Professional Development Mostly Limited to Intellectuals
In Russia, access to professional development is determined by one's occupation, as well as job position, company size, and characteristics of the local labour market. Skilled personnel in non-physical jobs and public sector employees are more likely to pursue professional development, while low-skilled employees in private firms are effectively excluded from any such opportunity, according to Vasiliy Anikin, Assistant Professor of the HSE Department of Applied Economics.
Life of the Russian Regions is Hidden from the Government
About 40% of the Russian able-bodied population are employed in the informal sector of the economy. This is a competitive market economy. Subsistence production, distributed manufacturing, ‘garage production’, seasonal work and various cottage industries flourish in the Russian regions. The economies of many small cities feature strict specialization and developed cooperation, in the context of internal competition between families and clans. These are the findings of HSE professors Simon Kordonsky and Yury Pliusnin in their study ‘Social Structure of the Russian Provinces’.
Russian Economy May Face Mobilisation
The current crisis in Russia is different from all others in its heightened uncertainty and unpredictable consequences, and recent events are comparable to the transformative crisis that occurred in Russia in the 1990s, the Director of the Centre of Development Institute, Natalia Akindinova, and HSE Academic Supervisor Evgeny Yasin said in their paper ‘A New Stage of Economic Development in Post-Soviet Russia.’ The researchers propose four possible scenarios for how the Russian economy might change, the most probable of which, they posit, is a so-called ‘mobilisation scenario.’
Myths Keeping Muscovites and Migrants from Finding Common Ground
Relations between Muscovites and migrant workers from the CIS are plagued by myths circulating in the mass consciousness. In her research, Yulia Florinskaya , a Senior Researcher with HSE’s Institute of Demography, refutes prevalent statements that migrants not only take jobs from Muscovites, but also seriously increase the burden on healthcare and intentionally maintain illegal status.
Interethnic Marriages Reflect Distances Between Ethnic Groups
The proportion of interethnic marriages in Russia varies widely depending on ethnicity. How common mixed-ethnicity families are depends largely on couples' ability to overcome cultural, religious and social differences between their ethnic groups and also on settlement and migration patterns. In his ground-breaking research, Eugeny Soroko , Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Demography, measured the relative ‘distances’ between ethnic Russians and ten other ethnic groups using a tool he invented – the mixed family matrix.
Corporate Social Responsibility Brings Benefits to Business
International companies engage in social responsibility in order to to improve their reputation, be more competitive, and to gain political benefits and some degree of control over society. In Russia, however, businesses convert social investment into informal privileges granted to them by government, according to a paper by Olga Kuzina, Professor of the HSE Department of Economic Sociology, and Marina Chernysheva, postgraduate student at the same department.
Wealthy Russians Reluctant to Hand Down Business to Their Heirs
Today's big businesses in Russia may never become family dynasties. Only a few business owners have succession plans in place, but many have never considered the issue, for reasons ranging from their heirs being too young to avoiding conflict in the family to resenting the lack of institutions in Russia to support effective wealth succession. Instead, most entrepreneurs are planning to retain control of their business for as long as possible, according to researchers from the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences and the Skolkovo Wealth Transformation Centre. For the first time ever, they examined the attitudes of Russia's major capital owners towards business and wealth succession.
Raiders Love Tradespeople and are Afraid of Lawyers
Russian corporate raiders prefer to operate in regions with developed trade and industrial sectors, but where there are fewer lawyers and non-profit organizations, said Anton Kazun, junior research fellow at the HSE Institute for Industrial and Market Studies International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development, in his paper ‘Corporate raid in Russian regions: indicators and factors’.
2.5 times
is the minimum degree by which per capita gross regional product (GRP) should increase by 2020 compared with 2012 in the Murmansk, Belgorod and Sverdlovsk regions as well as in the Chuvash Republic. This is the largest increase among the Russian regions.
52.6%
of Russian lawyers handle more than 25% of cases using a special procedure, i.e., choosing the tactic of cooperating with the prosecution.