Men in Contemporary Russia by Rebecca Kay

Author:Rebecca Kay [Kay, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Men's Studies
ISBN: 9781351918220
Google: 4yuoDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05T03:24:38+00:00

‘Good’ business versus ‘bad’ business

A key decision confronting any individual considering a move into private enterprise, anywhere in the world, is what sort of business to establish. For men seeking to start up in business in post-Soviet Russia, this question has been heavily laden not only with practical issues of viability, sustainability and competition, but also with issues relating to political and social perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ business, which are rooted as much in the ideological teachings and social climate of the past as they are in the political rhetoric and economic realities of the present. Under the Soviet system, considerable ideological emphasis was placed on productive labour as the most, if not the only, truly legitimate form of work and that deserving the highest rewards. Moreover, whilst non-productive work in the form of intellectual, administrative and state controlled consumer services was recognized as a necessity, independent commercial and retailing activities were both ideologically unacceptable and, in fact, illegal for most of the Soviet period. In the newly independent Russia therefore, commercial activities based fundamentally on retail trade, particularly where this involved the importation and selling on of cheap foreign goods, were frowned upon by large sections of the local population. In addition, entrepreneurial activity of this type, particularly cross-border trading, was stigmatized in the media as frequently illegal, designed only to enrich those personally involved and not bringing with it any of the wider benefits to the local, regional or national economy expected of the development of ‘respectable’, tax-paying private enterprise (Belov 1993).

Certainly, from the perspectives of the development of a more sustainable and self-perpetuating economic base, locally, regionally, even nationally, the stimulation of production, rather than simply trade, would be a sensible priority. Indeed, recent initiatives at the local and regional level have in some cases placed specific emphasis on supporting those forms of small- and medium-sized enterprise which involve an element of production, for example by making low interest loans available to this type of business (‘Malomu na bednost” 2002). Yet, as both men and women involved in private enterprise have pointed out, such help is often not as generous in practice as initially promised and frequently comes too late, if at all. Therefore, for many, engaging in retail trade, often in a fairly informal and unregulated manner, may be seen as the most practically viable form of commercial enterprise:

I think that if a person wants to undertake some kind of production, they should get some kind of special subsidies. But in fact it’s a joke. … If you look at the taxes, … shops, shopkeepers and traders pay less tax than they have to pay at the workshop. At the workshop there’s a certain income. Well, if you look at a shop, in principle you just buy stock, bring it to the shop and sell it, so there’s nothing to produce. But the workshop is producing things and it’s the only one in the town, so they should support it at least somehow. It’s got one foot in the grave already.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.