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

In this article I compare the informal exchange of favours, goods and informationin St. Petersburg and Helsinki. The study is part of a larger internationalcomparative research project coordinated by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes enSciences Sociales, Paris. This text is based on data collected in the two citiesduring 1993 - 94: Forty secondary school teachers in St. Petersburg andthirty-eight in Helsinki kept a diary of their important social relations fortwo weeks. Each evening during this period they recorded their significantsocial encounters of the day in structured questionnaires; eg. whom they met andwhat they did or discussed together. After the two weeks, they added to thediaries persons whom they had not encountered during the study period but whomthey nevertheless considered as significant for their social life. In addition,a complementary theme interview concentrating on their life course was carriedout.Clear differences were found between the informal exchange practices of Russianand Finnish respondents. Compared to their Finnish colleagues, Russian teachersexchanged more favours, goods and important information. Moreover, the contentof the informal exchange in St. Petersburg was both of a different nature andmore diverse than in Helsinki; cases abounded of Russian respondents having touse their relatives, friends, colleagues or acquaintances in order to obtaininformally products or different kinds of services (eg. medical care).Similarly, half of the Russian respondents reported blatexchanges - a particular Soviet/post-Soviet phenomenon of arranging thingsthrough informal connections, and a practice not found in the Finnish data. Theinformal exchanges reported in the St. Petersburg data were more often carriedout with colleagues or other work-mediated relations, thereby stressing theimportance of the Russian workplace as a social milieu. In the Russian data theinformal exchange relations also involved more examples of informal exchangemediated by a third person, whereas in Helsinki the relations were more of adyadic nature.The results support the view proposed by previous research according to whichinformal exchange and patterns of behavior inherited from the socialist erastill continue to influence the transition society. The continuing lack of trustin official institutions and social services was compensated for by our Russianrespondents with the use of their personal relations. The trust necessary forinformal exchanges to take place was guaranteed either through the use ofbrokers or a common social context, particularly the workplace. The resultingforms of social life can be characterized as personalized(since abstract and therefore replacable relations were turned into personal andunique ones) and mediated (since the brokers were often used).Though changing in forms and functions, the networks of personal relations stillcontinue to play a significant role in the life of post-Soviet citizens.