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.By focusing on thispuzzle, we can begin a deeper investigation of Russian under-standings of democracy, capitalism, and the interrelationshipsbetween the two.The conventional wisdom is that Russians are insufficientlyliberal.Whether as a result of an overly Byzantine traditionalculture or the recent history of Soviet economic paternalism,the presumption is that Russians are too committed to anegalitarian distribution of economic goods, too reliant on govern-ment as a vehicle to promote the general welfare, and too readyto sacrifice the freedom of the individual to the collective goodto be democrats in the Western liberal mode.2 To many, theilliberal tinge of Russian democracy is confirmed by thecontinued popularity of President Vladimir Putin despite hisapparent attacks on personal freedom, despite in particular1.For instance, Grigory I.Vainshstein, Obshchestvennoe soznanie i insti-tutsional nye peremeny, in Chelovek v perekhodnom obshchestve: Sotsiologicheskiei sotsial no-psikhologicheskie issledovaniia, ed.G.G.Diligenskii (Moscow: Instituteof World Economics and International Relations, 1998), 35; James L.Gibson, The Russian Dance with Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs 17, no.2 (2001):101 25; Boris Dubin, Zapad, granitsa, osobyi put : Simvolika drugogo vpoliticheskoi mifologii sovremennoi Rossii, Monitoring obshchestvennoe mneniia:Informatsiia analiz, no.6, issue 50 (2000): 28.2.Judith S.Kullberg and William Zimmerman, Liberal Elites, SocialistMasses, and Problems of Democracy, World Politics 51 (April 1999): 323 58;Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (NewYork: Free Press, 1995), 40.5 02.Carnaghan Ch5-Ch7 1/17/07 12:15 PM Page 108108 Out of Orderhis efforts to curb the power of the most successful of Russia s entre-preneurs oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky,and Vladimir Gusinsky.3But are Russian democrats really insufficiently liberal? Is their dislike ofmarkets and oligarchs the product of an alternative set of nonliberal values,or do the sources of discontent lie elsewhere? In this chapter, I show thatthe suspicion of markets among some of Russia s democrats has more todo with how markets function in Russia than with preferences for greateregalitarianism or government control of the economy.Market-doubtingdemocrats in Russia embrace the ideals of liberal economic freedom asreadily as do most liberals.They are simply unconvinced that the marketsdeveloping in their country provide most people with those freedoms.Aswe saw in the previous chapter with representative institutions, the problemlies not in the ideal but in the highly imperfect reality.That imperfect realityalso lies behind support for Putin.To many Russians, Putin s attacks on thefew who have benefited from economic reforms look less like assaults onmarkets than like efforts to make markets work better for ordinary people.I begin this chapter by examining logical tensions between democracyand capitalism and by addressing ways those tensions can be reconciled.I then review what we already know from mass surveys about how ordinaryRussians assess the relationship between democracy and capitalism, andI develop hypotheses to explain why some Russians fail to reconcile con-flicting elements of democracy and capitalism.I test those hypothesesusing the intensive interviews with Russians.Democracy and InequalityThe idea that democracy and capitalism are intimately linked is partly basedon the joint historical origins of the two systems and on the empiricaltendency for democratic polities also to have capitalist economies.Democ-racy sprang from the womb of the capitalist economy : the rise of thebourgeoisie provided the impetus for restrictions on traditional powerstructures and the repudiation of anachronistic restraints on individuals.4 Inthe contemporary world, democracy seems to function best in higher-income3.Rudra Sil and Cheng Chen, State Legitimacy and the (In)significance of Democracy inPost-Communist Russia, Europe-Asia Studies 56, no.3 (2004): 358 62; Ol ga Kryshtanovskaia, Vybor patriotov: bednost ili rakety? Argumenty i Fakty, no.30 (July 2003): 3.4.Kyung-won Kim, Marx, Schumpeter, and the East Asian Experience, Journal ofDemocracy 3 (July 1992): 24. 02.Carnaghan Ch5-Ch7 1/17/07 12:15 PM Page 109Views of Markets 109countries, which is to say, countries with flourishing market economies, witha large middle class and an affluent and secure working class.5The connection between democracy and capitalism, however, is generallyargued to be not only empirical, but also logical.The key logical connectionis that both systems rest on the shared value of individual freedom.6 Bothdemocracy and capitalism are supposed to leave us as free as possible topursue our own good in our own way. 7 Democracy does this by limitingthe arbitrary power of governments over citizens, thereby protecting rightsgiven by Nature or the Creator. These rights include free speech, assembly,and the unfettered exercise of religion, and they also prominently includerights of property and individual initiative in the economic sphere.Somewould argue that citizens must have property to defend if they are to takeseriously democracy s precept that they keep the government in check.8Capitalism, similarly, is based on the individual s freedom to pursue hap-piness in whatever form it takes, particularly in forms that can be counted,stored, and saved against a rainy day.Capitalism further enhances individualfreedom by limiting government s role in the economy, thereby shrinkingthe possible size of the state as well as protecting a private sphere outsidegovernment direction.To many Americans, democracy and capitalism are so tightly inter-twined that the features of one get mixed up with those of the other.Forinstance, one of my American respondents, Ted, defined democracy as certain inalienable rights.Freedom.You know, we must always havesome laws.Freedom to make your own choices where you want to work,where you want to live, what you want to do with your life.I love havingthose choices.I couldn t stand being told what I was going to do with mylife.Having four thousand deodorants to choose from, I mean that sgreat.I like it. In an affluent liberal democracy, the pursuit of happinessmay look a lot like consumer choice.But there are also tensions between democracy and capitalism.Chiefamong these tensions is different treatment of the value of equality.5.Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics [1959], expanded ed.(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Adam Przeworski, Michael E.Alvarez,Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institu-tions and Well-Being in the World, 1950 1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).6.Karl R.Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 4th ed.(Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1963); Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944).7.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Penguin, 1985), 72.8.Andranik Migranian, Dolgii put k evropeiskomu domu, Novyi Mir 7 (July 1989):166 84. 02
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