Informal Exchange Relations in Post-Soviet Russia: A Comparative Perspective

In this article I compare the informal exchange of favours, goods and information in St. Petersburg and Helsinki. The study is part of a larger international comparative research project coordinated by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. This text is based on data collected in the two cities during 1993 - 94: Forty secondary school teachers in St. Petersburg and thirty-eight in Helsinki kept a diary of their important social relations for two weeks. Each evening during this period they recorded their significant social encounters of the day in structured questionnaires; eg. whom they met and what they did or discussed together. After the two weeks, they added to the diaries persons whom they had not encountered during the study period but whom they nevertheless considered as significant for their social life. In addition, a complementary theme interview concentrating on their life course was carried out.

Clear differences were found between the informal exchange practices of Russian and Finnish respondents. Compared to their Finnish colleagues, Russian teachers exchanged more favours, goods and important information. Moreover, the content of the informal exchange in St. Petersburg was both of a different nature and more diverse than in Helsinki; cases abounded of Russian respondents having to use their relatives, friends, colleagues or acquaintances in order to obtain informally products or different kinds of services (eg. medical care). Similarly, half of the Russian respondents reported blat exchanges - a particular Soviet/post-Soviet phenomenon of arranging things through informal connections, and a practice not found in the Finnish data. The informal exchanges reported in the St. Petersburg data were more often carried out with colleagues or other work-mediated relations, thereby stressing the importance of the Russian workplace as a social milieu. In the Russian data the informal exchange relations also involved more examples of informal exchange mediated by a third person, whereas in Helsinki the relations were more of a dyadic nature.

The results support the view proposed by previous research according to which informal exchange and patterns of behavior inherited from the socialist era still continue to influence the transition society. The continuing lack of trust in official institutions and social services was compensated for by our Russian respondents with the use of their personal relations. The trust necessary for informal exchanges to take place was guaranteed either through the use of brokers or a common social context, particularly the workplace. The resulting forms of social life can be characterized as personalized (since abstract and therefore replacable relations were turned into personal and unique ones) and mediated (since the brokers were often used). Though changing in forms and functions, the networks of personal relations still continue to play a significant role in the life of post-Soviet citizens.