How does one go about ascertaining the size, income, and demography of a middle class in a country where 40-50 percent of the economy is hidden from the tax collector, where the official—that is, declared and taxed—salary is often only a small fraction of the actual income, and where government statistics have notoriously underreported the size of the national economy and the people’s well-being?

In many respects the Russian middle class is a black box—a phenomenon whose key attributes cannot be ascertained directly with satisfactory precision and validity. In these circumstances sociologists must try to glean the key attributes of the object by what comes out of the box—in this case the patterns of self-identification, behavior, and consumption consistent with Western notions of middle-class values and pursuits.

In such an exploration government data are not the end but rather the first step to be followed up by market research, public opinion polls, journalistic accounts, anecdotal evidence, and, perhaps most important, field research. To be sure, such a mosaic will not yield a photographic image, correct and reliable in every detail. Yet, like a pointillist portrait, it may convey the tones, contours, and the dynamics. As Yogi Berra said, sometimes one can see a lot just by looking.

The birth of the post-Soviet middle class in 1994-1996 coincided unsurprisingly with the taming of inflation, which had been unleashed by the abolition of state control over most prices. The new social stratum grew swiftly, with abundant signs of strength and depth, until the August 1998 financial crisis and devaluation of the ruble, brought about by the combination of the worldwide investor panic that swept the emerging markets and the mushrooming domestic debt, which resulted from the government’s inability to overcome the determined resistance by the Communist-dominated parliament and to reduce the enormous budget deficit.

Along with the alleged collapse of the Russian experiment in capitalism, many U.S. journalists and experts solemnly announced the end of the Russian middle class: for the foreseeable future the structure of Russian society was to remain exceedingly simple—the seven "oligarchs," the starving masses, and nothing in between. Fortunately for Russia (and the world), the report of the death of the Russian middle class was premature. In less than a year the dead and buried stratum staged a remarkable comeback. The roots of this resilience lie in the group’s professional and demographic profile and its relations with the post-Soviet economy.

Two monumental changes in the Russian economy and society have shaped the composition of the post-Soviet middle class over the past nine years. First, there has been a shift from manufacturing to services. This process began in the West in the 1940s but was delayed in Russia for nearly half a century by the state-owned economy: politically driven, autarchic, heavily militarized, and relentlessly consumer-hostile. Second, income and prestige within the upper crust of the
middle class have been redistributed away from professions serving the state to those needed by individuals and private businesses.

The results were painful and often tragic for millions of scientists, military officers, university professors, and engineers employed by the enormous military industrial complex. The latter had consumed as much as half of the country’s GDP, funded most fundamental and applied research—and were decimated by Boris Yeltsin’s demilitarization. Equally devastated were the ranks of the "fighters on the ideological front": journalist-propagandists, teachers of Marxism-Leninism, and hundreds of thousands staffers of various "scientific research institutes" in the employ of local and central party authorities. Still harder must have been the fall for the Soviet upper middle class: regional and federal party and government functionaries, members of official "creative unions" (writers, composers, artists, actors), diplomats, and top military brass.

Replacing them are the formerly humble accountants, physicians now in legal private practice and private clinics, and lawyers. Joining them are freshly minted capitalist professionals in advertising, marketing, and real estate; computer and Internet engineers and programmers; architects; journalists at leading local and national newspapers, magazines, and television stations; translators; teachers at private high schools ("gymnasiums") and at private colleges; home design and remodeling experts; insurance salespeople; and owners of small family businesses: cafes, bakeries, delis, tailor shops, gas stations. (Poorly remunerated in Soviet times, public school teachers remain woefully underpaid.)

The upper segment of the post-Soviet upper middle class includes managers of major Russian and foreign law firms and companies (for example, Gazprom, Lukoil, RJR, Mars, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Nestlé); managers and owners of medium to large restaurants, stores, advertising agencies, travel and real estate agencies, and market research, public relations, political consulting, and home design and repair firms; chefs in the best restaurants; and top fashion models. Of hired labor, the single most-numerous group in this category is professionals in banking and financial services.¹

Membership in the Russian middle class is heavily and positively correlated with age, education, and place of residence. Other things being equal, the younger
a person in Russia is today, the more educated and the closer to a large metropolis, the better one lives. Although not everyone who is young, is highly educated, and lives in a big city is part of the new middle class, the latter consists primarily, perhaps overwhelmingly, of urban college graduates younger than forty.

As in Soviet times, Moscow remains Russia’s gateway to the world, the magnet for the country’s most energetic and successful citizens, as well as the cultural and social trendsetter. Today the headquarters of most foreign and domestic companies, Moscow’s share of the middle class well above the national average.

The entry point to the Russian middle class is significantly lowered by the state’s provision of free or heavily subsidizing services that are significant expenditures
for their West European and especially American counterparts. Most colleges are free for those who scored well on the entrance examination; tenants, regardless
of income, pay less than half the real cost of rent and utilities of their "privatized" apartments (which they had been given for free or at a nominal charge); and the fares in public transportation in the cities are minuscule.

Relatively low expectations—the legacy of Soviet days—further reduce the income brackets. According to the Soviet press, in 1989 a typical family of young engineers or doctors (starting salary of 140 rubles, or around $14, on the black market) could not afford a refrigerator, a color TV, or furniture without help from their parents. Another member of the Soviet middle class, a skilled blue-collar worker, reportedly spent nearly 70 percent of her salary on food and was dependent on parental assistance for a fur coat.²

As the Russian middle class emerges from the four generations of crushing poverty under the Soviet regime, its aspirations (especially of its lower segment) ought to be compared not with those of its West European (let alone American) counterparts today but with European middle class immediately after World War II: a reasonably comfortable apartment of one’s own, a compact car, a tiny country house to own or rent, and an annual trip abroad.

If the lower boundary of the Russian middle class is placed at or above a monthly income at least twice the 1999 national per capita cost of living for a working-age person as estimated by the federal statistical committee, the Goskomstat,³ then the entry point is 2,000 rubles ($78 a month) per capita, or $234 for a family of three. Recent surveys have come reasonably close by including into the lower middle class those with monthly incomes between $300 and $550 for a family of three.⁴ The breadwinners are receptionists, security personnel, chauffeurs, bank tellers, and secretarial assistants (especially in foreign-owned firms); bakers, cooks, truck drivers, and waiters in popular restaurants; and skilled construction workers. According to the same estimates, the "middle middle" stretched between $550 and $1,500, and upper middle extended to $3,500.⁵ (Reflecting the cost of living, the sizable presence of Western firms, and the concentration of the nation’s best and brightest,⁶ these limits are on the average 2.5-3 times higher in Moscow.)

Income distribution and hence the size of the Russian middle class are impossible to certify because of pandemic underreporting of revenues. With both employees and employers trying to hide as much as possible from multiple—and until recently draconian—taxes, remuneration is often given as cash payments and bonuses, private medical insurance, rent subsidies, child care and even in-kind. Second and third jobs are often paid in unrecorded cash. As a result, for millions of Russians declared salaries are only a part (in many cases a fraction) of the total income.

Nevertheless the most recent survey by Goskomstat found that the share of the population with declared and taxed earnings above 2,000 almost doubled from 19 percent in 1999 to more than 35 percent by October 2000.⁷

Taking into account the rapidly growing economy and increased real incomes of the past two years,⁸ Russia’s basic socioeconomic structure looks as follows: 25 percent are destitute with incomes at or below the cost of living (less than $120 a month for a family of three); 35 percent are poor with enough money for food and clothes but not for much else (under $240);⁹ 35 percent are lower-to-upper middle class; and the remaining 5 percent are "rich" with more than $3,500 a month for a family of three in the provinces and more than $7,000 in Moscow. (In 1992 Russia inherited from the Soviet Union 50 million destitute citizens living below the official "subsistence level," or 34 percent of the population. During the next five and a half years, until the August 1998 crisis, the segment declined to 31 million, or 21 percent, and then increased to 23 percent in 1998.)¹⁰

While declared monetary income alone is hardly a reliable indicator, in capitalist Russia demand generates supply and makes it possible to supplement the official statistics with observation about consumption. After the fall of Communism, the post-Soviet middle class had a seemingly insatiable longing for five things: decent food, travel, good books, a car, and comfortable homes. Unlike their grandparents and parents, who lived amid abject poverty and shortages, these men and women have been able to pursue and in many cases to realize their dreams as they dramatically change their country’s economy.

Grocery Stores. In a country where nine years ago people needed to show ration coupons to buy sugar and butter, stood in bread lines, and stored sacks of potatoes on the balconies in preparation for famine, the purchasing power and tastes of the middle class have created a food cornucopia. Most delicacies formerly available only to the party nomenklatura and—in a strict and fine descending order of quantity and quality—to those whom the party deemed important are now always on sale and entirely within the purchasing power of even the lower middle class.

This past summer the manager of a Moscow grocery store was kind enough to give an inquisitive American a tour and even furnish his supplier’s list of available products, including fifty-four kinds of sausages and nineteen sorts of hams, ranging in price from 9 rubles to 57 rubles a pound (or from $0.30 to $2), the most expensive being Sicily with olives; lyonnaise with mushrooms; veal sausages; and hard Finnish and Russian salamis. There were more than thirty traditional delicacies of pâtés and of salted, smoked, pickled, and cured meats and fishes, ranging from 20 to 90 rubles a pound.

In the past two years spicy, ready-to-eat salads prepared by ethnic Koreans living in Moscow have been added to the store’s deli department. Some of the fourteen available dishes were made of squid, three kinds of mushrooms, asparagus with carrots, eggplants fried or pickled, bamboo shoots, fish, meat, and cabbage. The prices ranged from 8 rubles to 25 rubles for a quarter-pound. Located outside the center of the city in a quiet residential area around the Aeroport Metro, the store was in no way different from scores of others all over Moscow.

Foods that were either impossible or extremely difficult to obtain under the Soviets are returning to Russia. Bananas—the height of luxury available to hoi polloi only a few times a year and after several hours of queuing— were hawked by street vendors this past July for 25 cents a pound. A typical lower-middle class publication, the "Domestic Cooking" calendar for the year 2001 (12 rubles), featured recipes that would have been inconceivable even five years earlier: pineapple and kiwi tortes, squid salad, asparagus fried with bread crumbs, pizza, veal liver in butter sauce, and kidneys in sour cream.¹¹

Often sold in kiosks next to innumerable fast-food booths (Russian, Mexican, Chinese, Greek, Georgian, and Middle Eastern) is yet another novelty: gorgeous red, yellow, and white roses on foot-and-a-half stems. Reportedly trucked daily from Holland, the flowers are sold from 7 a.m. to midnight. They cost about 70 rubles ($3) a stem and, to judge by the spots near Metro entrances, sell out by the end of each day.

Restaurants. According to a summer 2000 survey, 87 percent of the Russian middle class reported eating at restaurants, compared with 33 percent of the rest of the population.¹² More than 1,000 restaurants—from very expensive, luxurious, and beautifully decorated establishments to small family-owned cafes—dot Moscow’s sidewalks, the same sidewalks where crowds of shabbily dressed people, weighed down by enormous bags and bundles, used to shuffle silently and sullenly, like a herd of foraging beasts of burden, from store to store in search of food.

Perhaps no other aspect of the Russian capital’s remarkable transformation from a crumbling, dingy, squalid, and hungry city to a vibrant European metropolis—clean, comfortable, young, bursting with energy and bright shop windows—is as visible and dramatic as the gastronomic renaissance of the past few years. "The vast and recent improvements on the dining scene should continue to garnish the often delicious experience of eating out in Moscow," noted a recent Fodor’s guide to the Russian capital. "The city is no New York or Paris, but more than a few of its leading dining rooms now offer world-class cuisine."¹³

Fodor’s reviews of forty-six Moscow restaurants are replete with praise for "the exceptional foie gras with papaya and raspberry" (served in La Gatronome); the "authentic feel" of the Bangkok; the "superb" Mongolian food (Tamerlan); the "as classy as you can get" Chinese and Tandoori dishes in the Five Spices; the "excellent" Mughlai and South Indian cuisine of the Kahinoor; grilled sea bass with aromatic herbs (Spago); apple pancakes with Calvados, vanilla ice cream, and cream custard with wild berries in balsamic vinegar (Rossini). The guide was just as uncharacteristically generous to Russian restaurants: from the very expensive CDL ("everything here is extremely well prepared") and the Grand Imperial ("superbly prepared and often Croesus-rich dishes") to the far more modest Uncle Vanya with its "good, wholesome Russian cooking," Botchka (where wild game is roasted on a giant spit), and the Mesto Vstrechi, or Meeting Place, where the "food is always well crafted and satisfying."¹⁴ Menus reviewed in a recent issue of Restorany Moskvy (a glossy, beautifully illustrated "popular publication for the gourmands") listed "hot oysters in a white wine sauce" and "Atlantic octopus under the tomato and olive oil sauces" (Sirena); "frog legs Provençal" and "tender medallions of deer in the wild cherry sauce" (Club T); and "sterlet baked in rye dough" (Tsarskaya Okhota, or Tsar’s Hunt).¹⁵

After the filth and rudeness of Soviet "restaurants," perhaps even more remarkable than the availability of food and its competent preparation are the skill of the service and the elegance and ingenuity of restaurant design and ambience. Authenticity and attention to detail are often striking, whether in the Shinok, where one finds oneself in a nineteenth-century Ukrainian tavern, with horses, pigs, goats, and turkeys walking around in a barnyard behind a glass partition; a nineteenth-century nobleman’s mansion at the Café Pushkin and the Oblomov; the submarine-like Sirena, with exotic large fish swimming under the glass floor; a wooden hunting lodge of the Tsarskaya Okhota; the Cruise, where a life-size Captain Cook—in scarlet coat, cutlass in hand—stands guard; a medieval castle of the Rytsarskiy Club (Knights’ Club); and the low ceilings of a Russian monastery at the Godunov, which serves grilled venison under cherry mint sauce, wild boar with cranberry sauce, and open pie with bear meat.

Of course, in Russia, as everywhere else, the core of middle-class repasts is not in the splendor and opulence of memorable but occasional dining events in the places mentioned above but in the unpretentious but solid establishments, "neither chic nor sordid," as A. J. Liebling called them. Moscow today has scores of places where for under $10 one can stop by after work for a bit of caviar, smoked salmon, or pickled Baltic Sea herring, marinated mushrooms, a shot of chilled vodka, pirozhki (small meat pies), a bowl of fiery borsht or fish broth, chicken giblets baked in a pot, veal cutlet with fried buckwheat, mushrooms and onions, and a glass of tea in a traditional tall silver holder—and live jazz or Russian romances and ballads. Dozens of Georgian restaurants deliver simple but wholesome and tasty food in a cozy and warm setting.

Consistently good and affordable non-Russian restaurants, most nonexistent three years earlier, are legion: Bulgarian, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Mongolian, Scandinavian, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, and Uzbek. On the lower end the Mexican contingent is the largest and includes the Santa Fe, El Rancho (where a business lunch with soup, main course, and drink costs 125 rubles, or $4.50), and Azteca, an especially colorful and festive place where tequila bottles replace six-shooters in the holsters of the waiters and a guitar, pipe, and drum band regularly inspires the clientele to break into dance. The most popular by far is Hola Mexico with its great margaritas, silver and gold Sauza tequila, a mariachi band, and giant sizzling fajitas.

Cars. Between 1990 and 1998 car ownership grew 72 percent: from 18 cars per 100 households to 31 cars.16 In 1997 alone 1 million Russians bought new cars at an equivalent of $7,000-12,000 cash, for each-vehicle.¹⁷ Despite the crisis, car ownership has increased 30 percent in the past two years, with 40 cars per 100 households by May 2000.¹⁸

In the past ten years the number of cars in Moscow tripled to 2.5 million vehicles in a city of 9 million.¹⁹ Despite such an increase, a traveler on a Moscow beltway finds no sign of formerly ubiquitous long lines at gas stations. The latter multiplied in the past three years mostly because of the addition of new Russian companies (AstOil, Nefto, Kedr, Lukoil, Proton, Arpha, and Trans), which are now far more numerous than BP and AGIPP, which had dominated the business in the first post-Soviet years.

Home Remodeling and Home Building. Judging by billboards in Moscow and along major highways leading to the capital, the repair, remodeling, and building boom is in full swing. Ads offer everything for the job: air-conditioning units and windowpanes, parquet and roofing materials, bricks and kitchen appliances, bathtubs and drywall. This past March, 40,000 Muscovites flocked to the opening of a giant Ikea furniture store and backed up the traffic for two miles.²⁰

Along any major highway around Moscow one can see bedroom communities springing up at a furious pace: with trimmed hedges and lawns, barbecues in the back yards, and volleyball and tennis courts. As with most middle-class trends, Moscow is leading the way, but new homes are being built around virtually all large cities. Conceived by a thirty-two-year-old developer, the Kolomyaga townhouse complex in a St. Petersburg suburb includes twenty-one condominiums, at a cost of $75,000 a unit. The purchasers are primarily couples in their thirties with children.²¹

Those who cannot afford to build a house in the suburbs or are unwilling to part with the cheap apartments close to work undertake the so-called Euro-repair, which costs around $10, 000 and includes at a minimum the installation of dishwasher, washer, dryer, stove, and microwave. Renting or selling an apartment in Moscow without these amenities is becoming increasingly difficult.

Travel. As early as the summer of 1994 with the first signs of economic stabilization, foreign consulates in Moscow were deluged with visa applications. The French Embassy received 700 applications a day, compared with a total of 2,700 visas granted Soviet tourists in all 1988. Talking to those bound for Paris on an Aeroflot flight in August 1994, an American reporter found the group "positively middle class … not wealthy or well-connected but simply comfortable, determined and lucky enough to have saved a few hundred dollars": a policewoman, a high school chemistry teacher, a physical therapist.²²

A year later, Russian tourists spent $11.6 billion on travel abroad.²³ According to the World Tourism Organization, of twenty-five top country-by-country spenders in 1996, Russian travelers were tenth: behind Americans, Germans, and Japanese but ahead of South Koreans, Brazilians, Spaniards, and Chinese.²⁴

In both 1996 and 1997, 17-20 million Russians (of a total population of 150 million) traveled abroad for business or pleasure, compared with 500,000 in 1991.²⁵ This past summer 16,000 travel agencies operated in Russia. The most popular destinations for a middle-class family were Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Spain. Russian agencies offered two-week packages including food, lodging, and airfare for $500-800, about a two-month salary "of a rank-and-file professional in a private firm."²⁶

Books. In the last years of the Soviet Union, an average of 1,500 new titles were published in Russia each year. By the end of the 1990s the number increased to 12,000. ²⁷ Last summer a typical middle-size Moscow bookstore Mir Pechati offered 11,000 books from 281 publishers.²⁸ Orders could be faxed or placed at the store’s website at www.prestorg.ru. Books in stock were guaranteed for courier delivery within greater Moscow in two days, with the handling and shipping of up to three books costing 12 rubles, or 43 cents. (The out-of-stock items were delivered from warehouses within ten days.)

For anyone who remembers Soviet bookstores, the change is thrilling. Inviting browsing, with no counters or rude salesclerks between the shoppers and the books, the collections are as delightfully eclectic as in any Western store. Unhampered by government censorship, the Russian bookselling business eschews ideology except that of selling the wares to as many customers as possible. Standing side by side are beautiful volumes of Solzhenitsyn and Trotsky, Pasternak and Nabokov, Sakharov and Bukovsky, Hayek and Keynes; biographies of Bill Gates and Monica Lewinsky; the latest translations of Tom Clancy and John le Carré; a children’s Bible and manuals for Microsoft Word; Michelin guides to Europe, North America, and Asia; English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries (legal, banking, environmental, medical); books on children and the Holocaust and on Russian history; translations of medieval French poetry and of Robert Burns.

The prerevolutionary and Soviet Russian classics from Pushkin and Gogol, Chekhov and Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev to Yuri Olesha, Vasily Shukshin, and Yuri Trifonov are plentiful and accessible. Last summer the volume of Isaak Babel’s select prose works cost 72 rubles ($2.62); poetry of a wonderful Soviet poet and bard, Bulat Okudzhava, 43 rubles; beautifully produced translation of collected works of François Villon, 23 rubles; and Yuriy Lotman’s excellent biography of Russia’s great historian Nikolay Karamzin, 32 rubles. Karamzin’s multivolume classic History of the Russian State, never published under the Soviets, was displayed nearby.

Another item scarce item of the Soviet days, children’s books now dazzle with the beautiful covers and illustrations: Pushkin’s Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish and the Tale of the Golden Rooster (35 rubles and 34 rubles), coloring books, including one of Pushkin’s fairy tales, 3-5 rubles; or a pop-up version of the folk tale Teremok (Little castle), 9 rubles.

Information Technology. According to a summer 2000 marketing survey, 32 percent of the Russian middle class use computers and the Internet at home and
at work.²⁹ In spring 2000 there were over 30,000 web- sites and 380 internet service providers.³⁰ Several leading search engines now have Russian sites, for instance, yahoo.ru or aport.ru. There are 1 million cellular phone subscribers in Moscow.³¹

Households with cable packages get most U.S. channels, including CNN. When a fire temporarily disabled the Ostankino television tower in August 2000, a firm that installed satellite dishes was deluged with service requests and added 1,500 customers daily. ³²

Concentrated in Moscow (and at least one-fifth of that population) but in evidence in larger cities from St. Petersburg and Novgorod in the west to Samara in the southeast, Perm and Ekaterinburg in the Urals, Novosibirsk and Omsk in Siberia, and Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, Russia’s new middle class exhibits attitudes indicative of a common set of values.

Self-Reliance. By far the strongest and most common sentiment evident in polls or newspaper interviews is independence: reliance on one’s own resources, hard work, and abilities. According to a national market research survey of the "middle middle" class (with family incomes from $450 in the provinces and $900 in Moscow), the "representative attitudes" of the respondents included "freedom, the possibility to determine one’s own destiny, self-confidence, the desire to work and to progress, preparedness to run risks to achieve success."³³ Asked to assign values from 0 to 5 to various factors responsible for success, students at the elite Higher School of Economics gave an average of 4.1 to the "betterment of their life through their efforts" and only 2.0 and 2.8 to local and federal authorities, respectively.³⁴

After three generations of compulsory work for the state, to be self-employed or better yet to own one’s business is the ideal. "Middle class is a small businessman, who has his own business, supports his own family, works for himself, rather than for someone else," said a participant in a middle-class focus-group discussion.³⁵ "I wanted both freedom and money, and that is how I came around to starting my own store," wrote a former Moscow physicist in a remarkable middle-class manifesto entitled "I, a Small Store Owner."³⁶ Another new entrepreneur, a thirty-eight-year-old regional distributor of medical supplies in the city of Voronezh (300 miles south of Moscow), said to an American reporter in late 1999: "I don’t know who will be leading Russia in a year’s time. But in this little piece of Russia, I know what we will do. We will improve services. We will hire new people, we will improve salaries. These are our plans, and most of them are realistic. We will do what we can in our own house."³⁷

Such attitudes drive the steady growth of small and medium businesses all over Russia. Even in the red-belt agricultural province of Voronezh, which primarily sends Communists to the national parliament, 61,000 small businesses were registered at the end of 1999.³⁸ Altogether, there are 890,000 registered businesses in Russia. Most are owned by the middle class, which is estimated to produce 30 percent of the country’s GDP.³⁹

Work as Source of Joy and Pride. Men and women in the Russian new middle class are almost twice as likely to enjoy their work as the rest of the population: 70 percent to 38 percent. Asked if they would continue working if they had "a lot of money," 73 percent said yes, as compared with 42 percent in the country at large.⁴⁰

"It gives me pleasure to create new jobs," a thirty-six-year-old Novgorod restaurateur told an interviewer. "I not only sell these products," he added. "I can bake goods myself. It is this part of my business that brings me pleasure."⁴¹ A twenty-seven-year-old Moscow owner of a small mail-order electronics firm saw a similar "moral aspect" in his work: "I have created only four but, still, new jobs—and two of them for my friends."⁴² Another entrepreneur stated that his business had given him an opportunity to "participate in the life" of the society.⁴³

Support for Reforms, Capitalism, and Democracy. Both demographic characteristics and political preferences of the Russian middle class came into sharp relief in the watershed 1996 presidential election, in which President Boris Yeltsin’s opponent was Communist Party Chairman Gennady Zyuganov. According to exit polls, Yeltsin led Zyuganov 71 percent to 23 percent among those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, and by 57 to 36 percent in the thirty to forty-four-year-old category.⁴⁴

Yeltsin won in 86 of Russia’s 100 largest cities (including every regional capital). Among the ten candidates in the first round of the election, he was preferred by professionals 42 percent to Zyuganov’s 18 percent and by and white-collar workers 38 percent to 26 percent. Among college students, in 84 percent voted for Yeltsin in the runoff and 7 percent for Zyuganov.⁴⁵ Of those who said that they planned to vote for Yeltsin, 75 percent valued equality in "realization of everyone’s abilities," and only 22 percent thought equality of income and standard of living were most important.⁴⁶

Education. In a recent survey three of four middle-class respondents had a college education, compared with one in three persons in the country at large. As they seek to ensure good education for their children, the middle class takes advantage of new choices, and no effort is spared to secure good schools early in the game. Between 1991 and 1997 the number of private schools (gymnasiums) in Russia increased from 177 to 1,606.

The number of colleges and universities in Russia grew by 75 percent between 1992 and 2000, and the number of students 50 percent, primarily because of the emergence of private institutions of higher education.⁴⁷ The competition for college education is ferocious all over the country, with as many as twelve applicants for each admission slot. Reflecting the shift in the desirability of employment away from the state and toward the private sector, the most sought-after schools are no longer those of journalism, foreign languages, and diplomacy but of law, economics, and medicine. Private tutors (known as the professor mafia) charge exorbitant fees, often reaching $50 per session to prepare boys and girls for four entrance exams (at least two of these are oral).

Charity. Between 1988 and 1998 the number of charities in Russia grew from 0 to 60,000.⁴⁸ The first Rotary Club was founded in Moscow in 1990; nine years later there were fifty-four all over the country, including the ones in Vladivostok, Petropavlovks-Kamchatskiy, Yakutsk, and Naryan-Mar, beyond the Arctic circle. Among the Moscow club’s projects is the Krug learning center for retarded children.⁴⁹

Because of the perennial fear of tax authorities and also because charitable contributions are not deductible under the current tax code, rich and middle-class donors keep a low profile. One such benefactor was identified by a teacher at a private shelter for abandoned children: a thirty-year-old owner of a potato chip factory who contributed more than $8,000 a month and paid the institution’s food bill.⁵⁰

Leisure. "If you wish to locate a large group of the representatives of the Russian middle class," noted a popular Russian weekly newsmagazine, "don’t construct sophisticated samples—just go to the theater." In repeated polls of theatergoers from Moscow to the smokestack city of Magnitogorsk in the Urals, at least six of ten identified themselves as middle class.⁵¹

Because of the continuing and enthusiastic patronage of the middle class, Russian theaters have survived the painful transition from total ownership by the state to a mixture of state and private funding or to entirely self-supporting entrepreneurship. This switch has been accomplished without loosing a single major classic theater, while dozens of smaller, modern, and experimental outlets have been launched. An American playwright and theater critic who recently visited Moscow found most theaters "packed" and the audience "engaged, lively and attentive." He added: "One never gets the feeling in this city that classical culture is vestigial or superfluous. Quite the contrary: it remains a central fact of everyday life."⁵²

For the week of October 19-26, a weekly guide to Moscow arts and leisure listed performances in seventy-nine permanent theaters: twelve "musical" (ballet, opera, operetta); twenty-four drama houses; thirty-three modern, experimental, and studios; and ten children’s.⁵³ The repertory included Eugene Onegin at the Bolshoi, Swan Lake at the Kasatkina-Vaslilev Theater of Classic Ballet, Schiller’s Treachery and Love at the Maly, Three Sisters and Cyrano de Bergerac at the MkhAT, Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus at the Malaya Bronnaya Street Theater to Diary of Ann Frank at the Russian Youth Theater, Jesus Christ Superstar at the Spesivtsev Studio, and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men at the Factory of Theater Events. The prices ranged from 400 rubles ($14.50) rubles at the Bolshoi to 10-100 rubles ($0.30-3.60) in most other theaters including the Maly and the MkhAT. (For popular plays and first nights, the last-minute theatergoers pay the scalpers as much as $50 a ticket.)

Lovers of classical music patronize thirty-three concert halls in Moscow, starting with the Moscow Conservatory and the Tchaikovsky Hall. There are seventy-nine permanent art galleries and museums (the entrance is either free or costs less than $1)—from the venerable Kremlin, Tretiakov, and Pushkin exhibits to smaller private exhibits—and eleven children’s museums.

Middle-class moviegoers are gradually transforming decrepit cinemas: of the sixty-nine movie theaters in Moscow, ten are state-of-the art Dolby-sound multiplexes with their own websites and fresh popcorn. Bowling and pool (called American billiards) are the rage.

Still poor by Western standards, barely recovering from the devastating financial crisis of 1998, and accounting for no more than one-third of the Russian population, the country’s middle class is a long way from becoming the dominant force for the better. Yet coupled with the country’s rapid economic recovery and growth of incomes, on the one hand, and the government’s economic policy, which includes support for the private sector and the sharp reduction of the tax burden, on the other, the values of the Russian middle class, its demography, and undeniable early successes warrant optimism.

A great deal remains to be done to lower obstacles to the hard work, energy, and intellect of these resilient and brave men and women. First priorities are private ownership of land, which has been blocked by the Leftists in parliament for the past nine years; a modern banking system that would provide long-term home mortgages and loans for business creation and expansion; and tax laws with deductions for business expenditures and charitable donations. The ability of local and federal bureaucrats to meddle in the business affairs of the middle class, blackmail propertyowners, and extort bribes must be eliminated.

In the past nine years the Russian middle class has learned to succeed with scant assistance from the state—and a great deal of hindrance. Extending some of the former but mostly reducing the latter will work still more miracles for capitalist, democratic Russia.

1. See, for example, "Professionaly ekstra-klassa diktuyut usloviya" (Top professionals dictate their conditions), Moskovskie Novosti, April 9-16, 1996, p. 4; and L. Belyaeva, "’Novye srednie’ v Rossii," Svobodnaya Mysl’ 7 (1476) (July 1998): 34-45.

2. "Semeyniy buydjet: dokhody I raskhody" (Family budget: income and expenses), Pravda, May 19, 1989.

3. "Distribution of Population by Average per Capita Money Income. January to September 1998 and 1999." Goskomstat at www.gsk.ru.

4. Alexey Savin, "Dokhody srednego klassa rastut" (The income of the middle class is growing), Izvestia, May 12, 1999, p. 6; and Paul Starobin and Olga Kravchenko, "Russia’s Middle Class," Business Week, October 16, 2000, p. 79.

5. Starobin and Kravchenko, "Russia’s Middle Class," p. 79.

6. Professionals are 22 percent of Moscow’s population,
as compared with 9 percent nationwide. "Russia’s Would-Be Middle Class." Washington, D.C.: Office of Research and Media Reaction, USIA, January 1998, p. 2.

7. "Russia’s Middle Class Growing," RFE/RL Newsline, November 2, 2000.

8. Between January-August 1999 and the same period of 2000, the real (that is, inflation-adjusted) average monthly wage in Russia increased by 50 percent to 2,099, or $76. "Nominal and real average monthly wages" Goskomstat at www.gks.ru.

9. According to the distribution of "official" (declared) incomes put out by federal statistical agency, the Goskomstat, in September 1999 (the most recent income distribution figures available from the agency’s website), those with incomes between 1.2 times and 2 times the cost of living, are 29 percent of the population, "Distribution of Population by Average per Capita Money Income." The estimate has been revised upward to account the 12 percent increase in the average "official" income since September 1999.

10. "Main Socioeconomic Indicators of the Living Standard of the Population," Goskomstat at www.gks.ru.

11. Kalendar Domashnaya kukhnya na 2001 god. Moscow: TETRAK, 2000.

12. "Lifestyle of the Middle Class." Moscow: Expert Magazine and COMCON Research Company, 2000.

13. Fodor’s Moscow and St. Petersburg. New York: Fodor’s Travel Publications, 1999, p. 71.

14. Ibid., pp. 71-82.

15. Restorany Moskvy 9 (2) (2000): 10-25, 46-47.

16. Steve Leisman, "Surprise: The Economy in Russia Is Clawing Out of Deep Recession," Wall Street Journal, January 28, 1998, p. A11.

17. Erlen Berenshteyn, "Sredniy klass gotovit ekonomicheskiy rost" (The middle class is forging economic growth), Novoye Vremya (5) (February 1998): 19.

18. Gregory Feifer, "People’s Carmaker Evolves," Moscow Times, May 30, 2000 (www.themoscowtimes.com).

19. "More and More Cars Clogging Moscow Roads," RFE/RL Newsline, October 25, 2000.

20. Starobin and Kravchenko, "Russia’s Middle Class," p. 85.

21. John Varoli, "A Little Levitttown on the Neva," New York Times, July 13, 2000, pp. D1, D8.

22. Lee Hockstader, "The Russian Invasion," Washington Post, August 15, 1994, p. A12.

23. "Travel Fever," Washington Post, August 2, 1997, p. A14.

24. "Round and Round They Go. And Where They Stop and Shop," New York Times, April 12, 1998, p. 5.

25. Anna Ostapchuk and Evgeniy Krasnikov, "My zhivyom luchshe, chem schitaetsya, no khuzhe, chem khotim" (We live better than is assumed but worse than how we want to live), Moskov-skie Novosti, December 14, 1997, p. 18 (an interview with the economists Larisa Piyasheva and Igor Birman); and "Soyuz pravykh—zavtrashnyaya vlast" (A union of the right is tomorrow’s power), Novoye Vremya (49) (December 1999): 13 (interview with former first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais).

26. Ekaterina Terpigoreva, "Nevziraya na vizy" (Visas notwithstanding), Novoe Vremya (30) (July 2000).

27. "Soyuz pravykh," p. 13.

28. Katalog knig (Book list). Moscow: Presstorg, 2000.

29. "Lifestyle of the Middle Class" Moscow: Expert Magazine and COMCON Research Company, 2000. The poll of the representative national sample was conducted during the summer of 2000. Making available the unpublished report for this essay is gratefully acknowledged.

30. Andrew Jack, "Russia’s Desktop Revolution," Financial Times, March 7, 2000, p. 10.

31. Andrew Jack, "Mobile License Deal Stuns Moscow," FT.com, May 30, 2000.

32. "Screens Blank, So Russians Turn to Cable TV," Reuters, August 31, 2000 (www.russiatoday.com).

33. "Lifestyle of the Middle Class."

34. Belyaeva, "’Novye srednie’ v Rossii," p. 35.

35. "Russia’s Would-Be Middle Class," p. 11.

36. "Ya, melkiy lavochnik" (I, a small store owner), Moskovksie novosti, March 31-April 7, 1996, p. 40.

37. Celestine Bohlen, "Small Entrepreneurs Tired of Russian Politicians," New York Times, December 16, 1999, p. A3.

38. Bohlen, "Small Entrepreneurs."

39. Starobin and Kravchenko, "Russia’s Middle Class," pp. 79, 84.

40. "Lifestyles of the Middle Class."

41. "Russia’s Would-Be Middle Class," p. 12.

42. Mash Gessen, "Pervyi raz v sredniy klass" (For the first time—into the middle class), Itogi, April 21, 1998, p. 14.

43. Novikov, "Ya melkiy lavochnik."

44. "How Russians Voted in the Runoff," New York Times, July 4, 1996, p. A8. The national poll was conducted by Minofsky International and CESS Ltd. Other polls revealed still larger leads for Yeltsin in these age groups.

45. "Russian Voter Speak Out on Issues," New York Times, June 18, 1996, p. A4. The balance of the votes was cast for the other nine candidates who had run in the first tour.

46. Viktor Sheynis, "Proyden li istoricheskiy rubezh?" (Have we passed a historic watershed?) Polis 1 (1997): 88.

47. Strategiya razvitiya Rossiyskoy Federatsii do 2010 goda (Strategic development of the Russian Federation to the Year 2010). Moscow: Center for Strategic Planning, June 2000,
p. 57.

48. "Russian Love in a Cold Climate," Economist, August 15, 1998, p. 37.

49. Larisa Naumenko, "Life Rotates Around Charity Work," Moscow Times, October 21, 1999, p. 24.

50. "Russia’s Would-Be Middle Class," p. 17.

51. Anatoliy Golubobskiy, "Zapovednik" (A preserve), Itogi, April 21, 1998, p. 38.

52. Robert Brustein, "Moscow Nights," New Republic, October 16, 2000, pp. 42-43.

53. Vash dosug (Your leisure), October 19-26, 2000, pp. 9-21.

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the director of Russian studies at AEI, is the author of Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life.