Russia: “The New Elite” · Global Voices
Lyndon

“Join United Russia!” [image source]
Journalist Ilya Barabanov, who writes for the New Times and blogs engagingly as LJ user barabanch, wrote a laconic post a couple weeks ago that drew some interesting comments (RUS):
A young lady came to interview for a job with a friend of mine.
She's a [Young Russia] activist.
Under “Professional Accomplishments” [on her resume] the first and only line read “Participated in the inauguration of [the Russian president] Dmitry Anatol'evich Medvedev.”
A couple of comments on the post:
avdeev [punctuation and capitalization as in original]:
it's funny, but things like that have been happening for awhile
for example at RGGU [Russian State University for the Humanities] they accept [United Russia] party members into the graduate programs, and it's harder for people who haven't been vetted by the office to get in […] a couple of my friends were advised by the academic department that before turning in their grad school applications they should pay a visit to the local United Russia office, that it would be more correct and predictable to do so
at the office it was suggested that they write an essay about how much I love the motherland, i.e. [United Russia], and how much I want to join the party, well they told [United Russia] to go you-know-where and they submitted their applications anyway, we'll see what happens in September
***
el_cambio:
You don't understand.
[quoting from Viktor Shenderovich‘s website (here), who also seems to have been quoting from a transcript of some kind]:
Speaking at [a panel discussion on “the new Russian elite” at the “Strategy-2020 Forum”],[Vladislav Surkov] called on the participants in the discussion to “determine what the Russian elite is.”  In response to this, producer Andrei Fomin suggested compiling a “list of the elite,” and Andrei [Korkunov], general director of the Odintsovo candy factory, noted that such a list already exists, and pointed out the list of participants in the presidential inauguration in the Kremlin.