[LINK] "Farewell to Florida"

[rfmcdonald]

At Open Democracy, Mikhail Kaluzhsky argues that the popularity of Richard Florida and his "creative class" thesis in Russia actually wasn't supported by the facts on the ground.

As little as 18 months ago, one could still count hundreds of people in the Moscow metro who were prepared to demonstrate their involvement in political protest. No one wears the famous white ribbons anymore. The imitation of political activity on social networks has triumphed over real political activity, once and for all. Russians still turn out to defend their economic rights, but no one protests against the illegitimacy of parliament. Does anyone actually still remember that the Russian Duma is illegitimate? The war in Ukraine and the economic crisis, it seems, have completely eclipsed the political protest we saw in 2011-2012.

So, who are those people who took to the streets, and have now just as unexpectedly disappeared?

Apparently, the former protesters aren’t sure themselves. The social composition of the failed 'snow revolution' has been variously described, but the terminological confusion that this created only goes to demonstrate the acute identity crisis of the protesters. Identification and self-identification were focused around two seemingly interchangeable terms: 'middle class' and 'creative class'. Members of the opposition themselves declared that the 2011-2012 protests were a movement of the creative class. Those who did not support the white ribbon wearers still talk of the opposition-minded in derogatory terms (kreakly – creatives) in the pro-Putin media and social networks.

Just like the 19th century Russian intelligentsia’s love for Marxism, in the 2000s, Russians became obsessed with the theory of the creative class.

The Russian translation of Richard Florida's 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class. And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life appeared in 2005. This concept soon became a source of inspiration for people who believed Russia possessed 'a capacity for innovation' and 'a knowledge-based economy', as well as those who believed that progress would be possible without actually changing the political system. The phrase itself quickly became fashionable: ‘creative class’ became part of everyone’s vocabulary (whether you believed in it or not). Yet discussions on topics such as 'Is there a creative class in Russia?' demonstrated first and foremost that the participants had not read Florida.

There was, of course, no creative class in Russia, or certainly not the phenomenon that Florida was writing about. For Florida, a creative class could only emerge if certain conditions – the ‘Three T’s’ – were met: talent (a talented, well-educated, and qualified population), technology (technological infrastructure is essential for the support of business), and tolerance (a diverse community guided by the principle of 'live and let live').