Russia’s Dual Social Structure
Resource Allocation within a Feudal System
Simon Kordonskij, Dmitrij Dechant, Ol'ga Moljarenko
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russian society has a dual structure. On the one hand, the state has created formal professional castes, to which it allocates resources based on the principle of welfare-state distributive justice. On the other hand, there exist informal “corporations”. Politics in Russia revolves around the conflict between these two principles of order. On one side are those who want to allocate resources according to the principles of a deeply socialist caste society; on the other side are the members of different regions, sectors, concerns, clans, or ethnic groups who want to see resources allocated according to the unwritten “rules” of a fluctuating hierarchy of these “corporations”.
(Osteuropa 4/2013, pp. 107–143)