When revolutions happen, they change the rules of everyday life--both the codified rules concerning the social and legal classifications of citizens and the unwritten rules about how individuals present themselves to others. This occurred in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which laid the foundations of the Soviet state, and again in 1991, when that state collapsed. Tear Off the Masks! is about the remaking of identities in these times of upheaval. Sheila Fitzpatrick here brings together in a single volume years of distinguished work on how individuals literally constructed their autobiographies, defended them under challenge, attempted to edit the "file-selves" created by bureaucratic identity documentation, and denounced others for "masking" their true social identities. Marxist class-identity labels--"worker," "peasant," "intelligentsia," "bourgeois"--were of crucial importance to the Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s, but it turned out that the determination of a person's class was much more complicated than anyone expected. This in turn left considerable scope for individual creativity and manipulation.
Outright imposters, both criminal and political, also make their appearance in this book. The final chapter describes how, after decades of struggle to construct good Soviet socialist personae, Russians had to struggle to make themselves fit for the new, post-Soviet world in the 1990s--by "de-Sovietizing" themselves. Engaging in style and replete with colorful detail and characters drawn from a wealth of sources, Tear Off the Masks! offers unique insight into the elusive forms of self-presentation, masking, and unmasking that made up Soviet citizenship and continue to resonate in the post-Soviet world.
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When revolutions happen, they change the rules of everyday life. This occurred in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which laid the foundations of the Soviet state, and again in 1991, when that state collapsed. This book is about the remaking of identities in these times of upheaval.
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List of Illustrations ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Becoming Soviet 3 PART I. Class Identities 27 CHAPTER TWO: The Bolshevik Invention of Class 29 CHAPTER THREE: Class Identities in NEP Society 51 CHAPTER FOUR: Class and Soslovie 71 PART II. Lives 89 CHAPTER FIVE: Lives under Fire 91 CHAPTER SIX: The Two Faces of Anastasia 102 CHAPTER SEVEN: Story of a Peasant Striver 114 CHAPTER EIGHT: Women's Lives 125 PART III. Appeals 153 CHAPTER NINE: Supplicants and Citizens 155 CHAPTER TEN: Patrons and Clients 182 PART IV. Denunciations 203 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Signals from Below 205 CHAPTER TWELVE: Wives' Tales 240 PART V. Impostures 263 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The World of Ostap Bender 265 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Con Man as Jew 282 AFTERWORD 301 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Becoming Post-Soviet 303 Selected Further reading 319 Index 323
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"Sheila Fitzpatrick's work has defined social history of the Soviet period: it is the reference against which others are measured and to which they react."--J. Arch Getty, Slavic Review
"What makes Tear off the Masks! so appealing and why the pieces work so well together is that they cover a broad range of experiences associated with what it meant to be a Soviet citizen. Certainly, it will be a boon to the field to have the book available for courses. Tear off the Masks! is so appealingly written, full of wit and occasional humor, that it could serve as a model of the historian's craft. What we get is a phenomenal, nearly unparalleled depth of research combined with a transparency about research methods that invites the reader into this particular(ly skilled) historian's laboratory."—Lewis Siegelbaum, Michigan State University, author of Stalinism as a Way of Life"Tear off the Masks! will be indispensable to students of Soviet history and valuable to scholars as well. Not only does it make available to the reader pioneering writings on important subjects such as defining class in the Soviet era and the institutional operations of Soviet patronage, alongside new work, but it is held together by focus on one important theme: 'the pragmatics of Soviet identity,' as it might be called. Fitzpatrick gives a vivid, sympathetic, and often entertaining picture of Soviet citizens surviving (barely) the class war (or, conversely, clawing their way up the ladder when circumstances allowed), and engaged in battles for existence of a different kind in the 1930s and 1940s."—Catriona Kelly, University of Oxford, author of Refining Russia
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What makes Tear off the Masks! so appealing and why the pieces work so well together is that they cover a broad range of experiences associated with what it meant to be a Soviet citizen. Certainly, it will be a boon to the field to have the book available for courses. Tear off the Masks! is so appealingly written, full of wit and occasional humor, that it could serve as a model of the historian's craft. What we get is a phenomenal, nearly unparalleled depth of research combined with a transparency about research methods that invites the reader into this particular(ly skilled) historian's laboratory. -- Lewis Siegelbaum, Michigan State University, author of "Stalinism as a Way of Life" Tear off the Masks! will be indispensable to students of Soviet history and valuable to scholars as well. Not only does it make available to the reader pioneering writings on important subjects such as defining class in the Soviet era and the institutional operations of Soviet patronage, alongside new work, but it is held together by focus on one important theme: 'the pragmatics of Soviet identity,' as it might be called. Fitzpatrick gives a vivid, sympathetic, and often entertaining picture of Soviet citizens surviving (barely) the class war (or, conversely, clawing their way up the ladder when circumstances allowed), and engaged in battles for existence of a different kind in the 1930s and 1940s. -- Catriona Kelly, University of Oxford, author of "Refining Russia"
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780691122458
Publisert
2005-07-25
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Vekt
482 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, U, 06, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
352
Forfatter