Livelihoods in postcommunist Russia: urban/rural comparisons

Discussions of Russian social trends rarely look below the regional level. This article compares livelihoods within Sverdlovsk Region in the year 2000. In the capital city, Yekaterinburg, postcommunism had opened new opportunities for private sector employment and lucrative additional earnings, but chiefly to the benefit of men with higher education and good connections. By contrast, in Achit, the small administrative centre of an agricultural district, most people continued to work in the state sector and there was an acute money shortage. All respondents, including senior professional people, grew their own vegetables. Livelihood strategies were more clearly 'survival strategies' in Achit than in Yekaterinburg, where, by contrast, they could in some cases be classed as 'accumulation strategies'. Among the Achit sample, livelihood strategies were less clearly gendered than in Yekaterinburg, and it was possible for women to succeed in business. Nonetheless, livelihood strategies in both locations had certain common features, depending heavily on activities other than primary employment, and relying on extended families and networks of friends and work colleagues.