for a western student this is the most important pre-professional stage of his career where one works as hard as one can, with us those five years are used for getting adjusted in the social system (marriage, connections etc.) or just for getting the formal certificate. Only 8-10% consider instruction to be a significant pre-professional stage in their lives and they are willing to spend money, time and effort on that.  

Alexei Levinson: Anyway, the country is passing to the post-industrial phase of economy. This process goes in a strange way accompanied with factual destruction of the industry in the 90’s and forming the sphere of services working mainly on the pre-industrial, manual, non-informational bases. Major part of workers shifted from industrial sphere to the services sector; it is beginning to accrue and gradually it presents the demand for what is called here ‘certificates’. “Manager of soft toys section” is either a former manager, or a person who might have been a manager in soviet times. This occupation is not a shame for a man now; this is a normal way of making a career. This is a white-collar kind of occupation.          

The system of vocational instruction for industry is working badly and there is the lack of workers; this is why the authorities are trying to revive the system, while expressing a concern that too many people get higher education. There have been real attempts to restrict the system of higher education – some private institutions get deprived of the state license etc. All that indicates to attempts of going opposite to the strong trend that is tried to be explained with a “fashion for education”. In reality, the process is much more serious; this is the reflection of real demand for certain jobs requiring higher education of not much quality. There are rather highly developed enclaves inside of this servicing economy of inferior level. There is a hope that the sphere of their action will be extending. Probably, the educational system will be re-oriented to that in the future.   

Boris Dubin: There is a low demand by employers for real education of the work force. To have a cheap one, it’s easier to hire not much educated workers; so the demand by industry for highly qualified workers is not seen yet. And the servicing sphere is the horse of different color. 

Alexei Levinson: High demand for highly qualified work force of soviet type is only presented by resuscitated enterprises of military industrial complex. Those plants need “magical hands” that left the ruined enterprises in the period of the 90’s. It’s only those specific entities that need such kind of workers and their return is interpreted as general revival of the industry. However, the really modern industry does not need them.

Lev Gudkov: I would say the situation here is like it is in other areas. The system of higher education turned out to be much more conservative than we supposed 10 years ago. With the signs changed, the whole structure of the educational process remained same. Producing a typical engineer or teacher, not a real specialist, is still its goal. This standard education is not of high quality, it is undifferentiated, non-specialized and not flexible. The teaching staff getting older, there is no inflow of the new, young, quality and educated personnel. That means, it is the previous level of knowledge that is reproduced, the knowledge from the years where today’s professors were young teachers. This institutional conservatism is supported by the state which suspends the level of backwardness. This is why, on the one hand, generally education gives opportunities of some raising one’s professional status. And on the other hand, it is getting depreciated. The consequences of this will be felt for long and the situation itself is going to last long, as the system of the state institutions has become very rigid. Opportunities for career growth from the 90’s, where everything was unstable and absolutely new spheres appeared, now such opportunities are hindered with toughening of the vertical and sclerotization of the channels of social mobility. There are very few areas remaining where it is possible rapid and intensive development. The authoritarian system is inclined to stagnation.