Book contents
- Reviews
- The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia
- The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Notes on Transliteration
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- 1 Theorizing Post-Revolutionary Social Resilience
- 2 From Imperial Estates to Estatist Society
- 3 Mapping Society and the Public Sphere in Imperial Russia
- 4 The Professions in the Making of Estatist Society
- 5 Education, Socialization, and Social Structure
- 6 Market Values and the Economy of Survival
- 7 Family Matters: Looking Back – and Forward – in Time
- 8 Society in Space
- 9 The Two-Pronged Middle Class: Implications for Democracy across Time and in Space
- 10 The Bourgeoisie in Communist States: Comparative Insights
- Afterword
- Supplementary Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Family Matters: Looking Back – and Forward – in Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2021
- Reviews
- The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia
- The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Notes on Transliteration
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- 1 Theorizing Post-Revolutionary Social Resilience
- 2 From Imperial Estates to Estatist Society
- 3 Mapping Society and the Public Sphere in Imperial Russia
- 4 The Professions in the Making of Estatist Society
- 5 Education, Socialization, and Social Structure
- 6 Market Values and the Economy of Survival
- 7 Family Matters: Looking Back – and Forward – in Time
- 8 Society in Space
- 9 The Two-Pronged Middle Class: Implications for Democracy across Time and in Space
- 10 The Bourgeoisie in Communist States: Comparative Insights
- Afterword
- Supplementary Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter breaks with the typical detachment of chroniclers of Russian politics from the social wavelengths that in so many ways defy conventional periodization. Stalin may have proclaimed a classless society, and inconvenient memories were “frozen” out of discourse, yet social distinctions continued to be cognitively programmed among future generations in families and in the realm of the professional, educational, and social institutions to which they were exposed. First, I discuss theorizing on historical memory. This helps us distinguish between articulated injunctions and situational staging on the one hand and unarticulated silences on the other, as expressed in choices, symbols, or artifacts. Next, I present survey results, which corroborate not only hypothesized covariance between educated estate ancestry and white-collar occupations but, intriguingly, awareness of the placement of respondents’ forbears in the imperial estate structure. In the remaining sections, I make sense of these patterns by discussing our protagonists’ journey of ancestral reconstruction; tapping into reminiscences of private spaces and public-oriented practices within them; exploring familial injunctions and artifacts that create mental cartographies and ties structuring exclusion and belonging; and, finally, discerning the descendants’ instrumentalizations of ancestry to actively delineate their place in post-communist Russian society.
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- The Estate Origins of Democracy in RussiaFrom Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class, pp. 238 - 277Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021