‘Deep Civil Society’ Taking Shape in Russia Despite Contraction of Middle Class Higher School of Economics Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – A new survey conducted by sociologists at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics finds that Russians are becoming more demanding of the state and feel a greater sense of personal efficacy, trends that the scholars say point to the emergence of “a deep civil society.”

            Forty percent of Russians now say that they believe the government must support those in Russian society who find themselves in difficulty, an increase from early surveys, and 30 percent believe that they can change their own lives for the better, up from 22 percent just four years ago (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5fcce52b9a794796ff111ca6).

            They stress that these developments have occurred not as the result of the growth of the middle class, the category typically associated with such attitudes, but during a period when as a result of economic and social crises, that stratum is declining in size. That means that these civil society attitudes are spreading to others.

            Between 2016 and now, the HSE sociologists report, the share of Russians who believe that they can influence the situation in their city or village has increased from eight percent to 13 percent and the size of those who believe they can have such an impact in their micro-district or rural area from 13 percent to 18 percent.

            Although the figures are still relatively low and, in every case, far less than 50 percent, the scholars suggest that these are signs of the growth of what they call “a ‘deep’ civil society.”

Supporting that conclusion is the fact that the study concludes that “Russians are becoming more demanding of the government.”

            The share saying that the government isn’t giving society enough but should be asked to give more has risen from 29 percent to 34 percent over the last four years, but the fraction who say that the state gives so little that “we don’t owe it anything” has fallen from 31 percent four years ago to 24 percent now.

            “Traditionally,” the sociologists says, “during a period of shocks, the state tries to support the weakest, but the population considers that in the first instance it must support” not those at the bottom per se but rather “those who have suffered the most” from whatever the current crisis is.

            Thus, four out of ten Russians polled say that the state must support those who have lost work because of the crisis compared to 27 percent in 2018. The share saying the government must help those who can’t help themselves has risen only three percentage points over the last two years.