Russia’s middle class turn against Putin

But exasperated by corruption that throws obstacles in the way of any attempt to build a business in Russia, his patience snapped when Vladimir Putin’s party won a fraction under 50 percent in fraud-tainted parliamentary polls.

He joined tens of thousands of other Russians, most of them representatives of the country’s growing middle class, in attending mass protests against Putin aimed at telling the Russian strongman that enough was enough.

Their horizons broadened by foreign travel and connected by constant Internet access, the middle class have formed the core of the protest movement against Putin’s rule.

But ironically it is the relative economic stability created during Putin’s 12 year domination that has created a substantial middle class in Russia with disposable incomes and an increasingly critical mentality.

"It is important that people go out en masse into the streets to show the authorities and the rest of the world that a substantial part of the population desires change and wants to be heard," Sharets said.

"We want there to be less corruption in the country," said the 39-year-old, complaining that corrupt bureaucrats were still placing an "inconceivable" number of obstacles in the way of entrepreneurs.

The authorities were taken by surprise by the protestors’ middle class profile, said Natalia Tikhonova, a sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Whereas previously in Russia political and social demands had been made largely by the working class, "today it is the middle class that is expressing itself."

In Russia this meant white collar workers, employees of small business, office workers, as well as teachers and doctors, Tikhonova said. Taken together, they represent 33 to 35 percent of the Russian population, she added.

These Russians "do not think they depend on the authorities" and simply want to be "left alone, for the law to be respected and for what they have succeeded in building up to be protected."

A survey by the independent Levada Centre at one of the biggest opposition protests on December 24 showed that 62 percent of protestors had a higher education with only four percent describing themselves as workers.

Analysts from New York’s Citibank said rising wealth levels had turned Russia in to a middle-class country "arguably for the first time in its history."

Estimating between a third and a half of Russia’s population now to be middle class, they predicted the protests "will lead to the middle class taking more of a role in the running of the country."

After coming close to economic meltdown in the late 1990s under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, Russia enjoyed prosperity and a stronger RUB under Putin’s rule with the crucial help of a high oil price.

Citibank noted that before the early 2000s there was almost no discretionary spending in Russia, whereas now Russia had almost as many cars as Germany and and most households enjoyed the full range of electrical goods.

Yet the global economic crisis of 2008 cast a cloud for many over the future, exposing Russia’s dependence on hydrocarbon exports and the apparent failure of Putin to implement serious reform of its economy.

Many of the middle class protestors have expressed exasperation that the country has failed to fix its structural problems in the years of high growth, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations in the global economy.

"We have ceased to be a developed industrialised country," said Mikhail Galkin (27) who took part on the anti-Putin demonstrations.

"Now we are no more than a reservoir of natural resources."

AFP/ Eleonore Dermy/ Expatica