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Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2014 Spheres Of Semi-Legality: Discourse, Media And Informal Economic Practices In St. Petersburg, Russia (2000-Present) Maria Rosaria Roti Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Roti, Maria Rosaria, "Spheres Of Semi-Legality: Discourse, Media And Informal Economic Practices In St. Petersburg, Russia (2000-Present)" (2014). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 974. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. SPHERES OF SEMI-LEGALITY: DISCOURSE, MEDIA AND INFORMAL ECONOMIC PRACTICES IN ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA (2000-PRESENT) by MARIA R. ROTI DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2014 MAJOR: ANTHROPOLOGY Approved by: Advisor Date __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY MARIA R. ROTI 2014 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION To my mother, Caterina ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the past ten years I have received great support and encouragement from many individuals who have believed in my project and my abilities as a student to pursue it. I would like to thank all of dissertation committee members for their time, commitment and constructive criticism of the text. I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Barry J. Lyons, who has been an invaluable mentor who guided my dissertation writing with great enthusiasm, academic insights, and persistent help; and all of this was done with great kindness and with the highest degree of professionalism and integrity. Without his help and support this dissertation would not have been possible. I also owe a great degree of gratitude to Dr. Allen Batteau for his agreement to serve as a committee member very late during the research phase as well as him providing prompt, insightful feedback to my text. I would like to thank Dr. Aaron B. Retish for his unbridled enthusiasm, great conversations, and historical fact checking. In addition, a thank you to Dr. Vadim Volkov for his careful reading of the text, his introduction to my research site, and for providing additional support while in the field. Lastly, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Alexei Yurchak who helped to shape my ideas for the research, for great conversations, and for providing immeasurable moral support and focus while conducting my research. My research would not have been possible without having the important Russian language skills required for interviews, observations and reading required texts. For this I owe great gratitude to my language teachers: Stanislav Chernyshov, Marina Nikolaevna Lavrova, Elena Nikolaevna Vakulova, Katiya Maximova, Ellen Kinsley, and all at Extra Language Class in St. Petersburg, Russia. These ‘teachers’ provided me much more than Russian grammar skills; they provided me invaluable insights into Russian society and culture. iii I give deep gratitude to BIR for allowing me the opportunity to use their organization as my ethnographic field site and to their members and staff who provided the source for my arguments. Special thanks to Ludmila, Tatiana, Elena, Karina, and Tanya. I also want to thank my informants who found time in their busy schedules to be interviewed and to share their thoughts and experiences. Special thanks also needs to be given to my Russian friends for their time, wisdom, kindness, generosity, many laughs, great conversations and, most importantly, for giving me the belief in a positive future for Russia; Aleksei, Anna, Anton, Danil, Elza, Inna, Irina, Ira, Koliia, Lev, Nastiia, Nina Alexandrovna, Misha, Oleg, Olga, Rostislav, Sergei, Stas, Sveta, Veronika, and, especially Lena Kuzmina, Oksana Parfenova, Vera Galindabaeva and Iulia Andreeva. Special thanks to Liliia Borovskaia for her guidance, advice and friendship. I must mention other “important people” who had provided help, either academically or personally, and this includes my former advisors, Dr. Frances Trix and Dr. Thomas P. Abowd, who both had helped me greatly in the beginning of my doctoral studies; Barbara Carson- McHale for life-changing advice; Angie and Claudio Bertolin for emotional support; Olesya Tkacheva for important, valuable advice; and David J. Lowrie for every kind of support that exists in the universe (too many things to mention in such little space!); Jeeong-hee Seo and Guenhee Zho for friendship, Russian language practice, and tasty cuisine. I send kind appreciation to Vladimir Gel’man for both employment and quick reference information. Special thanks also needs to be given to my brother, Joe, for his funny emails and constant help; and for my uncle, Vincenzo Tassone. Special thanks to Sherry Lynn Holland who proved a true friend and colleague and who provided both moral and academic support. iv I am especially grateful to the Anthropology Department at Wayne State University and the Thomas C. Rumble Fellowship which provided partial fieldwork support, as well as to European University at St. Petersburg for allowing me the use of its libraries and computers, visa support and invitation to lectures and seminars. Thanks also needs to be given to Wayne State University’s Humanities Center for the Dissertation Writing Grant which helped to partially fund me during the writing phase of the dissertation. Special thanks to Carole Barduca and Daisy Cordero for helping me to navigate through Wayne State University’s complex bureaucracy. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my mother who instilled in me pride, self-respect and high self-esteem and who always gave me unconditional love and support; she had been a lifeline while in the field and who had so accurately predicted the many ups-and-downs. It is to her that I dedicate my dissertation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication__________________________________________________________ii Acknowledgments____________________________________________________iii List of Figures_______________________________________________________ x Chapter 1___________________________________________________________1 Capitalism: Russian-Style________________________________________2 Russian Business Practices: The State and Informal Economy___________9 Background and Fieldwork Preparation____________________________12 The Research: BIR_____________________________________________16 Methods_____________________________________________________19 Claiming Authority in the Field: Gender, Citizenship and Cultural Immersion____________________________________________________23 Daily Practices, Hegemony and Resistance__________________________42 Importance of this Research______________________________________45 Dissertation Outline____________________________________________49 Chapter 2___________________________________________________________49 The Informal Economy and Russian Informal Economic Practices________50 vi The Bureaucracy: Weber, de Soto, and Russian Government Officials_____58 Informal Practices in Accounting__________________________________71 The Soviet Legacy: The Informal Economy, Informal Practices and Russian Entrepreneurship_______________________________________________74 Alternative Enforcement of Informal Practices________________________87 Hybridity and Informal Practices__________________________________92 Transformation of Informal Practices_______________________________95 Hegemony and Representation____________________________________97 Russian Gender Behavior and Representation________________________98 Conclusion____________________________________________________100 Chapter 3___________________________________________________________102 Late Soviet Production and Mismanagement_________________________103 Trusts, Gifts and Bribery in late-Soviet Enterprises____________________112 Gendered Behavior in the Soviet Workplace-late Socialism______________117 Hybrid Behaviors in the Russian Workplace__________________________122 Russian Entrepreneurial Skills_____________________________________153 Conclusion____________________________________________________155 Chapter 4___________________________________________________________156 vii Private Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union: The Reforms of Perestroika_155 Fuzzy Legality and Law Circumvention in Russian Business_____________160 Russian’s ‘Ambivalent’ Attitude to Law_____________________________165 Russian Entrepreneurship: Realism in Advance Planning_______________170 Russian Entrepreneurs: Circumventing the Rules and the Role of Trust____183 Hegemonic Practices of Bribery and Resistance______________________189 Russian Entrepreneurs: Custom Schemes in Black Accounting___________197 Conclusion____________________________________________________201 Chapter 5___________________________________________________________203 Foreign Firms_________________________________________________205 Unfair Advantages: Russian vs. Foreign Business_____________________211 Bribery in Russia: Foreign Firms__________________________________215 Problems with Infrastructure: Education, Housing and Transportation____217 Conclusion___________________________________________________224 Chapter 6 __________________________________________________________226 Russian and Soviet
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