The estate origins of democracy in Russia

The Bolsheviks not only toppled the tsarist monarchy to install a communist government a century ago, but also ostensibly flattened the class system with the ruthless efficiency of a steamroller. The 1917 revolution created a dictatorship of the proletariat and was a big step towards establishing the classless society advocated by Karl Marx. Under the communists' monochromatic ideology, virtually no trace of the old bourgeoisie was evident in the prototypical Soviet citizen. Or was it? In her new book, The estate origins of democracy in Russia, Tomila V. Lankina draws on archival evidence to challenge, and perhaps shatter, this long-held assumption. Lankina presents a rare portrait of hidden middle-class, bourgeois lives, quietly flourishing, or at least enduring, in a subterranean economy in Soviet Russia. Relying on demographic and other statistical analyses along with empirical evidence such as old letters, diaries and memoirs, Lankina documents how, despite political dogma to the contrary, the bourgeoisie of pre-revolution imperial Russia not only fared quite well in the Soviet era, but quietly remained among the elite in the arts, academia, medicine and entrepreneurial society. Her findings are at once promising and discouraging for today's world, offering evidence of inspiring social resilience yet also of how difficult it can be to reduce inequality even when drastic measures are taken to attempt it

Bourgeoisie · Communism · Democracy · Economic history · Elite · Ideology · Middle class · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Proletariat · Sociology · History · Law · Soviet and Russian History

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• Response to Comments on Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia

  Open Access•Tomila V Lankina•Nationalities Papers•2024

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