Living as Before: Keeping Up with the Joneses after Repression

• In Event: Advances in International Political History

Abstract

How does repression influence middle class groups’ social reproduction? While influential scholarship recognizes their importance in the origin, development, and resilience of democracy, less is known about these groups’ responses to episodes of state repression, common throughout history. We explore the effects of Soviet repressions on the survival choices and reproduction of Tzarist middle-class strata, combining aggregated regional data on repressions and social composition with novel survey evidence, archival, and memoir sources. We find that repression pushed a share of Imperial estates of nobles, clergy, merchants, and urban bourgeoisie towards identity-enhancing behaviors, pursued in modified forms. Throughout the Soviet period, these relatively well-educated estates in places with high-intensity repression were more likely than others to pursue university education and eschew risky behaviors. However, they reverted to habitual pursuits deemed previously dangerous like entrepreneurship when the threat of punishment subsided. Findings contribute to literatures on repression, social resilience, and developmental-political persistence in space.

Authors

• Tomila Lankina, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Katerina Tertytchnaya, University College London

• Alexander M. Libman, Freie Universität Berlin