1991 et l’accumulation du capital institutionnel: le cas des dirigeants des clubs politiques informels

The end of the 1980s was an exceptional time when recruitment to politics and journalism was open in Russia. Leaders of groups in the opposition (what was called the “informal” and then the “democratic” movement) rushed into the two major pathways for reorienting careers as legislators or journalists. Most of them had been on the fringes of the Soviet system, and were mainly equipped with resources drawn from their activism. They were appointed to offices beyond what they could have hoped for. Although their career trajectories veered before 1991, this year marked a turning point as these persons accumulated new institutional capital. They assumed roles that were not yet fully codified and that they helped redefine, since the new institutions with which they were affiliated were in the throes of change. This creative redefinition led them to hold often divergent positions in their new professions, a probable factor underlying their movement’s dispersal. The study of these career trajectories lets us glimpse the conditions enabling them to remain in the sphere of power beyond 1991, thus revealing how little institutions could lastingly incorporate players who were not ‘conformist”.