We investigate the persistence of the old Tsarist elites during the 20th century after 1917. The Russian Revolution brought to power the extreme left who declared equality as one of the major goals of the new Soviet regime. The Soviet government nationalized major assets, undertook many policy initiatives affirmative to the poor, and openly discriminated against the former high-social status groups. A study of the social mobility of former elites in such an extreme environment allows us to analyze to what extent individual outcomes depend on one’s ancestors if major attributes and means of high status – like property and privileges – are lost. We measure the relative representation of Tsarist elite surnames among Soviet and modern Russian elites and document a quicker decline of old elites’ representation at the start of the Soviet era, but mostly for political and military outcomes during Stalin’s reign. Over the longer haul (1914-2022) we find that, despite a series of post-revolutionary shocks, the Tsarist elites demonstrated substantial persistence with little variation between elites from different backgrounds. However, the persistence rate of 0.5 is smaller than the multi-generational estimates (based on the same surname methodology) the literature reports for other countries (0.7-0.8).