Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 25 – Russians are so used to thinking almost in Marxist terms about the clash between workers and capitalists that they are failing to notice that in Russia today, small businessmen are suffering from the actions of the oligarchs “no less” than are wage earners, according to economist Nikolay Novichkov.
The Just Russia Duma deputy argues that it is critically important “not to confuse the capitalist and the entrepreneur,” given that the former seeks ties with the government and state capitalism while the latter seeks competition and the development of the market (mk.ru/economics/2026/02/25/predprinimateli-protiv-kapitalistov-kak-zashhitit-ot-oligarkhov-malyy-biznes.html).
Novichkov points to the political divisions that this difference produced at the end of imperial Russia, and he cites the words of Chinese communist reformer Deng Xiaoping to the effect that “socialism is a market and competition while capitalism is monopolies and oligopolies.”
In Russia today, “the role of small and mid-sized entrepreneurship in society is colossal,” the deputy says, involving some 25 million people and paying a large share of taxes. But the oligarchs work with the state against small business and nowhere more successfully than keeping other Russians from recognizing that small business suffers from the oligarchs as much as they.
Unfortunately, Novichkov says, unlike in 1917 when the SRs did so, there is no Russian political party representing small business and the workers who benefit from that stratum of the economy; and consequently, the oligarchs combined with the state have almost a free hand to set the economic course in Putin’s Russia.
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