On the Way to the Mass Entrepreneurship in Russia: Currents State and Trends

Abstract

Despite the long history of market reforms in the country, the quality of Russian entrepreneurial ecosystems does not fit to the overall economic development of the country. The causes of this situation are poorly investigated even though there are many studies are conducted on the field of entrepreneurial climate in Russia. An explanation can be found in the field of political-economic aspects and policy of statism that has formed and strengthened in the country since the mid of the 1990th. In the present paper we analyze and discuss the current state of entrepreneurial development concerning the changing governmental political-economic policy. During the last two years, there have been certain qualitative changes, expressed in the transformation of elites' attitude to entrepreneurs. The «National entrepreneurship support» project has been introduced, and a series of impactful support programs have been launched on the regional level. Two IT platforms - 'Business Navigator' and 'My business', aimed at nascent and early staged entrepreneur's support have been successfully started. The study has a descriptive qualitative research design and also can be attributed to the Policy-Oriented Research type. In this study, we have analyzed the latest entrepreneurial statistics, GEM data, and several Russian entrepreneurial development indexes. The authors conclude that despite the appearance of stability in entrepreneurial development metrics, the current moment is a turning point, as some certain prerequisites for a qualitative increase in the entrepreneurial class have already formed in the country.

Keywords

• entrepreneurial climate
• mass entrepreneurship
• statistics of entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurship support programs