P. Tolkachev
tolkachev.space04 / ResearchApplied research into the digital economy · MSU

Research

I study how technological and economic systems produce a certain kind of subject — the figure of the entrepreneur — and why this matters to the people who build platforms.

01Research statement

Today the entrepreneur is not simply a profession, nor only a business owner. It is a norm that the economic and technological order offers to everyone: be proactive, take on risk, treat yourself as a project. I study exactly how this figure is produced — by institutions, markets, platforms and the infrastructure of everyday work.

Russian capitalism is the concrete context for this question. Here the entrepreneur takes shape in the gap between the state, the market and strategies of survival — which gives a particular lens on the general theory.

My approach is applied. I don't only describe these processes; I build the very systems in which they happen: platforms, feature flags, internal tools. Understanding how product decisions shape behaviour is directly useful to engineers and product teams.

Research focus
Entrepreneurial subjectivity in the transformations of Russian capitalism: an analysis of platforms, infrastructure and the digital economy.
Research programme · Moscow State University
02Directions of interest
01

Subject

How entrepreneurial subjectivity is produced: a figure that takes on risk and treats itself as a project.

02

Capitalism

Transformations of the economic order and the kind of subject it makes the norm.

03

Russian context

The entrepreneur between state, market and survival — a concrete case for the general theory.

04

Technology

Platforms, infrastructure and product decisions as mechanisms that shape behaviour and roles.

03Why this matters to an engineer

Every product decision is about power and behaviour: what to show, to whom, on what terms. I translate the language of social theory into practical design questions — and back. This makes engineering decisions more deliberate, and the research more grounded.

All writing