The "New Middle Classes" in Russia

If we focus on such factors as the denationalization of property and the appearance of private, corporate, and mixed property, the formation of an entrepreneurial stratum, the development of trade, and the saturation of the consumer market with goods, we can argue that Russian society has made considerable progress in market reforms. If, however, we examine such criteria as the gross domestic product, the dynamics of industrial production (especially science-intensive production), the levels of investments and unemployment, and stratification by property, the social situation and the crisis in depressed branches, then our assessments of the process of market transformation immediately become the opposite.