Understanding Britain Today

Начало книги

In 1991 I was acutely aware of the differences in the attitudes of Soviet citizens towards economic transactions and work habits as compared with people in the West. You (or your parents) also had an image of an England in their minds which had disappeared decades ago or which had never existed. So my book concentrated on discussions of money, markets, choices and the class system. Since those days Russia has been through turbulent times and emerged with an understanding of the market as an institution which is not so very far from our understanding of it. Your debates about money and choice are almost familiar to us. And nobody now asks me questions about the workers as though we were living inside a Marxist diagram because you, too, have discovered that structures of work in a developed society are diverse and changeable. So I have abandoned the chapters on shopping in a market economy, on small businesses and on the class system in Britain - although I cannot help noticing that the postcard business in Russia is still hopelessly behind that in other countries. My British friends have too little sense of the beauties of particular places in Russia because of the lack of those postcards which I recommended!

Читать дальше →