Sedova N.N. Social Values of Middle Income Group. In: The Middle Income Group in China and Russia. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. ...

Abstract

The middle class in present-day Russian society is not only an economic driving force that ensures social and political stability but also concentrates the most important functions connected with transformations in the field of social values. Setting the standards of the way of life and activity that others, first of all, less successful strata, may look at, the mid-class Russians thus take the role of a leader in formation, mastering and translation of relevant social ideals and goals, ideas of the world and the person’s role in it. The Russian middle class is very young in historical terms and dynamically developing social subject, heterogeneous in its origin. It is developed against a background of total changes in all spheres of the society with regard to which it is both an object and a subject, that is, it simultaneously forms new realia and is the first to adapt to them. Thus, the middle class is a group with a potentially high level of value transformation dynamics.