As Russia moved past the economic turmoil of the 1990’s, the country saw the emergence of a so-called middle class, which was expected to push the country towards democracy. However, that middle class was dependent on the state, and that dependency kept it firmly in Putin’s camp.
Not a bourgeoisie standing against the state, but a service class dependent on the state
Just as it is misleading to describe Russia’s richest businessmen as “oligarchs” in the classical sense — since even vast wealth gives them little real leverage over the Kremlin — it is also misleading to use the term “middle class” in Russia as if it meant the same thing as in Western political history. Russia does have a middle class, but much of it is tied to the state rather than independent from it. This distinction is crucial for understanding why it has not become a force against militarisation, and why some of its layers may instead help sustain the system behind the war.
For decades, many observers assumed that the growth of Russia’s middle class would push the country toward democracy. The logic seemed simple: economic growth would produce a stronger middle class; a stronger middle class would demand political representation; political representation would gradually weaken authoritarian rule. In the 2000s, high oil prices, wages, credit, mortgages and consumption strengthened a new urban stratum. But Russia did not follow the expected path.
A large part of Russia’s middle class is not autonomous from the state. It depends on public employment, state corporations, government contracts, security institutions, municipal administrations and businesses tied to public money. This helps explain why it has not become a brake on militarisation and, in many cases, has become part of its social base.
In Western political thought, it is often treated as one of the engines of modernisation and democratic development. But when this concept is applied to Russia without adjustment, it can obscure more than it explains. Russia does have a middle class, but its structure, sources of income and political incentives differ sharply from the historical image usually associated with the term.
In the European and North American tradition, the rise of the middle class was linked to merchants, professionals, urban property owners and entrepreneurs who demanded legal protection and gradually pushed for political rights. It was not always liberal by nature. But in the Western model, its interests were tied to autonomous economic activity, the rule of law, independent courts and limits on executive power. This never happened in Russia.
Russia’s official statistics do not provide a single, clear category called “the middle class”. Depending on the method, estimates vary dramatically. If one uses a broad income threshold, Russia can appear to have a very large middle class. But if the criteria include income, education, professional status, stability, assets and consumption, the figure becomes much smaller. Some Russian studies estimate the broader middle class at around one third of the population, while its stable core may be closer to one tenth.
This distinction matters. A person may have a mortgage, a car, a university degree and an annual holiday, but still lack real economic autonomy. In Russia, the decisive question is not only how much someone earns. It is where the income comes from.
A Western middle-class archetype is often an independent entrepreneur, professional, small business owner or skilled specialist. In Russia, a large part of the middle class consists of public-sector employees, officials, managers in state-owned companies, employees of state corporations, security-sector personnel, municipal administrators and private businesspeople whose contracts depend heavily on the state. Many are tied to public procurement, infrastructure projects, defence orders, state banks or politically connected companies.
This is not a bourgeoisie standing against the state. It is often a service class standing near the state, inside it, or below it. That difference changes political behaviour. A person whose income depends on an independent market may see arbitrary state power as a threat. A person whose income, career or status depends on the state may see political change as a risk. Democracy may be perceived not as an expansion of rights, but as instability, redistribution, loss of status, or the collapse of familiar guarantees.
The state did not simply suppress Russia’s middle class. It shaped it, employed it, financed it and bought its loyalty. Oil revenues, budget expansion, state companies, the security apparatus, public-sector salaries, mortgages and government contracts created a broad stratum for which the state became the main employer, customer, patron or guarantor of life chances.
Russia’s middle class supports the war in Ukraine because that’s where the money comes from
This helps explain the paradox seen during the war against Ukraine. Public opinion surveys in Russia must be read with caution. Fear, repression, propaganda and self-censorship all distort answers. Still, available polling consistently shows that support for the war, or at least for the actions of the Russian armed forces, remains high. The Levada Center’s January 2026 survey recorded 76 percent support for the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine. This does not mean that three quarters of Russian society are ideological militarists. Some support is active, some conformist, some fearful, some passive. But the middle strata of Russian society have not produced a decisive anti-war turn.
Higher income, higher education and residence in large cities do not automatically correlate with a clearly anti-war position. In some surveys, more educated or better-off respondents appear no less loyal to the official course than poorer groups. This is where the Russian case challenges the standard modernisation narrative. The issue is not that the Russian middle class does not exist. It does. The issue is that much of it is not institutionally independent from the state. Without that independence, education and income alone do not necessarily produce liberal politics.
The second answer is the war that has strengthened this dependency. Militarisation has created new beneficiaries: defence factories, logistics companies, construction firms, security agencies, regional administrations, propaganda structures, import-substitution projects, public procurement networks and families receiving military payments. The war economy does not enrich everyone, but it redistributes money through channels connected to the state. For some groups, war has meant new jobs, higher wages, contracts, status and administrative demand.
This is why it is too simple to say that support for the war comes only from the poor, the marginalised, or the peripheral regions. Russia’s militarisation also rests on a state-dependent middle layer: people with stable salaries, institutional positions and careers linked to the very system that wages the war.
The Russian middle class turned out to be consumerist, but not necessarily civic.
It wanted better living standards, and in the 2000s the state helped provide them.
It wanted stability, and the regime defined stability as loyalty.
It wanted predictable income, and the state became the source of that predictability.
When the political system exchanged civic passivity for consumption and security, many accepted the deal.
The broader lesson is that income categories are not enough. A self-employed professional, a state-company manager, a municipal official, a defence-sector engineer, an IT specialist and a business owner dependent on public tenders may all be classified as “middle class”. But they do not stand in the same relationship to power.
That is why the phrase “Russia’s middle class” should be used carefully. In the West, the term often implies autonomy, property, legalism and civic participation. In Russia, it often describes a level of consumption without the same institutional independence.
The Russian middle class did grow. But a large part of it grew not against the state, but from the state and around the state. That is why it did not become the expected engine of democratization — and why, today, it can function not as a counterweight to militarization, but as one of the social layers that helps sustain it.
