The estate origins of democracy in Russia: from imperial bourgeoisie to post-communist middle class
This talk is based on the author’s newly published book, The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class. The book argues that the Bolsheviks failed to obliterate the social structure of Tzarist Russia, and that these divisions continue to have implications for understanding popular support for autocracy in Putin’s Russia. The author makes this argument by analysing the transition of Tzarist Russia’s educated proto-bourgeoisie into modern high human capital status groups. In doing so, the book challenges the notion that the Soviet Union destroyed the social structure of the past and built a new, Soviet, society, with a new party and nomenklatura elite. It also argues that Soviet society is in many ways an extension of Tzarist society and its structure of estates (in Russian sosloviya) of aristocrats, clergy, the urban groups of merchants and meshchane and the overwhelmingly illiterate or poorly educated mass of peasants.
Date: 12 February 2024, 17:00
Venue: St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details: Nissan Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Professor Tomila Lankina (LSE)
Organising department: Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre
Organisers: Dr Michael Rochlitz (St Antony's College), Dr Marnie Howlett (DPIR, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: richard.ramage@sant.ox.ac.uk
Part of: RESC Monday Seminar, Hilary Term 2024
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Richard Ramage