The workshop "Challenges and perspectives of contemporary Russia" was held on 9 and 10 November at the University of Padua. In the studies by P. Hanson and S. Giusti, published by ISPI and presented at the event, it is underlined how the emergence of a middle class in Russia can act as an engine for the modernization of the country. L'impartial but efficient implementation of structural reforms, whose recent developments have been analyzed in a previous article on FIRST, such as liberalisations, macroeconomic stability, constant improvement of infrastructures and the fight against corruption, therefore seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition to accelerate the modernization of the country. Then emerges a trade-offs between the development of a modern, educated and dynamic middle class and the position rents of a political-administrative apparatus whose power is based exclusively on the control of energy resources. A large middle classIn fact, it reduces inequalities and polarizations in the economy, increasing the size of the market and the attraction of investments. But only on condition that those rules of the game are implemented which would undermine the very foundations and related income of an anti-democratic institutional apparatus. And this is precisely the greatest challenge that awaits a country with enormous potential such as Russia, as can be read in the attached analysis by Guido Michieletto.
Attachments: Economy and politics of the middle class in Russia.pdf
