Russians' Attitude Towards Entrepreneurship at the Beginning of the XXI Century: Main Trends

The article is based on the data of the long-term monitoring by the Institute of Sociology of RAS for the past 25 years to analyze the dynamic assessments by Russia’s population of entrepreneurship and involvement in entrepreneurial activity. The study shows that, first, there is a certain part of adults who are engaged in entrepreneurship, albeit there share in the population is not significantly changing over time and fluctuated in different years within 2 to 6%. Second, the entrepreneurial activity is hindered by various barriers, which vary at that depending on administrative restrictions (over 40% of Russians mention them), the stage of a person’s life cycle and the place of his/her residence. Third, the ideal socio-economic model in the mass consciousness implies a high degree of state involvement in the economy and its acceptance has doubled over the past 20 years (from 18.2% in 2001 to 36.8% in 2019). This economic model which not only limits the opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship, but also assigns it a deliberately secondary role. Thus, although Russians do not completely reject entrepreneurship as a legitimate form of economic activity, it should play a niche role. Entrepreneurship seems at that to be more attractive for young people and people with higher education, as well as for the two capitals inhabitants. In Russia, differences in the level of involvement in entrepreneurship and perception of this socio-economic phenomenon depending on human capital (age, education), as well as on the type of settlement, although decreasing over time, are still present. Entrepreneurship is often a realm for the younger and more educated people. It evokes a more positive attitude among residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The older and the lower the level of education, the lower the level of respondents’ involvement in entrepreneurship, the higher the level of rejecting entrepreneurship and phenomena closely related to its development – market economy and competition. With some exaggeration, it can be said that the attitude to entrepreneurship, like a litmus test, allows to distinguish two Russias. The first is the Russia of metropolitan centers, educated and younger people. The second is the Russia of an older and less educated population living on the periphery of the country. In Russia today, two opposite trends can be distinguished, which in the long run might affect the level of entrepreneurial activity and the perception of this phenomenon by the mass consciousness. On the one hand, these are demographic processes, as well as digitalization and related socio-economic processes (emergence of platform economy, the introduction of AI in business processes, etc.) objectively contributing to the formation of a hybrid type of worker-entrepreneur-self-employee and make entrepreneurship an everyday reality for growing parts of the population. On the other hand, the processes of re-nationalization of the economy, restrictions on the freedom of private property objectively narrow opportunities for entrepreneurial initiative and marginalize this phenomenon.