Estate Structure of Post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

As opposed to traditional methods of stratification research, in this paper, the author is trying to apply the method of exploring the estate structure of the Russian Empire, the USSR and contemporary Russia. The paper demonstrates, that estates have been the basic elements of Russian social structure instead of classes, and will continue to be such in the nearest future. There were certain estates in the Russian Empire, in the Soviet Union there were other types, and, finally, there are now forming new estates in contemporary Russia. Essentially, the transformations of estate order correspond to transformations in Russia. The periods, during which certain estates are being substituted with others, can be characterized as distempers, perestroykas or revolutions. At these periods temporary class antagonisms between the rich and the poor occur, which are just incompatible with estate structure because of the ‘unfairness’ of the latter. After the post-revolution estates have formed, class stratification is eliminated. It is peculiar for the Russian society, as opposed to other social orders, that estate and class structures coexist not synchronously, but diachronically, replacing each other sequentially.