Vanke, A. (2023). Reconceptualising the Working Class in Contemporary Russia. In: K. Odhav and J. Govender (eds.) Handbook on Sociology of Inequalities in BRICS Countries. London: Frontpage Publications, pp. 282–319.

Abstract

The article aims at critical reconsideration of the concept of the working class elaborated by ‘Western’ social theorists and reflects its application in empirical research beyond Western societies on the example of contemporary Russia. The author critically reviews the key approaches to class analysis and argues that the Russian working-class is strongly differentiated and includes different fractions. For that reason it is more correctly to speak about working classes rather than the working class. The article builds on comparison between the concepts of the post-Soviet working class and the post-socialist working class. The author comes to the conclusion that the difference between two concepts lies in divisions between ‘locality’ and ‘globality’, ‘transformative’ and ‘transitory’ processes. The post-Soviet working class is a local concept meaning specific temporality and territoriality; it is applicable to genealogical analysis of structural changes in former Soviet republics and countries of the former Soviet Bloc. The post-socialist working class is a broader concept addressing to the specific type of social orders and applicable to the analysis of former socialist states in relation to working-class everyday experiences. At the same time, both concepts will be more effective, if their application will be supplemented by critical reflection on gender, age and ethnicity in empirical examination of post-Soviet/ post-socialist realities. In such a case, critically driven research on the post-Soviet/ post-socialist working class should consider working-class femininity and masculinity, age and generational aspects of working-class existence, as well as ethnic differences, contributing to everyday and other inequalities, which working-class people face in daily life in contemporary Russia.

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Content (in russ)