Local Level Responses to Rapid Social Change in a City in The

Local Level Responses to Rapid Social Change in a city in the Russian Industrial Urals Francine Pickup Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D in Development Studies, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. UMI Number: U183256 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U183256 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 OF 1 POtfTICAL ANO & I P S o 7z f lozz^zu Abstract This thesis addresses the organisation of socio-economic life in the context of rapid social change. It does so by analysing people’s livelihoods in 2000, and their implications for social differentiation in a large industrial city in the Urals region of Russia. It shows who the winners and losers in the reform process were and why opportunities to prosper were restricted to a small group. As a case study of one city, the thesis is limited, but it does indicate how the shift 'from plan to market' actually happened in ways not expected by reformers and how institutional failure was circumvented in ingenious ways at the local level. This thesis focuses on how people in a large provincial city responded to the weakness of formal legal structure and high levels of state corruption and organised crime, and their engagement in the formal and informal economy. It provides information on the emergence of economic elites and how people made a living despite dismal wages. After laying out the its theoretical concepts and discussing the research methods used, the thesis considers how the institutional context shaped people’s responses to rapid social change. Arguing that the ability to make a living was determined by access to social, human and material resources, it examines the reasons behind the economic positions of different kinds of households. The thesis contends that social networks were a major influence on people’s situation and that access to them was determined by a range of factors, including gender. Organised crime is analysed as a form of social organisation that stepped into the void of the Soviet state’s collapse, with 2 long-term implications for life in the city. Drawing upon these various local level responses, the thesis makes some conclusions about the dynamics behind social differentiation in the city. 3 Acknowledgements There are many, many people who contributed to making the writing of thesis such an enriching experience. During my fieldwork, my gratitude goes to Gareth Ward and Ragne Low for providing me with shelter in Moscow and their regular visits to Ekaterinburg. I would also like to mention Stephen Harrison, Elena Chesnokova, Tanya Shmikova and Irina Kunilova at the British Consulate in Ekaterinburg, Bob Amot, Larissa Petrova at the Sociology Department in the Pedagogical University, Boris Pavlov at the Economics Institute and Teodor Shanin at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Most importantly though, this thesis would not have been possible without the openness of my respondents and the generosity of my friends who took me under their wing and took it upon themselves to make my data collection a success. I would particularly like to mention Karina for letting me bulldozer my way into her life, and who with, Masha, painstakingly transcribed my interviews. I would like to thank my supervisors, Elizabeth Francis and Sarah Ashwin, whose incisive comments and patience have made this a much better thesis. The study has also benefited from feedback on particular chapters by Dennis Rodgers, Stephen Lovell, Lynn Nelson. I am grateful to Anne White, who I met for the first time, one snowy early morning in a Ekaterinburg courtyard, for her personal and intellectual encouragement. I am indebted to her for helping me with the quantitative data analysis and I have benefited from her understanding of the continuities between Soviet and present-day life. I would also like to thank my mother, Diana, and father, Alan, and Livio, for their support, and I am deeply indebted to Peter for his thorough 4 . proof reading. None of these people bear any responsibility for the analysis here. Finally, I am grateful to The Leverhulme Trust, The Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation and the London School of Economics for their financial support. 5 For Karina, Olya K., Olya S., Marina, Dima, Tanya and Sergei. Contents 1 Introduction 10 2 Research Methods 39 3 Institutional Continuity and Change 60 4 Livelihoods of Survival and Security 103 5 Livelihoods of Accumulation 159 6 The Changing Role of Social Networks in the 210 Construction of Livelihoods 7 The Emergence of Organised Crime 265 8 Conclusion 298 Appendix 1 Respondents' Networks According to Income 315 Appendix 2 List of Respondents 325 Bibliography 330 7 List of Figures Figure Figure Title Page no. 1 Age of population per 1000 in Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk and Russia 47 in 1998 and 2000 and ages of respondents 2 Ascending per capita income among respondent households 48 3 Differentiation among my respondents and in Sverdlovsk, 2000 49 4 Education level of the main income-eamer in the respondent 49 households 5 Work activity of the main income-eamer in respondent households 50 6 Respondents’ form of access to land 51 7 Snowball example 1 52 8 Snowball example 2 53 9 % of unemployed in the working age population in Russia, 1992-2000 63 10 Sverdlovsk’s ranking among 79 Russian regions, 2000 66 11 Unemployment in Sverdlovsk, 1998-2000 68 12 Disposable income as % of previous year in Russia and Sverdlovsk, 75 1994-2000 13 Average wage according to sphere of activity in comparison with the 76 average oblast income, 2000 14 Average incomes in different forms of employment as % of 78 subsistence minimum in Sverdlovsk, 2000 15 Number of enterprises and sector of activity in eleven Russian cities, 81 1998 16 The role of industry as an employer of full-time workers in 81 Ekaterinburg, 1993-1998 17 Ekaterinburg districts in decreasing order of prosperity, 1998 86 18 Distribution of respondent households by economic position 105 19 Employment sector of main income-eamer by household income 109 20 Education level of main income-eamer by household income 110 21 Distribution of employment paths by the economic position of 110 households 22 Composition of households by income 127 23 Income contribution of pensioners to households 128 24 The inter-generational flows of support within and between 129 households 25 The presence and role of adult children by the economic position of 132 households 26 Household structure by the gender of the main income-eamer 133 27 Access to land by the economic position of households 139 28 The gender of entrepreneurs and the sector and size of their 162 businesses 29 Masha and Dima’s support network 229 30 Respondents’ networks 315 31 List of respondents 325 Map of Russia 15 9 Chapter 1; Introduction Finally we were boarding the 1.10am Moscow to Ekaterinburg flight. I made my first fieldwork observation - 1 was the only woman in the queue made up of young and middle-aged thickset men in suits. One of the younger men introduced himself to me. He had bought up a pipe-producing factory with a group of friends. His wife was learning English in order to teach it to their two daughters who they planned to send to school in England. Three hours later, I was peering out of the taxi window eager for my first impressions of the city... Forest, then the city outskirts. Unlike in Moscow, the snow had not been cleared. Were those factories abandoned? Approaching the city, I saw towering buildings with billboards advertising Nokia and Coca-Cola , empty unlit streets, banks and salons. The following day, I had my second significant conversation. I was sitting in a kitchen sipping tea with a woman who would turn out to be my flatmate. She had worked in the same state enterprise for twenty years earning an income below the subsistence minimum. On the floor was a box of potatoes from a friend that meant she had not gone hungry over the winter. In the other room was a large new television she bought when she sold her mother's garage. What was I to make of the different fates of these two people who occupy separate worlds in the same city? How could such a young man own a factory and why were there not any businesswomen on the plane? Given that the market economy had clearly reached the city, why had the state employee who I sat with in her kitchen not found better-paid work in trade, and why when she did not have enough money for food, had she bought a television? 10 1. Conceptualising Rapid Social Change1 Over the last ten years, people's belief that the Soviet state would plan for and provide a life-long guarantee of their livelihoods has been shattered. They have witnessed the overhaul in socialist ideologies, rising prices, the disappearance of savings, the destruction of jobs, financial crises, the appearance of a wider selection of expensive goods in new kiosks and shops and a small elite's sudden prosperity.

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