The Middle Class in Modern Russia: Has the Theoretical Construction Become a Reality?

The article examines three perspectives of studying the middle class in modern Russia. The first perspective is presented as a brief excursion into the history of the development of middle class studies in the post-Soviet period. The second perspective is devoted to the consideration of methodological issues of studying the middle class, the criteria for its identification in the social structure of Russian society and the definition on this basis of the quantitative characteristics of the middle class. The third perspective is presented by the results of the analysis of the middle class in accordance with the author's methodology of its identification by three criteria - material standard of living, education and self-identification with the middle class. The methodology is applied to the analysis of the middle class using data from the all-Russian monitoring conducted by the Center for the Study of Sociocultural Changes of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1990 to the present day. It allows us to trace the dynamics of the middle class in the post-Soviet period, its composition by professional characteristics, by areas of employment, by strategies in labour activity and other aspects. The latest wave of monitoring (summer 2023) focused on the population's attitude to the choice of the path the country should take and the respondent's self-identification with a particular model of Russia's development. The middle class in its majority (67%) chose a special Russian path of development for the country and for themselves personally, practically rejecting the path followed by Western societies, developed Muslim countries and China. At the same time, in second place (30%) we find the opinion that Russia should use all the best experience of other countries. At the same time, respondents declared themselves to be supporters of democratic forms of government, insist on the observance of human rights and freedoms, primarily in the economic and social spheres, as the closest to the everyday interests of people. The results of the study concluded that the majority of Russians, and especially the middle class, understand the original path for Russia as the path of a sovereign state based on traditional and humanitarian values, and does not at all mean a desire to live in a traditional society that has lost many of its features under the influence of decades of modernisation.