Valdai Discussion Club Grantees Analytical Report, Russian Elite--2020 (Moscow, 2013).

• Author: Telegdy, Balazs
• Position: Book review

Valdai Discussion Club Grantees Analytical Report, Russian Elite--2020 (Moscow, 2013)

The research entitled "Russian Elite--2020" is the work of seven sociologists, namely Zimmerman, W., Inglehart, R., Ponarin E., Lazarev Y., Socolov B., Vartanova I. and Turanova Y. The presented results are an outcome of a longitudinal research conducted among Russian elites--located only in Moscow--and reveals the important trends which can mark the political and economic orientation of the Russian elites in the next few years. The research uses a quantitative-based comparative methodology.

The presented study is based on a data collected during the project called "New Russian Barometer," led by Richard Rose, complemented by the results of six waves of World Value Surveys.

The results are divided in three chapters. The first chapter presents an "Overview of the Evolution of the Russian Elite and Transformation of the PostSoviet Regime," where the authors conclude that the consolidation of the Russian elite--which failed at the first stance between 1993 and 1998 due to the lack of a charismatic leader and also due to the lack of vast popular support of the top politicians (both in the government and in the opposition)--is a result of an internal and informal agreement among the key players regarding the distribution of the resources.

Another important conclusion of the authors is that in this first period of transition there was no clear mobility pattern in the Russian Federation to become a part of the elites, aggravating the deep division among the elites and lacking the consensus. This result is also important because one of the main aims of the study is to give a coherent characterization of the Russian elite. So, while in this first period the picture was so heterogeneous that beside the age and gender factor there is hard to give any exact characterization of the elites, the book succeeds to give a sociological description of the expected, new generation of Russian elites. The first Annex is dedicated solely to this characterization, so the main goal of the study is fulfilled.

The second chapter entitled "The Russian Elite Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Main Trends and Speed of Change brings, among other interesting results, a novelty in the field of methodology, meaning the application of a cohort analysis among the elites interviewed in the different polls and waves. As a conclusion, the authors create six cohorts, where the first consists in the...