Risk-taking and Business Entry in Russia — Blurred Borders of a Life Course
Abstract
The article describes some risks and strategies of coping with them while launching a small family business in Russia. Entering into business was a strategy for a household to cope with the difficult material conditions, which, after trials and errors, led to the accumulation of initial funds. For example, participation in the shuttle trade, which allowed to provide the initial capital to create their own business in the future. Despite the fact that this research project is based on interviews collected in the 2000s, this topic has not only become less urgent, but, on the contrary, in the conditions of the prolonged crisis, the interest in the experience of creating one's own business and practices of coping with the attendant risks is only increasing.
Acknowledgments
The work was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Humanitarian Research within the framework of the project 15-03-00421 "Trajectories of life courses of the residents of St. Petersburg in post-Soviet Russia: intergenerational analysis" (2014-2017).
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