Sociology,labour and transition in post-Soviet Russia: A view from within

Introduction

In the early 1990s, Simon Clarke acted as a catalyst for Russian and other post-socialist researchers to constitute an international network studying the transformation of social relations in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and post-socialist Asia. He first came to Moscow in 1990 to lecture young sociologists from Russian regions. Through teaching and subsequent interactions, he understood that post-Soviet society was too complex to fit into western-derived neat models. There were plenty of experienced sociologists who could handle theory and fieldwork. It will be hard to say whether he planned this outright. However, he managed to gather a collective of researchers from different regions to investigate the new social reality that escaped the comprehension of foreigners and those inhabiting it. The first projects focused on independent trade unions and restructuring labour relations in Russian enterprises. The establishment of the Institute for Comparative Research in Labour Relations (ISITO) in the mid-1990s expanded the research scope to other FSU republics and, later, China and Vietnam. In the late 1990s, research themes also grew, including labour markets, households, family and gender issues. The following two sections reflect on ISITO research methodology and findings, their legacies and their limitations. Conclusions delineate their significance to contemporary Russian reality.

Clarke’s alternative methodology

ISITO research employed a qualitative methodology based primarily on multiple case studies representing the first systematic application of this method in Russia (Kozina 1995). Its choice rested on the assumption that it is best to judge actual practices and their change by directly observing interactions between workers, trade unions and employers at the enterprise or organisation level. These units, understood as holistic formations, are ideally suited for case study research. For most Russian sociologists like us, research in enterprises was not unfamiliar: ‘factory sociology’ was one of the few subjects accepted under ‘developed socialism’. However, ideological control and the very nature of the subject made for obvious limitations. Above all ruled the assumption that Soviet society could be studied as an undifferentiated population. Thanks to Clarke’s projects, Russian researchers first turned to the social problems associated with changes in property relations and the new role of the state, employers, trade unions and workers in ‘classical’ industrial relations. This task required, first, mastering IR theory but also developing original ideas suited to the Russian context, and second, learning qualitative methodology from scratch. For Russian sociologists educated in the positivist tradition, this meant a difficult transition from the language of variables to one of the interpretations of subjective meanings. Essentially, this was a new way of seeing, which gave access to other dimensions of the social spectrum. An additional complication was that, when applying these new approaches, we were more concerned with conveying observations about a fast-changing world than with developing adequate explanations.

Building our methodology, accounting for the interdependence between macro- and micro-analysis and allowing for large-scale studies took place gradually. Research seminars held every 6 months played a crucial role in this end. The primary and most challenging question was how diverse fieldwork material collected by any available means could be used for theoretical analysis. Simon’s approach was that interviewees’ responses required interpretation rather than classification, seeking commonality among varying narratives; then, each case’s accounts were shared and checked against others using triangulation to validate findings.

An essential part of such research consisted of participant observation of labour conflicts, particularly strikes (Kozina 2009). Simon was also an excellent field researcher. Following him, we learned to conduct in-depth interviews and direct observation, be more critical about information and use all available sources. An underground strike, for example, looks differently when an insider observes the bundle of manager–workers’ tensions and complex interactions among strikers themselves. This way, we realised the complexities of organising strike actions (Bizyukov 1996). So, it emerged that sometimes there was no industrial dispute but the mere conflict between union leaders and factory directors. Such leaders recklessly used the workers’ collective to pursue their ambitions (Borisov & Kozina 1998). Conversely, attention to all available details allowed us to see emerging connections between workers’ committees and civil society and the new possibilities for workers’ activists elected as representatives of local and regional bodies to promote the interests of workers and develop labour subjectivity. This proved disappointing when they integrated into the political system while workers’ grass-root organisations dissolved (Bizyukov 2021).

Research into Russia’s social transformation

In the early 1990s, neoliberalism dominated not just politics but social research. A naïve myth prevailed that the triumph of market and democracy was the measure of social progress. In Russia, transition to ‘market democracy’ acquired a particularly harsh character. Neoliberal reformers acted without concern for social and economic consequences. The main goal was primarily preventing communist restoration, as Chubais, a key reformer and oligarch, later admitted. To this end, ‘shock privatisation’ transferred economic power to a new bourgeoisie with catastrophic results.

Clarke went against the tide, offering an approach focused on the subjectivity of the working masses. Empirical studies across Russian regions focused on household survival strategies and workers’ resistance. This research convincingly showed how reform was failing its declared objectives. We could call it the sociology of absurdity: reformers rushed to the goal only to find that it looked nothing like they had planned or promised. However, the current ‘neo-etacratic’ regime does not depart from early reforms but represents its logical outcome.

Our empirical research unveiled striking paradoxes – plentiful western consultants backed a surprisingly simple transition model – closing unprofitable enterprises without concerns for negative social or economic externalities. This case was about privatising the coal industry. After pit closures, the Siberian and Arctic region’s monotowns were left with substantial wage arrears and unemployment. Social disasters following chaotic economic reforms discredited the market and democracy, engendering mass longing for a ‘strong hand’ to restore order. These expectations ushered Putin’s triumphal rise to power.

The coal industry, home of the pugnacious Miners’ Independent Union (Nezavisimyi Profsoyuz Gornikov [NPG]), also offers a clear example of ‘false class consciousness’. Neoliberal reforms undermined the very existence of the mining industry. However, union leaders became political allies of the neoliberal authorities, embracing their doctrine and anti-communist priorities and blindly supporting market reforms. The NPG regularly organised strikes to demand wage arrears payment, and their allies in the Kremlin complied just as regularly. A system developed where strikes became the condition-sine-qua-non for wage payments. Meanwhile, industry executives employed NPG as a lobbyist to extract government grants until full privatisation made the system obsolete (Il’in 1998). Looking back, the first genuinely antagonistic trade union, for many reasons, was integrated into the socio-political system formed in the 1990s.

Clarke’s research across sectors and regions also looked at traditional Soviet trade unions historically tasked with mobilising labour and maintaining social peace. The 1990s was a brief period when they directly opposed the government’s liberal reforms (Ashwin & Kozina 2020). However, these organisations successfully survived market reforms by suppressing attempts to lead the trade union movement along the path of independence from management and capital and reproducing their traditional functions as enterprise welfare departments and local authorities’ political partners. In the 1990s, the rhetoric of social partnership between business, government and trade unions appeared. Long-term observation of related events in critical industrial regions pointed to the hollow nature of this institution. Trade unions played the formal role of marginal participants in discussions, making no significant contribution to the economic and political situation (Petrova 2001). Thus, the former Soviet trade unions, Lenin’s ‘transmission belt from the party to the masses’, successfully survived Transition’s cataclysms and became an essential element of the ‘neo-etacracy’, a system of total state control over all spheres of social life, formed in 21st-century Russia.

In the mid-1990s, Clarke initiated a large-scale quantitative study on Russian households’ adaptation strategies. Here too, findings challenged reforms’ declared objective of Transition to ‘civilised society’. Economic chaos engendered autarchic strategies, like reliance on private allotments and drifting towards a natural economy rather than highly socialised activities. Another overall strategy involved fleeing waged employment for the ‘shuttle’ trade. In contrast, skilled workers/professionals became small-scale traders smuggling goods from abroad or delivering them in small batches from other cities (Ilyina and Ilyin 2001).

In perspective, research conducted by Simon Clarke and his large collective of Russian and international sociologists stands out on two accounts. First, it offers a grand portrait of FSU’s social transformation from below, a fundamental contribution to the history of social change in the post-socialist field. Second, these 20- to 30-year-old findings do not simply illuminate the past but provide essential keys to understanding Russia’s present. As such, they still await a contemporary re-assessment.

Conclusion

Four significant achievements mark Simon Clarke’s research in Russia: First, he offered ‘alternative’ methods, which continue to be developed. Second is the network research organisation, a flexible structure capable of quickly developing research. Third, the research findings are unwrapping the new and highly complex reality of the 1990s and 2000s. Last, there are several dozen researchers who, thanks to their ISITO experience, now pursue research at higher education (HE) institutions across the country. Independent projects like the Monitoring of Labour Protest (2023) have recorded and analysed data about industrial disputes and the labour movement since 2008 in Russia and later across the FSU.

What connects these achievements is Simon’s epistemological stance, the embodiment of a ‘passion for the Real’ doggedly pursuing the truth about social domination and emancipation struggles (Morrison & Sacchetto 2018). In Russia, then, too many westerners hardly reached further than a cold beer and a hot shower, as he humorously put it, an attitude reflecting a generalised ‘epistemological hypochondria’ (Armstrong 2017). Consistently, his theorising remained cautious. He dismissed the ‘inflexible mould’ of ‘state capitalism’, remaining open about the direction of class struggle in post-socialism (Buckley 1995). In his last monograph, he argued for capitalist restoration’s reality and its difficulties. The conclusions singled out the Ford factory’s textbook case of worker–management conflict as evidence that ‘capitalism in Russia is not so different from capitalism everywhere else’, yet its exceptionalism stood for ‘the incomplete subsumption of labour under capital’ (Clarke 2007: 242).

Does the dissolution of that factory and its militant potential prove him wrong? A comprehensive answer exceeds the confines of the article. However, it is worth noting that further research attests to continued workplace resistance and growing class conflicts against predatory but lacklustre capital (Bizyukov 2021; Croucher et al. 2022). As elsewhere, the transition’s latest dramatic turn may owe more to the reality of flesh-and-blood resistance than to notional empty hearses, such as post-socialist informality, legacies or Russian people’s exceptional proclivity to submit to all-enveloping politics.

Simon Clarke, his work and his achievements are now inscribed in the history of Russian sociology. More importantly, his colleagues and alumni do not just preserve his legacy, but continue developing his vision and alternative approach.