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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33047 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Even so, of course, many communist elites were of bourgeois middle class origin (certainly in the top decile by income distribution, and with some status and power); Xi's ancestors (before his father's rise in the CCP) were wealthy landowners in Shaanxi, Lenin was upper middle class, etc.

This wasn't the rule. Let's take a look at the postcard and see what families the top two rows were from:

  • Lenin: gentry (and was classmates with Kerensky)

  • Stalin: peasantry

  • Zinovjev: bourgeoisie

  • Kamenev: working class to middle class

  • Trotsky: bourgeoisie

  • Sokolnikov: bourgeoisie

  • Bubnov: bourgeoisie

  • Podvoysky: clergy

  • Unschlicht: burgher

  • Sverdlov: burgher

  • Nevsky: bourgeoisie

  • Uritsky: bourgeoisie

  • Bokiy: gentry

  • Ioffe: bourgeoisie

  • Molotov: working class

60%, sounds rather high. But let's compare this with, say, Politburo of 1940:

  • Stalin: peasantry

  • Voroshilov: working class

  • Kalinin: peasantry

  • Molotov: working class

  • Kaganovich: peasantry, could've been a trader

  • Andreev: peasantry

  • Mikoyan: peasantry

  • Zhdanov: clergy to PMC

  • Khruschev: working class

At most one out of nine, 11%. The purges have removed practically all traces of bougie communist elites.

In addition, the 20th century in Russia and the US alike saw colossal material gains in quality of life that quite naturally resulted in vast numbers of people rise the class hierarchies of their countries.

That's a very valid point, I agree that measuring the composition of the Soviet PMC wouldn't show us the destruction of the pre-revolution PMC.

I am not sure I can reliably estimate the average fate of the pre-revolution PMC. The actual ruling elites (political and mercantile) were replaced almost wholesale. Lenin's father was a school inspector, which might be a scary figure if you're a parent waging the culture war in modern America, but on the national level he was a nobody.

On the broad PMC level there were measures in place that punished you for belonging to a privileged class before the revolution. Until 1936 you and your children were formally disenfranchised, barred from obtaining education beyond primary, employment beyond menial jobs and so on.

I am sure that some families clawed their way out of this situation while some didn't. But I don't have statistics, only anecdotes. Fot example, I know the daughter of a "lishenets" (police detective before the revolution) who never received any education beyond primary, but married a talented peasant's son. That peasant's son became an engineer designing some pretty important classified and ultimately ended up with a government-issued apartment and a car with a personal driver, with his wife being able to pay a black market tailor and a hairdresser.

Does that count as the continued existence of the old PMC? Or is that two different families, old PMC and new PMC, bridged by marriage?

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