As always, we have our own peculiarities, at least three of which radically affect our subject.
The first is the origin of our domestic “wealth of nations.” In most cases it resulted from the straightforward embezzlement of Soviet state enterprises’ assets. Of course, most entrepreneurs were not thieves—they created new value and new property. However, the fact remains, and it cannot but influence the “work ethic” and the middle class’s—in our case, the “thinking public’s”—attitude toward labor, savings, success, and other “bourgeois values.” The general impact that our recent history has on immature middle-class minds can be characterized as… eeeee… a certain guilelessness with which this public approaches life. In their consciousness, conspiratorial thinking and simplistic solutions apparently dominate, and these serve as the universal and only legitimate method. These people are also convinced of the absence of morality and any positive values whatsoever, the triumph of technology over reality, the possibility of mass manipulation—in general, they suffer from the entire range of post-industrial phobias, and it seems, to a much greater extent than their Western counterparts.
The second peculiarity is the character of entrepreneurial activity and, speaking more broadly, the general relations between people who produce goods and the state. We will call these relations corruption, although, strictly speaking, they are not corruption in the usual sense due to their mass prevalence, their nonexceptionality. Actually, corruption is the main method of relating to power not only for the middle class, but for the entire population. It is simply that the middle class, as the most active and independent element, uses it to the greatest extent—and uses it consciously. Corruption is not so much bribery as individual “solving of issues,” in which state officials are always involved. The advantage of corruption over all other possible means of communication and “solving issues” available to us is that it is simple, convenient, and accessible.
Finally, the third peculiarity, directly stemming from the second—the dependence of owners, top managers, and other senior executives on the state, directly resulting from corrupt practices. This dependence is also reinforced by taxation, in which only legal entities appear. As a result, employees become more politically independent than their bosses, which gives rise to the specific phenomenon of the “middle-class proletariat.” In particular, I have already had occasion to write that the well-known manifesto is a typical example of such proletarian output. It should be noted here that the dependence of owners and managers on the state practically deprives them of the ability to create and fund organizations operating in their own interests. They are always compelled to participate in projects imposed from outside, as a rule, by representatives of the state “elite.”