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A Role Reversal in Russia

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Lyuba Polikarpova sits clenched as tight as a fist, rocking distractedly on a wobbly wooden stool, bitter and bemused over the lot life has dealt her.

Only 43 and in what should be the prime of her career as a math teacher, she earns so little that she has to live off of her 19-year-old daughter.

“I can’t imagine why they pay her so much just to sit in an office and type on a computer,” says Polikarpova, gesturing toward Natalya, a computer science student and part-time travel agent who makes $500 a month.

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“She earns more than her father and I put together, and for what?” Polikarpova wonders aloud, genuinely at a loss to understand the new world taking shape around her. “She doesn’t even have a proper education.”

But Natalya has something those of her parents’ generation can never recover: a clean slate. Ignorant of the ways of the Communist era, the industrious young woman balancing school and work and untold thousands of others like her are mastering the new skills of the post-Soviet era and slipping seamlessly into the fields of business and commerce alien to older generations.

And with financial success has come a profound responsibility, an unspoken obligation to carry their families through an economic transition that has wiped out the working world as those over 40 knew it.

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As Russia plods along the path toward a stable market economy, those in their 20s and 30s are shouldering increasingly heavy loads as their extended families’ chief breadwinners.

Sociologists fear that the shift of support duties also is disturbing traditional relationships within the Russian family, toppling the generational hierarchy and gouging at the self-worth of those reared to respect intellectual prowess over remuneration. The changes are even causing some young people to go to work at unreasonably early ages, mostly doing odd jobs.

While the demands of Russia’s dramatic transition may be robbing the young of a carefree early adulthood, those bursting onto the business scene with fresh ideas and youthful exuberance tend to accept the burdens gladly and endeavor to ease the psychological toll being inflicted on their parents.

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“My mother just wants for me to be happy. She isn’t bothered too much by the fact that the changes have been unfair to her generation,” Sergei Skatershchikov, the 24-year-old founder and chief executive officer of a publishing empire, says of the parent he supports financially but still heeds as the voice of greater wisdom.

“The support issue doesn’t change her view of herself,” the CEO of Skate Press says. “If she thinks I’m doing something that could lead to a crisis, she feels she has a say in the matter--and she does. She’s my mother.”

His mother, Irina Malakhova, may have an easier time coping with dependence than Polikarpova because of the several zeros separating their children’s respective incomes. Malakhova doesn’t have to feel guilty accepting help from a son in possession of millions.

No Burden, No Choice

The young workers share nearly identical views that the current trend in family economics is neither a burden nor a choice. And their acceptance of responsibility for relatives edged to the economic roadside of the new Russia is quickly becoming commonplace.

“What is happening in Russia is unprecedented in the world. Financial and economic power has been passed from people in their 60s to those in their 30s, or even younger,” says Yuri Milner, the 35-year-old CEO of the mammoth Alliance Menatep financial industrial group that has a $6-billion annual turnover and 200,000 employees. “The generations in between were simply lost. They never got their turn or their share of the benefits.”

Milner doubts many from this disinherited generation can be retrained and incorporated into the modern job market because their education and experience were oriented around an economic world that no longer exists.

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“If I look at my own practices, I have hired a lot of people over the past year and not one of them was over 35,” he says, arguing that it is not age discrimination as much as recognition that old labor values make those forged under the old system unsuitable for today’s jobs.

During the more than seven decades that Russia was guided by Marxist theory, initiative was stifled, and even at the most vaunted institutions the work ethic was enshrined in the Communist-era quip: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

Today, the competition is cutthroat and the pace too impatient for many in middle age to catch up, especially in the business spheres that have opened only in the last decade.

“There’s a big generation gap in terms of how people are working,” Skatershchikov says. “But there is still no free lunch. The greater initiative shown by younger workers is mostly limited to the areas of employment not tainted by the old ways, like computer sciences and marketing and public relations. You don’t see a lot of successful people of any age in ferrous metals.”

With opportunities skewed toward those just out of college and unblemished by obsolete ways, Milner says most of those in his generation are willing to accept responsibility for relatives who have suffered as a consequence of economic revolution.

That includes his father and mother, respectively an economist and a physician whose salaries from once-prestigious government institutions have eroded to a state best described as symbolic.

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A Delicate Balance

Providing for parents long before their retirement and during what should be the prime incoming-earning period of their careers is a delicate balancing act for prosperous young people whose success can be a source of parental pride and at the same time a galling reminder of a generational reversal of fortune.

“It’s easier for all of us if the gifts come indirectly,” says Milner, who prefers to pay his parents’ bills quietly and treat them to trips abroad rather than risk offending them with cash handouts.

Dmitri Zelenin, a 34-year-old partner in the Microdyn export-import conglomerate, has dealt with some of the indelicacies of role reversal with face-saving largess. He has set up a subsidiary business for his 57-year-old father, Vadim, so he can play a part in the new economic world and maintain at least the appearance of financial independence.

A former researcher at the secretive and elite Radio-Technical Institute that designed antimissile systems, Vadim Zelenin says pride in his son’s success is more than enough to assuage the insecurities suffered from the blow dealt by history to his own career.

“Success does seem to depend on what generation you belong to,” says the elder Zelenin. “Young people are less constricted. They find it much easier to adapt to the new demands. Not everyone is capable of changing.”

He doubts many of his former colleagues from the research institute have made the transition into private business, and he appears to bear no ill will toward the youthful movers and shakers who have supplanted his own generation.

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“It will take at least one full generation for this age imbalance to correct itself,” he says of the brighter opportunities for young workers. “The country will have found its way out of the current crisis by [then].”

In the meantime, he says, he considers it “healthy” for young entrepreneurs like his son to bear a disproportionate weight in supporting an extended family.

Sociologists tend to agree that taking care of the reform era’s casualties boosts the self-esteem and maturity of young workers.

“It is much more difficult for those on the receiving end than for those who are giving. Many middle-aged Russians today feel like kept pets,” says Mikhail Matskovsky, head of Moscow’s International Center for Human Values.

“It used to be that most young married couples expected to get material support from their parents. They were often forced to live with their parents well into the years when they had their own children. But today all this has changed,” he says. “Now many parents cannot afford even to support themselves.”

But Matskovsky believes middle-aged workers’ comfort level in depending on their offspring has much to do with the social perceptions of their children’s line of work. Service industries--which are booming now--were regarded as demeaning during the Soviet era, when only those who failed in the more prestigious realms of production and academia were condemned to wait on others. Profiting from sales and other trade activities also was considered exploitative and shady.

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“The mentality is changing, but very slowly,” says Matskovsky.

Stepan Osipov’s parents are at once grateful for the assistance their 24-year-old son can provide as a successful real estate agent and resentful of the commercial values that have drawn their son away from medical school into what they see as the menacing world of business.

“They are proud of my success, but I know they would be happier if I had become a doctor,” says Osipov, whose father was a respected surgeon until illness struck five years ago.

With an annual salary exceeding $40,000, Osipov can afford to take care of his parents and grandparents as well as his wife and baby daughter.

“I hope I will always be in a position to take care of them,” says the young man on whom four generations depend for support.

A Growing Trend

There are no statistics available to shed light on how many young workers are de facto heads of their parents’ households, but most observers and analysts of Russia’s revolution agree the young are increasingly relied on by older relatives and that it is a trend likely to intensify in the continuing quest for a market economy.

“It would be interesting to study how the income differences among the generations affect each person’s role in the family,” says Oksana Kuchmayeva, a senior researcher at the Institute of the Family under the government Ministry for Social Defense. “I suspect the more a young person earns, the more influential and decisive his views are on those who depend on him.”

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She judges the huge responsibility placed on the shoulders of successful workers in their 20s and 30s as a largely positive development for Russian society, noting that this age group in more developed and stable countries tends to be the most reckless.

But she is worried about a corresponding trend toward children going to work early, noting that an institute study last year found 25% of Moscow’s boys and girls younger than 16 were helping to support their families.

Aside from the bright, young professionals populating the new firms and offices, an army of street urchins has appeared to hawk newspapers and magazines, wash car windshields at intersections, fetch fast food and run other errands.

“We can only hope this trend toward early labor eases as living conditions improve,” says Kuchmayeva, who says she doubts young Russians will have the luxury of leading normal lives for at least another generation.

Irreversible Change

Even those who doubt the wisdom of abandoning Russia’s Communist experiment seem to accept that the changes are irreversible and that the future of the country is in the hands of its youth.

“We can’t go back to the old ways, even if we want to,” says Lyuba Polikarpova. “The young people would all be against it. There would be a terrible blood bath.”

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Vadim Zelenin, the father-partner at the trading conglomerate, more readily accepts that Russia has no other choice for its future and should regard the youthful breadwinners with admiration and respect.

“Our success is predetermined,” he says. “But the only way the country will get through this is on the shoulders of the younger generation.”

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