Revisiting the Criteria and Indicators for Identifying the Middle Class within Contemporary Russian Society (before the Social and Economic Crisis of 2014)

The article deals with the problem of delineating the middle strata of Russian society in the context of the social and economic crisis and  assesses the correlation of the differences in social positions of  middle class representatives as a criterion for social stratifi cation in  general. Since the position of the middle strata within a system of  social inequality is vulnerable enough, the economic crisis has quite  a sizeable impact on the middle class and changes its structure. Over the past twentyfive years, Russia's middle class has undergone a  number of transformations caused by the new waves of social and  economic crises. So, in 1998 the Russian sovereign default resulted  in the fact that following the massive declining trends the middle classes have thinned out to a minimum. The subsequent economic  recovery accompanied by a social and political stabilization has led to an increase in the number of middle class members up until 2008 when another wave of the economic crisis had its dramatically significant impact on the middle strata. A comparison of survey data collected by the Public Opinion foundation in 2004 and 2014  leads to the conclusion that on the level of identity middle-class  population trends have been stable in the past decade, except for  the period of severe fl uctuations under the infl uence of the waves  of the 2014 economic crisis. It was also considered how the economic crisis that emerged in the fall of the national currency proved quite a painful impact on the social well-being of broad layers of Russian society. This fact indicates that in the context of a lasting  disorientation and supplemented by state of anomie in which a large  part of the population exists, the middle strata — the way western  scientists understand it, i.e. as the actor and regulator of social  processes — cannot perform the functions assigned to them. To the  present day, the dominating macro-trends erode the middle class  which is accompanied by a decrease in the welfare of this group. Finally, the paper concludes that there are signifi cant differences in the tools applied by Russian sociological services, first of all  concerning the criteria and indicators used for identifying the middle class.

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