Living with(in) and without the state: Russia’s new middle classes forging “strategic autonomy”

The article analyzes the case of Russia’s new middle classes and their responses and strategies in dealing with the consumption policies (the food embargo and import substitution) introduced by the Russian government in 2014, amidst the economic downturn. It explores how their resilient reactions to these policies and the economic crisis can be understood as part of their broader relationships with the Russian state beyond the framework of the social contract. These relationships have been forged within the new middle classes’ positionalities and biographical experiences and have mediated their responses to state interventions. In particular, the analysis describes the tendency of the new middle classes to subjectively disentangle their lives from the larger developments in the country. I define this tendency as “strategic autonomy” and conceptualize it in dialogue with the phenomenon of post-socialist “practical and psychological autonomy” (Shevchenko 2009). In particular, I emphasize the role of the new middle classes’ post-Soviet trajectories in the formation of this disposition. The article analyzes how these trajectories have been shaped by the simultaneous neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system and by the reconfiguration of Russia’s political economy as it became increasingly state-controlled under a consolidated authoritarian political regime. I trace how the Russian state has been consistently divesting itself from its responsibility for the social reproduction of its citizens. I also show how the new middle classes, in turn, have embraced self-reliance and individualized coping strategies while withdrawing their demands and expectations from the state. The article discusses how these strategies came to be incorporated into the reproduction of Russia’s authoritarian regime, also in the context of the current developments related to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The study contributes to the scholarship on the middle classes and their political agency, especially in countries that went through a radical economic transformation.