Is Russia Becoming a Normal Society

Abstract

The word normal is ambiguous in English. It can refer to acting in accord with a given standard of behavior, a norm, or it can refer to the way the average person behaves. In societies in which citizens and institutions act as they ought to, this makes social life both predictable and acceptable. However, what is normalno in Russia is much more problematic. Some scholars have argued that the autocratic institutions of tsarist and Soviet times survived because Russian subjects regarded the state's demands as normal in both the normative and the positive senses.1 However, the Soviet regime has been characterized as a "dualistic" hourglass society because of a conflict between the norms of the Communist regime and how people actually behaved.2 Vladimir Shlapentokh has recommended managing the resulting tension by adopting the approach of a herpetologist, studying life in A Normal Totalitarian Society as dispassionately as one might study the behavior of other parts of the animal kingdom.3The dissolution of the Soviet Union created the classic structural conditions for anomie in Durkheim's sense of the breakdown of the norms and institutions of polity, economy, and state. The upheavals that followed meant that Russians could not go about their everyday lives normally because they had been socialized to live in the Soviet era. People were forced to cope amidst the turbulence of a society that had not yet established routines of what was normal in the statistical sense. Most Russians have coped by adopting and adapting networks and strategies that were familiar in Soviet times.4By definition, a period of turbulence-and the transformation of Russia's polity, economy, and society was certainly that-can only be sustained for a limited period of time. At some point the void created by the repudiation of the Communist party-state and the command economy is filled by new institutions that require people to behave differently if they are to eat enough, enjoy their leisure, and get the benefits to which they are entitled from public services. Moreover, transformation has brought opportunities that people can seize to better their conditions. For example, by saving money in the knowledge that the shops will have goods if a person can pay the market price or studying English in the expectation that this will lead to a better job.5Two decades after the abrupt start of glasnost and perestroika, Russians have had time to learn, for better or worse, what is now statistically normal in their society. However, the regime's failure to live up to the values that Russians hold about what makes a normal society has led to widespread dissatisfaction with the institutions to which they have had to adapt.6The ambiguity of contemporary Russian life is expressed in the hybrid characterizations that international organizations and many area-studies experts use to describe it. Westerners use compound labels to emphasize values inherent in European norms and deviations from them, such as characterizing the country as "partly free" or exhibiting "managed pluralism" or a "predatory capitalism." Compound labels can also be used by Russians to emphasize what is valued by the Russian using then. For example, Vladimir Putin's deputy head of administration characterizes the country as a "sovereign democracy," an implicit assertion to foreigners that they have no right to comment on what the government does within Russia. The point is made more strongly by Dmitry Medvedev dropping the adjective to assert the claim that Russia is just as democratic as any other country of the G-8, a political challenge to G-7 leaders.However, all assessments of Russian society as a whole have limitations. It is assumed that there is agreement among Russians about what constitutes normal life and that Russians have the same norms and values as Western (that is, European and Anglo-American) citizens. But this assumption has no empirical validity. I draw on New Russian Barometer (NRB) survey data to examine what Russians mean by a normal society, whether they think it is normal today and if not, how many years will it take for Russian society to become normal or if it will ever do so. …