Bogdanov I.Ya. Small business and currency oligarchate development trends in Russia since 2014. Economic development of Russia. 2026. Vol. 33. No. 6. Pp. 139-142.

Текст статьи/выпуска на сайте журнала URL: https://ed-russia.ru/archive/68679/ (дата обращения 03.11.2026)

Abstract

This article presents an economic and sociological analysis of the divergent development trajectories of small and medium-sized businesses and large private capital, defined as the "currency oligarchy," in the Russian Federation from 2014 to 2026. It is found that exogenous shocks, including sanctions pressure, the pandemic, and currency crises, are catalyzing the deconcentration of small businesses and, simultaneously, the consolidation and rapid growth of the capital of ultra-large beneficiaries. T2he focus is on the 2026 indicator, namely, the closure of 209,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the first quarter, with the number of dollar billionaires reaching a historical maximum. The article substantiates the thesis of the formation of an institutional trap, in which administrative and fiscal burdens redistribute resources from atomized small businesses to oligopolistic structures incorporated into raw material export and state-distribution models. The study’s scientific novelty lies in a comprehensive institutional comparison of the dynamics of mass entrepreneurship versus ultra-large capital. This analysis reveals that successive crisis shocks have consistently served as a mechanism for redistributing markets and resources from weak, fragmented, and atomized actors to powerful interest groups affiliated with the state apparatus. These findings provide strong grounds to conclude that a stable neo-institutional environment is taking shape in modern Russia-one that reproduces social and economic inequality in its most extreme and socially dangerous forms. The study concludes that the trend toward a systemic and accelerating decline in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises-culminating in the closure of 209,000 such entities in the first quarter of 2026 alone-is unfolding in tandem with the strengthening position of the "currency oligarchy," a group whose numbers and aggregate wealth have reached historic highs according to Forbes rankings. A comparison of these dynamics demonstrates that these processes are not merely parallel events coinciding by chance, but rather interconnected elements of a single institutional model of socio-economic organization.