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Political Participation in the Period of


Post-Communist Transition
The Case of Russian Capital Owners

Nathalia Rogers
Dowling College

abstract: This article focuses on the political participation of


Russian capital owners during the period of post-Commu-
nist transformation. The author examines the forms and
levels of political participation of the capital owners in corre-
lation with the size and origin of the capital that the respon-
dents own, controlling for age, education and past political
participation. The purpose of this analysis is to establish if
capital owners in a post-Communist country are likely to
support the consolidation of a pro-democratic regime. The
findings, based on the original data collected by the author
in Russia in the late 1990s, show that only some capital
owners are willing to support a liberal democratic cause, and
that the capital owners who participated the most actively
were those with anti-liberal views. A multi-dimensional
theoretical model of participation is used to explain patterns
of political participation observed within different age
cohorts of Russian capital owners.

keywords: capital ✦ democracy ✦ political participation ✦


post-Communist transition ✦ Russia ✦ transformation

When the Communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern
European countries collapsed a decade ago, there was much anticipation
regarding their transition towards more economically and politically
open societies. Western experts were recruited to advise new govern-
ments on the issues of transformation and large amounts of money from
the West were disbursed to aid these governments’ new economic, social
and political goals. At the same time, it was anticipated that the much

International Sociology ✦ September 2004 ✦ Vol 19(3): 259–279


SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
DOI: 10.1177/0268580904046367

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needed transformation would also take place on the societal level and
that citizens would choose to support the new democratic and economic
liberalization reforms either on their own initiative or in response to their
governments’ initiatives. However, more detailed predictions about how
exactly the former Communist subjects were supposed to swiftly change
their mentality of complete economic reliance on the state and of deep
political alienation were hard to come by. Some scholars suggested that
once the state stopped striving for total control over the society, the
people would gradually reinvent a ‘civil society’, where citizens would
engage in a constructive political participation in various civic and
political groups, thus restoring and maintaining the democratic political
balance between the state and its subjects (Gellner, 1994; Tismaneanu and
Turner, 1995). Other authors implied that, with the fundamental change
in the economic relationships and the introduction of private property
ownership, political relationships would change too. In particular, large
groups of private property owners would be created, and these indi-
viduals would become supporters of new pro-democratic governments
(Boycko et al., 1995).
Not surprisingly there also were scholars who viewed the political
transformation of the post-Communist societies ‘from below’ as a rather
problematic task. Writing about transforming Russia, Rueschemeyer et
al. (1992: 295) predicted that its new capitalist class ‘will be weak econ-
omically and politically’. Eyal et al. (1998) argued that in the cases of the
Czech Republic and Hungary the politics of economic and political
liberalization was carried forward by an intellectual elite of former dissi-
dents, who successfully forged a union with the technocrats from the
former Communist government. To emphasize their point the authors
have coined the phrase ‘capitalism without capitalists’, but cautioned
that their theory of post-Communist managerialism should be applied
only to the explanation of the transition in Central European societies
(Eyal et al., 1998: 4).

Capital Owners in Post-Communist Russia


In 1991, a massive privatization program was launched by the new
Russian government which helped to create a few different kinds of
private property ownership: first, a large number of Russians received
privatization vouchers – certificates which could be exchanged for shares
in newly privatized state firms, with the majority of workers of formerly
state-owned firms also receiving a small number of shares in their firms
for a nominal price;1 second, the managers of formerly state-owned and
now privatized enterprises in most cases received controlling packages of
shares in those firms; and third, those individuals who either had money

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accumulated in the course of their activities in the Soviet ‘black market’


or through entrepreneurial activities during the first few years of
economic transformation were given a chance to establish their own
companies or to privatize small and medium-sized companies which were
owned by the state. In this article I focus on the second and third groups
of Russian capital owners.

Data and Method


In the sociological literature capital owners have been often analyzed in
terms of the size and origin of their capital. Different authors distin-
guished between the political behavior of two segments of the bour-
geoisie: (1) large capital owners, who were in most cases opposed to the
introduction of fully fledged liberal democracies and prone to alliances
with repressive elements within and/or outside of the state; and (2) the
petty bourgeoisie, owners of small and medium-sized capital, who were
also ambivalent toward democracy, but nonetheless more inclined to
support the efforts of other subordinate classes to achieve and maintain
their right of full political participation (Therborn, 1977; O’Donnell, 1979;
Rueschemeyer et al., 1992). The distinction also has been made between
the sources of one’s capital and one’s political interests. Moore (1966)
suggested that capital owners who rely on an economic base independent
from ‘the old state’ might be more prone to support liberal-democratic
developments than those capitalists who have accumulated their capital
with the help of ‘the old state’.
For my research I interviewed 60 capital owners and 10 national-level
politicians and leaders of business interest groups in Moscow in the end
of 1997 and early 1998. The respondents were selected on the basis of a
randomized ‘purposive’ sample, which called for interviews with owners
of capital of different size and origin.2 Regarding the origin of capital, I
distinguished between the owners of ‘independent’ type capital, or those
who had accumulated and continued to accumulate their economic
means mostly independently of any special help, support or protection
from the state; and owners of ‘old state’ type capital, or those who had
accumulated most of their capital as a result of a legal, semi-legal or
illegal direct transfer of the state’s property into their private ownership.
The resulting group of respondents included 30 (co-)owners of small and
medium-sized firms of the ‘independent’ type, 10 (co-)owners of small
and medium-sized firms of the ‘old state’ type, 10 (co-)owners of large
firms of ‘independent’ type and 10 (co-)owners of large firms of ‘old state’
type. These business owners also represented all major types of economic
activities in which Russian private and corporately owned businesses
operate.3

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Political Participation of Russian Capital Owners


in the Early 1990s
The history of organized political participation by Russian business
owners is little documented. In the early 1990s, the formation of the first
business groups and the first political parties established by entrepreneurs
took place. According to the Russian historian Alexei Zudin (1995–6), the
weakness of the majority of Russian political parties at that time, with the
exception of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF),
prompted the leaders of the ‘first wave’ of business interest groups to
avoid cooperation with political parties and pursue direct participation
in political life. The same idea about the desirability of direct political
involvement became a trigger for the establishment of many of the ‘first
wave’ political parties of the entrepreneurs. Such parties began to
multiply in the period just before the 1993 elections of the Russian parlia-
ment, and all performed poorly during the elections. The most success-
ful of them, the anti-liberal electoral block ‘Civic Union’, which
represented the interests of former Soviet industrial managers or ‘red
directors’, gathered only 2 percent of the votes (Lentini, 1995: 146). The
pro-reform political parties of entrepreneurs all received less than 1
percent of the vote. Such poor performance did not come as a surprise:
these parties had an extremely narrow social and territorial base due to
the small size of the social stratum of entrepreneurs and to the lack of
meaningful political activities outside of the city of Moscow. Other factors
which contributed to the parties’ weak political performance included the
presence of a number of parties of entrepreneurs with very similar
political programs in competition with each other and the use by parties’
leaders of ‘individualistic strategies’ of political influence, i.e. direct access
to and negotiation with politicians on a one-to-one basis rather than use
of their political organizations in order to achieve political goals (Zudin,
1995–6: 6).
After the poor showing in the 1993 elections, most of the political parties
of entrepreneurs became inactive, while more politicized business interest
groups such as the anti-liberal Russian Union of Industrialists and Entre-
preneurs (RUIE) and the pro-liberal All-Russian Association of Privatized
and Private Enterprises (AAPPE) continued their political activities
although on a smaller scale.

Political Participation of Russian Capital Owners


in the Late 1990s
In the late 1990s, one of the major characteristics of Russia’s political
transformation was the emergence of a ‘floating party system’. In an

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accountable party system the supply of competing parties remains


constant, but in a floating party system ‘the parties competing for popular
support change from one election to the next, thus making accountability
difficult, because voters can neither reaffirm nor withdraw their support
from the party they voted for in the previous election’ (Rose et al., 2001:
420). In Russia many parties quickly emerged and disappeared, others
changed their name but not their political platforms, yet others merged
into new political blocks and shifted their programs. Indeed, of the eight
parties that cleared the 5 percent threshold in 1993 Duma elections, only
three parties (the CPRF, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [LDPR]
and Yabloko) did so again, and again in the 1995 and 1999 Duma elec-
tions. Two of these three parties, the CPRF and LDPR, could not be
described as the advocates of democracy and a liberal market reform. The
center of the Russian political spectrum displayed the least stability, with
political parties emerging and dissolving at a rapid pace of change that
mirrored the fates of Russia’s leading politicians.
On the other hand, major Russian politicized business interest groups
did not exhibit a floating pattern similar to that observed in the political
party system. All groups that were established in the early 1990s (AAPPE,
RUIE, RTBR, RADSB4) continued to exist in the late 1990s. However, the
lobbying power and the popularity of each group did vary depending on
the politicians in power that the groups were connected to.

Results
Participation in Political Parties and Movements
Among the 20 owners of large capital that I interviewed, six business
people said that they were members of an existing Russian political party
and one other respondent was among the founders of an early political
party of entrepreneurs (the now inactive block ‘Transformation’). This
political involvement of large capital owners reflected the highest number
of active party members found among different groups of capital owners
interviewed. Four out of five owners of large capital who participated in
anti-liberal political parties and movements (CPRF, APR, RUIP, RCDM5)
owned ‘old state’ type capital, were older than 55 years and in the past
had been politically active in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU). Overall, owners of large capital who participated in political
parties were a highly educated group with three respondents having five
years of college education and another three respondents having more
than eight years of college education (postgraduate degrees).
Among the six owners of small and medium-sized capital who were
members of political parties, the two owners of ‘old state’ type capital
belonged to the anti-liberal CPRF and the RUIP, while the four owners of

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‘independent’ type companies all belonged to different centrist political


organizations (Our Home is Russia [OHR] and women’s movements).
Both of the owners of ‘old state’ type companies who belonged to anti-
liberal parties were older than 50 years, and had a history of active and
career CPSU participation in the past. All four middle-aged ‘independent’
capital owners, who belonged to centrist political movements, had no
history of past political participation. All six owners of small and medium-
sized capital who participated in political parties had the same
educational level of five years of college education.

Participation in Politicized Business Interest Groups


The owners of large ‘old state’ capital were active in both anti-liberal
(RUIE) and pro-liberal (AAPPE, RTBR) groups, with all older cohort (>55
years) individuals being involved with the anti-reform RUIE. One middle-
aged owner of large ‘old state’ capital, who was a passive CPSU member
in the past, participated in the pro-liberal AAPPE, and another middle-
aged capital owner, who had a history of past career in CPSU, partici-
pated in both the pro-liberal RTBR and anti-liberal RUIE. Among the
owners of large ‘independent’ type capital, all younger (25–34 years)
respondents with no history of past CPSU participation were members of
the anti-liberal RUIE, while respondents who participated in the pro-
reform AAPPE and RTBR groups were between 40 and 51 years old and
had no history of active CPSU participation. All of the participating
owners of large capital received five years of college education with the
exception of three capital owners who had postgraduate degrees and
received more than eight years of college education.
Among the owners of small and medium-sized companies, only one
respondent, a middle-aged businesswoman who owned an ‘independent’
type company and had no history of CPSU participation, chose to partici-
pate in the pro-liberal AAPPE. The rest of the small and medium-sized
capital owners who participated in politicized business groups chose
either the pro-moderate reform RADSB or anti-liberal RUIE (see Tables 1
and 2). The educational level of the participating owners of small and
medium-sized capital was comparable to the educational level of partici-
pating large capital owners: all of the respondents have received five years
of college education, with the exception of three capital owners who held
postgraduate degrees and one respondent who graduated from a voca-
tional school.

Explanatory Model
Pinard (1986) developed a multidimensional theoretical model of political
mobilization that can be adopted for the purposes of explanation of

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Table 1 Participation in Political Parties and Movements and Politicized Business Groups by Type of Political Attitudes and Type and
Size of Respondent’s Capital (N = 60)
Large capital Small and medium capital

Page 265
‘Old state’ ‘Independent’ ‘Old state’ ‘Independent’
Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part.
Type of political attitudes n n n n n n n N
Pro-liberal political and economic reform 2 0 1 1 0 1 4 10
Moderately pro-democratic,
pro-market reform 2 1 4 1 4 2 7 6
Authoritarian state with capitalist economy 0 0 2 1 1 1 2 1
Anti-democratic and market reform 3 2 0 0 1 0 0 0

Participation % (total n) 70% (10) 70% (10) 60% (10) 43% (30)
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Table 2 Political Participation by Respondent’s Age and Respondent’s Political Attitudes (N = 60)

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Age (years)
25–34 35–44 45–54 >54
Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part. Part. Non-part.
Type of political attitudes n n n n n n n N
Pro-liberal political and economic reform 1 1 4 3 2 8 0 0
Moderately pro-democratic, pro-market reform 2 0 5 6 4 3 5 2
Authoritarian state with capitalist economy 2 0 0 2 3 0 1 0
Anti-democratic, anti-market reform 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 2
Participation % (total n) 83% (6) 45% (20) 45% (20) 71% (14)
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Rogers Political Participation in the Period of Post-Communist Transition

routine political participation. The model focuses on both supply and


demand sides of mobilization and lists three major components that, in
various combinations, contribute to collective action. These components
include (1) internal motives based on deprivations, aspirations and/or
moral obligations, (2) external incentives (selective or collective) and (3)
expectancy of success. All three components must be present for the indi-
viduals to become motivated to engage in collective political action.
Internal motives can be a combination of grievances based on political,
economic and/or social deprivations and/or aspirations, which are
defined as a simple demand for more goods and benefits, and/or moral
obligations defined as selfless contributions. External incentives can be
collective, i.e. the achievement of certain collective benefits as a result of
action, or selective, i.e. individually meaningful rewards provided for
rational and self-interested members who have little interest in collective
incentives. Finally, individuals’ willingness to mobilize is directly
connected to the expectancy of success. When the expectation of success
is very low, there is little participation, specifically if the cost of partici-
pation is relatively high.

Discussion
Political Participation of Older Capital Owners
Out of 14 respondents who were aged 55 and older, only three owned
‘independent’ type companies of small and medium size. The other 11
respondents owned either large (six respondents) or small and medium-
sized companies (five respondents) of the ‘old state’ type. Such owner-
ship patterns are not surprising because older respondents had more time
and opportunities to advance their careers and to occupy positions of
power during the Soviet regime. These capital owners then succeeded in
holding onto their pre-reform job positions under the new economic and
political regime through becoming owners and co-owners of the
companies that previously belonged to the state. Out of the group of 14
older capital owners, six participated in anti-liberal organizations such as
the RUIP and/or RUIE, and another four respondents were members of
the moderately pro-reform RADSB. None of the respondents who
belonged to the older cohort participated in pro-liberal political organiz-
ations.
In order to find out about the motives, incentives and expectations that
led some older capital owners to participate in anti-liberal political
organizations, one has to start with an analysis of Russian economic and
political reforms, that left many Soviet top industrial managers with
strong grievances and also with expectations of greater state help for their
formerly state-owned enterprises. As reforms unfolded the majority of

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Soviet institutions, including large state enterprises belonging to various


state ministries, were coopted into the new political and economic order
rather than dissolved and created anew. The new Russian government
early in the 1990s sought to switch the allegiances of major institutional
actors rather than immediately remove them from the transformation
scene (McFaul, 2001: 133). Some researchers argued that the enterprise
managers had controlling power over the Soviet state long before the
Soviet Union fell apart. This power came from directors’ exclusive know-
ledge of precise information about the capacities and actual worth of their
enterprises. McFaul (1994) concluded that Soviet managers and directors
purposefully withheld this information about the capacities of their enter-
prises and, as a result, benefited enormously during privatization process
by being able to control the state’s assessment of the value of their enter-
prises.
Yet if the top managers were able to become economic winners of the
privatization of the state’s assets and they remained in control of their
enterprises, why would they engage in anti-reform mobilization? My
study indicates that it is the loss of political and economic status and influ-
ence with the state that served as the major grievance fueling some of the
political opposition of older Soviet top managers to the new regime. This
is how one of my respondents explained his reasons for participation:
I want to tell you why we have created our own political party and business
interest group. In the past we had all the power, money and voters. Reform-
ers were not so much afraid of the army as they were afraid of us, the direc-
tors from the military–industrial complex. So they [the reformers] started
creating different political units in order to divide industrialists into many
small pieces. Every business interest group wanted its own little piece, ideo-
logically. Mr Volsky was smart and did not give them too much. They [the
reformers] created the All Russian Association of Privatized and Private Enter-
prises and their own League of Military Enterprises. And everybody was
fighting for his own electorate. . . . Still the reason for the establishment of our
movement lay in our desire to create a power triangle between the Russian
government, our business group and trade unions. And within this triangle
we would have been able to solve all of the problems of our state. That’s how
we would have liked things to be done in 1993. We could have sat behind a
round table and regulated all of the reforms.6

The loss of status and the ability to easily influence the state by many
top industrial managers/capital owners was no accident, but an intended
consequence of certain policies adopted by the new Russian government.
Laitin (2000: 128) pointed out that the tripartite program of economic
restructuring that was developed by western and Russian neoliberal econ-
omists and adopted by the new Russian government advocated liberaliz-
ation, stabilization and privatization, but purposefully ignored the goal

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of the stimulation of production because the latter could disrupt the goal
of stabilization. The economists also feared that the focus on production
would allow industrialists ‘to feed resources to favored state enterprises’
and gain political and economic power that could be used to disrupt
neoliberals’ transformation plans. The Russian government offered top
industrial managers the choice of either going along with its policies in
order to gain access to the top political actors through pro-liberal business
associations, or survival at their own risk.7 The industrial managers who
did not change their allegiances soon enough found themselves progres-
sively more isolated and powerless. Strongly motivated by their status
grievances and their aspirations for a continued state support of their
formerly state-owned Soviet enterprises, some of my respondents chose
to mobilize on their own. The collective incentives that these respondents
had in mind were the return to the dominance of the industrial sector in
Russia’s economic development, and for some, there was also a selective
incentive of the survival of their own enterprise and the ability to maintain
their position as company owners and managers. These respondents also
maintained reasonable expectations of success because of a number of
factors conducive to their mobilization efforts: (1) the presence of some
anti-liberal officials in the Russian government who were sympathetic to
the causes of development and state support of local industry; (2) exten-
sive past political participation experience of many capital owners (career
and active CPSU members) who were top Soviet industrial managers in
the past; and (3) the extensive connections within Soviet networks that
this group of respondents had developed were also being used for
purposes of mobilization.
The very few older top Soviet managers who were able to construct
closer and more productive relations with the new government, and thus
wield a broader political influence with the new democratic regime,
supported the new political order although not without some reservations
and with a realistic perception of the new democrats’ shortcomings. These
capital owners were among the non-politically participating respondents,
who reported using direct access to key governmental officials and having
little need to mediate their aspirations for greater cooperation from the
state through various political organizations.
On the other hand, none of the older capital owners who chose to
participate in the pro-moderate reform RADSB came from the top ranks
of the industrial enterprise management and all of these respondents
owned small or medium-sized capital. Even though these capital owners
maintained comfortable institutional positions under the previous regime,
they had never experienced a high level of power and ability to influence
key economic policies such as the top industrial managers did. The
survival of these respondents’ small and medium-sized companies also

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did not depend on massive cash injections from the state, but on the
cooperation from the local Moscow officials, such as help in arranging
loans and provision of reasonable real estate leases. These respondents
displayed much lower levels of political grievances because their expec-
tations of political power sharing were non-existent. Their participation
in RADSB was based on practical aspirations to get loans and cheaper
rents and the selective incentive of being a successful entrepreneur. Since
the RADSB had the mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov as its patron, these
respondents had reasonable expectations of success, hoping that their
loyalty to the organization would be rewarded by greater attention of city
officials to their requests.

Political Participation of Middle-Aged Capital Owners


Similar practical aspirations and incentives characterized the participation
in RADSB by middle-aged (35–54) capital owners of small and medium-
sized companies. The following quote from the interview with a 53-year-
old business owner of a small ‘independent’ type company illustrates
nicely the differences in aspirations and incentives that existed between
former top industrial managers and the middle-aged and older respon-
dents who did not occupy top industrial ranks in the past and who
currently participated in RADSB. The businesswoman quoted here had a
past Soviet career as a second-rank industrial manager at a military–
industrial enterprise:
I once went to Alexander Volsky [the leader of the anti-reform RUIE business
group and RUIP political party] to ask him to help me to get a business loan.
There they gave me a long lecture on how terrible the current Russian govern-
ment is. There was no business whatsoever in that organization. They only talk
politics. All these former directors they have the same mentality – they are
distributors, they are not like us people who manufacture things. Volsky’s
directors just suck money out of the government and they burn this money. I
hope all of them will become bankrupt soon.
I then joined RADSB because I am always looking for ways to get business
loans. . . . There they helped me to get my loan.8
As this quote illustrates, respondents who had few expectations of
political power sharing, but who aspired to get credits and other economic
benefits, based their participation choices primarily on selective incen-
tives of the development of their own business.
Aside from RADSB, middle-aged capital owners also participated in
the centrist political movement Our Home Russia (OHR) and grassroots
women’s movements as well as in the pro-liberal Democratic Choice of
Russia Party (DCR), the AAPPE and RTBR and in the anti-liberal RUIE
and CPRF. Three respondents who participated respectively in OHR, the
RUIE, and CPRF, all owners of medium-sized businesses, described

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having similar motivations, incentives and expectancy of success as those


middle-aged respondents who chose to participate in the RADSB. The
mostly economic aspirations, the selective incentives of one’s own
business development and a higher expectancy of success led these
respondents to join. Their expectancy of success, however, was not based
on the expectations of success of the collective action by their chosen
political organization, but rather on the expectations of reaping strong
economic benefits of respondents’ personal connections to either poli-
ticians or business interest group and/or governmental officials at whose
request a capital owner joined the given political organization in the first
place.
Out of the six middle-aged respondents who belonged to the pro-liberal
DCR, AAPPE and RTBR, two individuals (one individual participated in
both the pro-liberal AAPPE and anti-liberal RUIP), both owners of large
‘old state’ capital, also placed economic rather than political motives as
their primary reasons for participation. Both individuals emphasized the
importance of working with the current pro-reform government and, as
a result, gaining various economic benefits for their enterprises as key
reasons for participation. However, the other four respondents (one owner
of large ‘old state’ type capital, two owners of large ‘independent’ type
capital and one owner of medium-sized ‘independent’ type capital)
identified their aspirations for a liberal political and economic regime as
primary reasons for their participation. Interestingly, these respondents
also continued to participate in and support pro-liberal political organiz-
ations even though they were well aware of the recent history of these
organization’s political setbacks (the DCR had not passed the 5 percent
threshold in the two most recent parliamentary elections and the AAPPE’s
political influence declined when the liberal politicians to which it was
connected did not win key governmental positions) and the resulting
lower chances for these organizations to turn into a political success story.
When asked why she continues to participate in a pro-liberal political
organization despite its history of political setbacks, one of the respon-
dents replied:

You know populism is always easy, but it does not lead to anything good.
Every time that I have to think about my own political decisions – I mean my
own personal political choices for whom to vote, and which political organiz-
ation I should support – I have this recurrent desire to support authoritarian-
ism, a reasonable, balanced authoritarianism. Doing this will be in the interest
of my business, for example. It may stabilize my market faster and may protect
my company from being taken over by a foreign competitor. But on the other
hand, as a Russian person, I know first hand what authoritarianism can lead
to. We must to learn how to look further than our immediate economic inter-
ests. We absolutely need democracy. We absolutely need to defend economic

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and political freedoms and civil rights. When I contribute to DCR or pay dues
to AAPPE, I feel that I am supporting the liberal causes from which my child
may benefit in the future.9

Other respondents who participated in pro-liberal organizations gave


similar answers that emphasized the importance of democracy as a good
future and participation as a way to support the cause that is important
to them. When asked why the establishment of a liberal economic and
political regime was so important to them, these capital owners would
typically discuss the history of their Soviet employment and talk about
their feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom with their previous Soviet
careers and with the Soviet regime which inhibited many of their
economic, social and political aspirations. Judging by their answers, these
respondents tended to positively evaluate liberal reforms when they
perceived their own lives as being much better under the pro-democratic
government.
This qualitative finding of my study is similar to findings from large
quantitative studies that research the reasons of support for pro-demo-
cratic political regimes. Drawing on data from the New Democracies
Barometer, a representative, quantitative study of political attitudes in a
number of post-Communist countries, Rose et al. (1997) found that the
stronger an individual’s past negative experience with Communism, the
more likely these individuals reacted in favor of current pro-democratic
governments (evaluation of current political performance on the basis of
early socialization). Citizens who felt that their individual freedom had
increased under the current regime were much more likely to trust pro-
democratic institutions.
Not incidentally, the middle-aged capital owners who participated in
pro-liberal organizations were very successful entrepreneurs who also
viewed their participation and support for the organizations as their
moral obligation ‘to give back’ to the organizations that support political
and economic ideas that these business owners also held. Considering
moral obligation as one of the motives also helps us to better understand
why these respondents continued to participate in pro-liberal political
organizations even though they perceived the organization’s chances to
succeed politically as limited.
But not all middle-aged respondents who owned businesses were very
successful under the new regime, nor did all middle-aged individuals feel
strongly that their Soviet careers had been completely unsatisfactory.
Many capital owners, particularly respondents who owned small and
medium-sized businesses, felt that they had had meaningful careers in
the past and that the current political and economic situation, while
allowing for more freedom, also forced them to constantly adjust to a

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changing economic and political environment making their life rather


difficult. The respondents who did not evaluate their past Soviet life in a
strongly negative light, and who did not view their current life as capital
owners as a complete success were most often found among the middle-
aged entrepreneurs who chose not to participate in any political organiz-
ations. Non-participating capital owners made up slightly more than half
of all middle-aged respondents. These individuals also often perceived
various political organizations as self-absorbed and corrupt entities that
cannot be trusted to advance the interests of a regular business owner
(very low expectations of success). Two quotes follow from the interview
with one of such respondents:10
By education I am a physicist. I did some very advanced things in science and
I worked in a research institute and in the electrical company since graduat-
ing from college in 1977. I really liked my job. But in 1990 our State Research
Institute went bankrupt. My colleagues and I were receiving no salary so we
decided to go into small business. We started with something that we knew –
we made equipment to direct laser rays. But that sustained us only for a short
period of time – when state enterprises still had money, those who used to
work with us before ordered from our new private business. We also created
a ‘team of scientists for hire’ – a group of us would go to various factories upon
request and develop equipment to substitute some expensive foreign equip-
ment so that the state enterprise would pay less money for the equipment and
continue to function. But that was again only possible because large industry
was still functioning. . . . In 1993 we got lucky when Coca-Cola came to Russia
and we won a tender to build lightweight kiosks to sell Coke in Russia.

Regarding participation in political organizations:


We certainly needed political and economic reforms, but Gaidar’s reform was
conducted in a stupid way. . . . It was a disaster, because people really never
got rid of their ‘socialist infantilism’ mentality: under the Soviet regime they
expected to do nothing and get paid in roubles, and now, after the reform, they
also expect to do nothing but get rich in dollars through connections to those
who redistribute property. . . . I never belonged to any political organizations
and I do not intend to join now. I know some people in RADSB and I know
how they distribute money that should be channeled to the development of
all small businesses. Basically they channel the money to the businesses of their
friends. As to the political parties, the politician who I like, [Moscow’s mayor]
Luzhkov, does not have a political party. And I do not like Communists, nation-
alists [Zhirinovsky’s LDPR] or Gaidar [and his DCR].

The quote above also illustrates the effect that the imperfect supply of
political organizations may have on political participation. Respondents
who were moderately pro-reform had few political organizations to turn
to because in the late 1990s the two largest Russian parliamentary political
parties, the CPRF and the LDPR, did not advocate democratic political

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regime, while pro-reform political forces were concentrated in the most


liberal end of the political spectrum. To sum up, non-participating middle-
aged respondents were often moderately successful business people, who
lacked strong grievances and/or aspirations and who saw little collective
and/or selective incentives to participate. Their weak motivation to
participate was further inhibited by the deficiencies in the Russian
political structure where few stable centrist political organizations existed,
and by the overall low level of trust that respondents had towards political
organizations.

Political Participation of Young Capital Owners


Six young capital owners aged between 25 and 34 years took part in the
study. Out of this group, three respondents, all owners of large ‘inde-
pendent’ type capital, participated in the anti-liberal RUIE. Another two
respondents, both owners of small and medium-sized ‘independent’ type
companies, participated in the moderately pro-reform RADSB and OHR.
The sixth respondent in this group, also an owner of a small ‘indepen-
dent’ type company, did not participate in any political organizations.
The two young respondents, who participated in, respectively, the
RADSB and OHR, reported doing so for reasons similar to those described
earlier for middle-aged respondents who participated in the same
organizations. The capital owner who participated in OHR was asked to
join OHR by Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov, after the company that he
owned won a large contract from the Moscow government. In the words
of the respondent: ‘I admire Mr Luzhkov very much and if the mayor
needs it, I will join any political party that he will ask me to join’.11 The
respondent who participated in RADSB was also motivated by mostly
economic aspirations, selective incentives of his own business success and
higher expectancy of success based on his personal connections to top
leaders of the organization.
On the other hand, the participation of three young owners of large
‘independent’ type capital in anti-liberal RUIE appears puzzling. Why
would a young person who owns a successful service company (all three
respondents did) that clearly benefited from economic and political
liberalization want to participate in an anti-liberal business interest group
led by former top Soviet industrial managers? To find an answer to this
question one has to consider the complexity of the situation in which these
capital owners found themselves as well as the efforts of the anti-liberal
business interest group to recruit young successful business people.
According to all three respondents, the RUIE was the only politicized
business interest group that made an effort to approach them with an offer
not only to join, but also to become relatively high-ranking (vice-presi-
dent level) members of the organization.12 The RUIE was purposefully

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Rogers Political Participation in the Period of Post-Communist Transition

recruiting business owners who were known to have material resources


that could help the RUIE to sustain its existence. When young owners of
large, service companies were being recruited, the anti-reform, pro-Soviet
industry rhetoric was toned down by the organization’s leaders, and an
emphasis was made on selective problems of current political and
economic reforms such as the issues of widespread political and economic
corruption and the need for the state to give more support to the indus-
tries in which respondents’ companies were operating. The young respon-
dents who participated in RUIE owned companies that operated in the
television advertising industry, financial industry and commodities
trading. While all three entrepreneurs started their companies indepen-
dently using their own skills and initial capital, all three saw their
companies expand rapidly after they started working with either local
government or state-owned companies. The owner of the television
advertising company placed advertisements for his clients on two state-
owned television channels, the owner of a financial company won the
Moscow government’s contract to place ATMs at numerous municipal
properties, and the owner of the commodities trading company depended
on supplies of grain from state-owned farms. Thus, for each of these
capital owners the stakes became higher as their companies grew larger,
and the continued cooperation with the state represented the key to a
continued growth of their companies. If the state would decide to pursue
a completely liberal economic agenda, their businesses will have to face
more competition; at the same time, an excessive corruption on the part
of state officials was also undesirable because it strangled the monetary
resources that flow into the markets in which respondents’ companies
operated. This is how one of the young respondents described his situ-
ation:
I am the vice-president of the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies and
a member of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. And I am
also a special adviser to Zhirinovsky [the leader of the anti-liberal LDPR]. . . .
We work very actively with the members of parliament trying to get through
the parliament changes in laws that will benefit us. We work on both levels:
on the level of Moscow city and the federal government level. We are really
trying to get out of the government benefits for our industry. . . . We need the
state that would be capable of enforcing laws and maintaining order. I am tired
of all this corruption and of constantly having bodyguards with me. I think
we need a really strong Minister of Interior, who would put everyone nasty
behind the bars.13
This quote reveals not only the aspirations for a reasonable state support
of the industry in which the respondent’s business operated, but also
strong grievances about corrupt and criminal environments. And while
almost all Russian capital owners had to operate their companies in the

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corrupt bureaucratic and criminal social and economic environment,


younger respondents appeared to have stronger grievances about the
issue compared to other capital owners.
Perhaps previously mentioned findings by Rose et al. (1997) about the
importance of comparison between an individual’s past and present situ-
ation in evaluation of current political and economic regime may help us
to understand the reasons behind the stronger grievances felt by some
younger respondents. Younger respondents were in their late teens when
the transformations began in 1986 and, unlike many middle-aged respon-
dents, they had just exited high school or entered college at that time,
and, for the most part, they did not find themselves in situations where
their careers were stalled because of the stifling nature of the authoritarian
political and economic regime. What younger respondents seem to
remember most was not the almost complete lack of political and
economic freedom, but a society that sheltered them from the need to
think much about their economic and physical survival. The economic
chaos combined with the strong rise in crime and bureaucratic extortion
that followed the old regime’s collapse made all business people
constantly fear for their life and survival of their business. But to many
young business owners democratic freedoms seemed to be less import-
ant than their need for an orderly political and economic environment
where the capitalist state would serve as a client and protector to those
business people who are willing to work with it. Thus some younger
capital owners felt that their individual freedoms have decreased due to
a strong rise in criminal activities (see also Radaev, 1998). These strong
grievances about crime and corruption coupled with aspirations for more
favorable treatment by the state contributed to the motivation of young
respondents to participate in the anti-liberal RUIE. Selective incentives of
gaining social status in a well-known business interest group also
appealed to some younger respondents who did not come from privi-
leged social backgrounds. Finally, as evident in the preceding quote, these
respondents also had moderate expectations of the organizational success.

Conclusions
When the age cohorts are taken into consideration, it is the younger (25–34
years) respondents and the older (>54 years) respondents who partici-
pated the most actively. Interestingly, in both age groups the majority of
participating respondents chose anti-liberal political organizations. Some
respondents in the middle-aged cohort participated in pro-liberal or
moderately pro-reform political organizations, but the majority of capital
owners in this age group chose not to participate. Among the owners of
small and medium-sized capital, respondents who owned ‘old state’ type

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Rogers Political Participation in the Period of Post-Communist Transition

capital had higher levels of participation than owners of ‘independent’


type capital, who as a group had the highest rate of non-participation.
Overall, owners of large capital had higher levels of participation in a
political party or movement or a politicized business group compared to
the owners of small and medium-sized capital. Participation in politicized
business interest groups was the preferred form of organized political
participation among capital owners in my study.14 I argue that a combi-
nation of factors such as individual perception of past and present
political and economic grievances, collective and selective incentives for
obtaining group and individual benefits and the real and perceived costs
of political participation contributed to the observed diversity of partici-
pation patterns found within each cohort of Russian capital owners.

Notes
The author wishes to thank the three anonymous reviewers and many other
colleagues who provided helpful comments on an early draft of this article,
especially Saïd Arjomand, Maurice Pinard and Suzanne Staggenborg.

1. According to Boycko et al. (1995: 2) the number of Russian citizens who owned
shares in privatized firms and mutual funds reached 40 million in 1994.
2. Russian capital owners were distinguished on the basis of the size and the
origin of their capital. Firms with a yearly turnover of up to US$200,000 were
classified as small businesses, firms with a yearly turnover from US$200,000 to
US$25 million were classified as medium-sized businesses, and firms with a
yearly turnover higher than US$25 million were classified as large businesses.
3. Out of 60 respondents, a little more than half (33) were selected on the basis of
the membership lists of major business associations. These business associations
were: the All-Russian Association of Privatized and Private Enterprises (AAPPE),
the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), the Russian
Association for the Development of Small Business (RADSB), the Moscow
Association of Women Entrepreneurs, and the Moscow Chamber of Commerce.
The remaining 27 respondents in this sample were selected in ways that did not
involve business interest groups. I approached some respondents at the Moscow
Small Business Days Exposition where I interviewed owners of every fifth
company that had an exhibit stand, others were chosen through various business
catalogues, and a few respondents were approached through friends.
4. RTBR stands for the Round Table Business of Russia.
5. APR stands for the Agrarian Party of Russia, RUIP for the Russian United
Industrial Party and RCDM stands for the Russian Christian-Democratic
Movement.
6. Interview with Vladislav Gorshenin, the president of the privatized concern
Technology and Industry, chair of the Moscow Branch of the Russian United
Industrialist Party and the vice-president of the Russian Union of Industrial-
ists and Entrepreneurs, on 25 November 1997.

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7. Interview with Gennady Tomchin, head of the AAPPE, now the deputy of the
Third Russian Duma on 25 February 1998.
8. Interview with Irina Shcherbatova, owner of the firm Faks, 28 November 1997.
9. Interview with Marina Pereverzeva, co-owner of the company Raster’s, 27
February 1998.
10. Interview with a company owner who wished to remain anonymous, 5 March
1998. One-fifth of my respondents requested to remain anonymous, while the
rest of the capital owners whom I had interviewed had no objection to my
use of their names when quoting them in print.
11. Interview with an anonymous capital owner, 18 March 1998.
12. Making offers to become a group’s vice-president was one of the techniques
the leaders of the RUIE used in order to recruit wealthy business owners who
could then be asked for money to support the organization. Inside RUIE no
one knew exactly how many vice-presidents RUIE had, but in the interview
with the author one of officials said that there were ‘dozens of them’.
13. Interview with Artem Vagin, president and owner of Blick Communications,
17 December 1997.
14. When considering these results, readers must be aware that the sampling
procedure in which about a half of all respondents were selected with the help
of business interest groups has undoubtedly affected the outcome. Nonethe-
less, for those respondents who were selected independently from the lists of
business interest groups the finding that business interest groups were their
preferred form of political participation over various political parties still
stands. This trend has been also confirmed by Russian sources (see Avilova,
1997: 63).

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Biographical Note: Nathalia Rogers is an assistant professor of Sociology at


Dowling College. She received her first PhD in sociology from Belarus State
University, Minsk, Belarus and her second PhD from McGill University,
Montreal, Canada. Her research and publications reflect her interest in studying
the social and political aspects of post-communist transformation and the
dynamics of local community responses to globalization.
Address: Dowling College, Oakdale, NY 11769, USA. [email: rogersn@
dowling.edu]

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