Kuznetsov E. A., Mikhailovskaya V. A. Tourist industries and the “right to the city”: Constructing local identity in post-Soviet Sortavala through the access to tourism resources // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №4. P. 40-71.

EDN: DYUCXN

Annotation

The article considers grassroots economic practices in the tourism sector of Sortavala, a town in northwestern Russia, which has undergone significant transformation following the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of international borders in the 2020s. In the absence of large industrial enterprizes, domestic tourism has become a primary economic activity for local residents. The authors focus on tourism crafts — f lexible, small-scale, and often informal practices that aim at self-sufficiency — to show how they adapt to the region’s unstable social-economic conditions. These practices differ from both precarious wage labor and formal entrepreneurship, representing a distinct mode of engagement with the tourist economy, which is widely perceived as the only viable and strategically promising development path. Based on the qualitative study conducted in 2023–2024, the authors argue that access to tourism resources (places, infrastructure, narratives, and natural environments), which can be monetized through tourist interactions, serves as the central factor of participation in this economy. This access is unevenly distributed, has become a key site of social conflicts, and serves as not only an economic opportunity but also a mechanism for expressing and enacting a sense of belonging. Through tourism crafts, local actors assert a form of the “right to the city” — the right not only to inhabit but also to actively shape urban and natural spaces. Thus, grassroots involvement in tourism functions as a medium for articulating and renegotiating local identity.

Keywords

Sortavala, tourism economy, informal economy, tourism crafts, tourism resources, right to the city, local identity.  

About the authors

Egor A. Kuznetsov, Research Intern, Center for Sociocultural and Ethnolinguistic Research, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE University). Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000, Russia.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Varvara A. Mikhailovskaya, Research Intern, Center for Sociocultural and Ethnolinguistic Research, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (HSE University). Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000, Russia.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

Gusakov T.Yu. Rural informal economy of the Crimean village Novoalekseevka // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №4. P. 107-129.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-4-107-129

Annotation

The article considers the situation in the Crimean village as a result of the dynamic development of informal economy in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author tries to adapt the existing classifications of informal economy to the specific features of rural Crimea, in which informal relations are primarily determined by the exogenous forces such as the return of deported peoples, the collapse of the collective farms system and peculiarities of the Ukrainian state building. The Crimean countryside became a hostage of the social-economic transformations of the post-Soviet period, and found the only way to adapt and survive under the “wild capitalism” in the refusal to follow the rules of ineffective formal institutions and in replacing them with informal ones.
“Self-reliance” became the main slogan of the Crimean village in the ‘dashing 1990s’. Ethnic, ideological and intercultural disagreements and a lack of trust determined a new model of coexistence of rural residents — a commonalty (an analogue of the pre-revolutionary rural community) constituted by a network of informal ties. Combinations of various mental features determine specific types of informal economy such as a traditional shift to trade and agriculture due to the available resource base. Transformations of the institutional environment and social-economic stabilization in the 2000s contributed to the reduction of informal sector in the rural economy of the Crimea.

Keywords

Crimea, countryside, informal economy, shadow economy, agriculture, peasantization, commonalty

About the author

Timur Y. Gusakov, Junior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.