"New Russians" at Kommersant

In September 1992, Russia’s weekly ‘first business newspaper,’ Kommersant, inaugurated the pilot issue of Kommersant Daily (‘daily’ spelled in English), with a “sociological” survey of their paper’s readership. The paper canvassed those who signed up for the Daily ahead of time, without a preceding ad campaign, but just an announcement in the Weekly, which also “emphasized the high subscription price” of the Daily– that is, around 1400 roubles for six months (versus 20 rub. for other nationally circulated newspapers at the time).
The bottom 85% of the proactive “New Russians” who signed up for advance copies of Kommersant Daily made less than $1800 a month that September, with 23% less than $600 (by the end of 1992, many would be making half that, due to hyperinflation). According to Kommersant’s calculation, these readers were comparable to the European middle class and constituted 2%-4% of Russia’s population. “Who are they?” Kommersant wonders, and their survey means to describe and prescribe. Readers should think of themselves as a minoritarian, successful, morally justified elite. Hence, they answer loaded questions, meant to shape “New Russian” values in the image of the paper. The paper concludes that its readership is a “vanguard group [operezhaiushahia gruppa]” that inherits pre-Soviet “merchant” and “aristocratic” estates of yore, even as 71% of them are “second-generation intellectuals” (i.e. grandchildren of workers, educated by Soviet institutions). New Russians work hard, do not emigrate, think they are self-made, take risks “even if chances do not seem good,” but do not especially value “morality [nravstvennost’],” “prosperity” and “power over others.” Half believe that “in the eyes of the population they are bandits and easy riders. Only 2% hope that they will be seen as heroes.” Still, almost all state that “Russia is gradually becoming a normal European country.” Three months later, around Western Christmastime, Kommersant celebrates “140,000 subscriptions”: “the paper is not for the masses, it is designed for a selective audience: people not only with a high income and an education, but also those with a special mentality. In other words, the Daily is a paper for smart, rich, positively disposed people. And given our subscriptions, the fact that the ranks of such people are rapidly growing in Russia is good news for Christmas, is it not?”
Unfortunately, few outside of Kommersant thought of “New Russians” in positive terms. In early 1990s jokelore, the moniker referred to goons in fancy cars, while the Western press recognized “New Russians” by their raspberry Armani suits, their Turkish knock-off leather, and their business dealings, mostly involving “export of natural resources, playing on the currency exchange rates, and other financial operations.” This inspired the Daily’s angry response from Feb 13, 1993, on the front page: “in the view of the experts at Kommersant, this portrait of New Russians… looks more like an unsuccessful caricature. It has as much to do with true ‘new Russians’ as the image of a fat capitalist with a cigar in his teeth does with Henry Ford.”