Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Sociology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Significant and rapid social change has occurred in Russia in the recent decade. With the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the former socialist block, Russian society entered a new stage of development, a stage of transformation towards a capitalist society with a democratic political system. In the course of this transformation, a new social group of Russian private capital owners has emerged. / This research focuses on the political attitudes and political participation of Russian businessmen who own and manage their own capital. In particular, it examines the extent to which capital owners are willing to support the consolidation of the democratic regime in Russia. The analysis was based on interviews with 60 capital owners conducted in Moscow, the capital of Russia. I examine their attitudes towards democracy, democratic institutions and democratic procedures, along with their ways of political participation in correlation with the size and origin of the capital that the businessmen own, controlling for age, education and political past. The purpose of this analysis was to establish if structural conditions such as the size and origin of the capital might play a role in a capital owners' pro-liberal political orientation. / Three main conclusions emerge from this research: (1) Russian capital owners are not uniformly pro-liberal in their political orientation, some businessmen being hostile to democratic political rule, and others having only limited pro-liberal political attitudes; (2) those capital owners who have pro-liberal political attitudes, limited or not, are the least likely to participate politically; (3) owners of small and medium sized independent type capital constitute the most pro-democratic group among Russian businessmen.

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