Personal, Private, Proprietary – What does Property they Own Mean to Russians?

Abstract

The paper utilizes normative documents to describe the institutional conditions of formation and increase of personal and private property of the population of the USSR and the Russian Federation, in which the basic object of ownership is housing; the characteristics of the public state discourse in relation to such property are defined on the example of the messages of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly, and the data of sociological surveys and household surveys show how Russians themselves treat it. The state policy is shifting from encouraging citizens to acquire property, primarily residential real estate, and bringing it into the zone of formal (registrable) rights to the use of property in controlling functions. In the public discourse since the early 2000s, the emphasis has shifted from the protection of citizens’ property rights to financial instruments related to it (housing mortgage, property taxation); property is associated with the private, family sphere. The attitude of the population to property is generally consistent with this discourse: the dominant object of ownership of the majority of Russians is occupied housing; its purchase, but not its possession, is problematized.