Political Participation in the Period of Post-Communist Transition The Case of Russian Capital Owners

abstract: This article focuses on the political participation of Russian capital owners during the period of post-Commu-nist transformation. The author examines the forms and levels of political participation of the capital owners in corre-lation with the size and origin of the capital that the respon-dents own, controlling for age, education and past political participation. The purpose of this analysis is to establish if capital owners in a post-Communist country are likely to support the consolidation of a pro-democratic regime. The findings, based on the original data collected by the author in Russia in the late 1990s, show that only some capital owners are willing to support a liberal democratic cause, and that the capital owners who participated the most actively were those with anti-liberal views. A multi-dimensional theoretical model of participation is used to explain patterns of political participation observed within different age cohorts of Russian capital owners