Income stratification in Russian villages: From profession to property

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 54, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 37-46

  O'Brien, David J ^a   Wegren, Stephen K ^b   Patsiorkovsky, Valery V ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI   (United States)

^b SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c The Institute of Social and Economic Studies of Population   (Russian Federation)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 35348845795     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2753/PPC1075-8216540104     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. Neil Fligstein, "The Economic Sociology of the Transitions from Socialism," American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 4 (January 1996): 1074-81;
2. Dennis J. Donahue, "Human Capital and Income Inequality," in Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia, ed. David J. O'Brien and Stephen K. Wegren (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), pp. 203-20.
3. Stephen K. Wegren, Valeri V. Patsiorkovski, and David J, O'Brien, "Beyond Stratification: The Emerging Class Structure in Rural Russia," Journal of Agrarian Change 6, no. 3 (July 2006): 371-98;
4. Stephen K. Wegren, David J. O'Brien, and Valeri V. Patsiorkovski, "Social Mobility in Rural Russia, 1995-2003," Journal of Peasant Studies 33, no. 2 (April 2006): 189-218.
5. Although many Western observers and Russian liberals have voiced concern about Putin's consolidation of power, ordinary Russian citizens, including those in rural areas, are strongly supportive, with approximately three-quarters of the electorate approving of his job performance. This is strongly correlated with the substantial improvement in the material quality of life for average Russian households since Putin took office. See, for example, "Special Report: Russia: Richer, Bolder - and Sliding Back," Economist (July 15, 2006): 23-25.
6. The emergence of new "classes" in rural Russian villages, including findings on income, land, capital stock, class consciousness and shared values, is reported elsewhere; see note 2 above. This article has a narrower focus on two specific mechanisms, household labor and rented land, that affect the amount of inequality between households.
7. Mary C. Brinton and Victor Nee, The New Institutionalism in Sociology (New York: Russell Sage, 1998);
8. Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (May 1973): 1360-80;
9. idem, "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness," American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (November 1985): 481-510;
10. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
11. Ivan Szeleny and Eric Kostello, "Outline of an Institutionalist Theory of Inequality: The Case of Socialist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe," in The New Institutionalism in Sociology, ed. Mary C. Brinton and Victor Nee (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), pp. 305-26.
12. The size and autonomy of the private sector varied considerably, from substantial private sector development some years before the end of communism in Hungary and Poland, to much more draconian state economic control bureaucracies in the Soviet Union. See, e.g., David Turnock, ed., Privatization in Rural Eastern Europe: The Process of Restitution and Restructuring (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998).
13. Akos Rona-Tas, "The First Shall Be Last? Entrepreneurship and Communist Cadres in the Transition from Socialism," American Journal of Sociology 100, no. 1 (July 1994): 40-49.
14. Donahue, "Human Capital and Income Inequality"; Fligstein, "Economic Sociology of the Transitions from Socialism"; Yang Cao and Victor Nee, "Controversies and Evidence in the Market Transition Debate," American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 4 (January 2000): 1175-95;
15. Victor Nee, "The Emergence of a Market Society: Changing Mechanisms of Stratification in China," American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 4 (January 1996): 908-49.
16. Donahue, "Human Capital and Income Inequality"; Fligstein, "Economic Sociology of the Transitions from Socialism."
17. David J. O'Brien and Valery V. Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change in Rural Russia: Surveys from 1991-2003 (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), pp. 57-73.
18. Constantin Ogloblin and Gregory Brock, "Household Income and the Role of Household Plots in Rural Russia," Applied Econometrics and International Development 6, no. 1 (2006): 51-68.
19. O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, pp. 51-68; Ogloblin and Brock, "Household Income and the Role of House-hold Plots."
20. David Brown and Laszlo Kulscar, "Household Economic Behavior in Post-Socialist Hungary," Rural Sociology 66, no. 2 (June, 2001): 158-80;
21. O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, pp. 75-94;
22. David J. O'Brien, Stephen K. Wegren, and Valery V. Patsiorkovsky, "Marketization and Community in Post-Soviet Russian Villages," Rural Sociology 70, no. 2 (June 2005): 188-207;
23. Wegren, O'Brien, and Patsiorkovski, "Social Mobility in Rural Russia."
24. Aaron Vinokur and Gur Ofer, "Inequality of Earnings, Household Income, and Wealth in the Soviet Union in the 1970s," in Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens, ed. James R. Millar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 197.
25. Stephen K. Wegren, Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), pp. 41-43.
26. Rossiia v tsifrakh 2004 (Russia in Statistics, 2004) (Moscow: Federal Government Statistical Agency, 2004), p. 207.
27. Stephen K. Wegren, The Moral Economy Reconsidered: Russia's Search for Agrarian Capitalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 42-43.
28. Rossiia v tsifrakh 2005 (Russia in Statistics, 2005) (Moscow: Federal Government Statistical Agency, 2005), p. 210.
29. David J. O'Brien, Valeri V. Patsiorkovski, and Larry D. Dershem, Household Capital and the Agrarian Problem in Russia (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 131-60;
30. O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, pp. 75-110.
31. Stephen K. Wegren, "Russian Peasant Farms and Household Plots in 2003: A Research Note," Eurasian Geography and Economics 45, no. 3 (2004): 230-39;
32. Stephen K. Wegren and Vladimir R. Belen'kiy, "The Russian Land Market," in Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia, ed. David J. O'Brien and Stephen K. Wegren (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), pp. 88-115.
33. "Special Report: Russia."
34. The focus is on rented land rather than on land sales and other types of land-tenure issues because rented land is readily available to a wide crosssection of the Russian rural population and its effects on village inequality are relatively easy to measure. A more complete discussion of different types of land use in reference to changes in the Russian legal code is found in Wegren, "Russian Peasant Farms and Household Plots in 2003."
35. The implementation of this law varied from one region to another in the Russian Federation. See David J. O'Brien, Valeri V. Patsiorkovski, and Larry D. Dershem, "Rural Responses to Land Reform in Russia: An Analysis of Household Land Use in Belgorod, Rostov, and Tver' Oblasts from 1991 to 1996," in Comparative Land Use in the Former Soviet Union, ed. Stephen K. Wegren (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 35-61.
36. See O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, for a description and findings from these various surveys. The results of a new cross-sectional survey conducted in nine regions in the summer and fall of 2006 are being analyzed.
37. For a discussion of the issues involved in measuring monetary and non-monetary income in Russia, see Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, "Is Money the Measure of Welfare in Russia?" Review of Income and Wealth 42, no. 1 (March 1996): 1-16.
38. O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, p. 104.
39. A. V. Chaianov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1966);
40. O'Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, pp. 76-80.
41. Ibid., p. 97.
42. O'Brien, Wegren, and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, p. 97.
43. Elsewhere we have shown that since 1991 there has been a growth in the number of extended family and other types of households with additional adult members that provide greater labor potential. See O' Brien and Patsiorkovsky, Measuring Social and Economic Change, pp. 63-65.
44. In 2000, for example, the average return on 1 hectare of agricultural land in Russia was 3,931 rubles ($131). For large enterprises, the former collective farms, the average return was 2,131 rubles ($71), but for household enterprises the mean figure was 37,719 rubles ($1,257). See Rossiia v tsifrakh 2002 (Russia in Statistics, 2002) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2002), pp. 203-4.
45. Brinton and Nee, New Institutionalism in Sociology; Granovetter, "Strength of Weak Ties"; idem, "Economic Action and Social Structure."
46. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance.
47. Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
48. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, pp. 93-98.
49. Wegren, Moral Economy Reconsidered.
50. Partha Dasgupta, "Economic Progress and the Idea of Social Capital," in Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective, ed. Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), p. 366.
51. An interesting empirical example that supports the general argument in this article is found in Sonya Salamon's study of German Catholic farmers in Illinois in the period preceding and during the "farm crisis" of the mid-1980s in the United States. These farm families adopted a very conservative strategy of diversified agriculture at a time when the financial institutions and federal government "experts" were promoting mono-cropping strategies to maximize profits. The high inflation, high interest rates, and low crop prices that emerged in the mid-1980s resulted in a great many bankruptcies among the "Yankee yeoman" farmers who had adopted the mono-cropping strategy, but the German Catholic farmers fared much better and had a much higher level of family farm survival. See Sonya Salamon, "Ethnic Communities and the Structure of Agriculture," Rural Sociology 50, no. 3 (fall 1985): 323-40.
52. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, pp. 54-60.
53. Ronald P. Dore, Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy, 1970-80 (London: Athlone, 1986).
54. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002).