Oligarchs and Democrats, page 27
hard to say yes or no, because many factors influence it. Simply there are examples, when
people are sufficiently educated and have specialties but cannot find applications for their
abilities. There are quite a few examples.” Market doubters were more likely to focus on those
examples where hard work was not enough, but even among those who showed little support
for markets there were quite a few people who thought significant opportunities existed. Among
skeptics, people were more likely to think opportunities existed than that they did not. Pelageia,
for instance, felt that as a pensioner she had few opportunities, but she seized the ones she
could find and admonished others to do the same. She supplemented her pension by selling
plastic bags in the market, and spoke with some heat about the necessity for young people to
look for better jobs. She said, “Young people stand with us—young people, around twenty years
old, selling shopping bags. We tell them, ‘Girls, you can go to work. Well, okay, we stand there,
pensioners. They already won’t take us anywhere…But you are young. Go and work. Why are
you standing here? You need a steady job. You need to work for your interests. But you stand
here with the old women, stand with these plastic bags…Why aren’t you ashamed?’” Even
Zinaida, a stressed, overwhelmed employee of a barely operating defense-related factory,
thought that people could improve their own material positions by selling privately the goods
produced in their factories.
Among market skeptics, it was particularly those of a more democratic leaning who saw
severe limits in the opportunities markets provide. While a couple market-doubting democrats
thought hard work was enough to push the ambitious ahead, most noted the importance of
other qualities: working outside the public sphere, being able to see opportunities as well as
being young enough to seize them, having an ability to do something that someone needs,
living in an area where good jobs existed. Nadezhda commented, “Doctors are poor, no matter
how hard they work. Well, that’s the government budget sphere. Everything depends on where
you work.” Asked whether a person could improve his or her material situation through hard
work, Dima replied, “Well, theoretically yes, of course. Theoretically. But at the same time, the
majority of people who don’t know how to work well may earn more than this person. And
society doesn’t always help him. Sometimes it gets in the way.” Anya noted that “it is not
enough to know how to work. It is necessary to have other qualities: assertiveness, maybe, and
impudence.” The kinds of doubts expressed by market-skeptical democrats tended to be
broader and more systemic than the ones expressed by less democratic market skeptics. For
instance, the less democratic skeptics often complained about the limits of their own particular
jobs or the injustice of their own situations. Nadia noted that she worked well but nonetheless
was paid less than the government-calculated minimum for survival. Inna complained, “I have
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