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Tear Off the Masks! : Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia / Sheila Fitzpatrick.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2005]Copyright date: ©2005Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource : 10 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691122458
  • 9781400843732
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305 .0947 0904 22
LOC classification:
  • HN523 .F58 2005eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE. Becoming Soviet -- PART I. Class Identities -- CHAPTER TWO. The Bolshevik Invention Of -- CHAPTER THREE. Class Identities In NEP Society -- CHAPTER FOUR. Class and Soslovie -- PART II. Lives -- CHAPTER FIVE. Lives under Fire -- CHAPTER SIX. The Two Faces of Anastasia -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Story of a Peasant Striver -- CHAPTER EIGHT. Women's Lives -- PART III. Appeals -- CHAPTER NINE. Supplicants and Citizens -- CHAPTER TEN. Patrons and Clients -- PART IV. Denunciations -- CHAPTER ELEVEN. Signals from Below -- CHAPTER TWELVE. Wives' Tales -- PART V. Impostures -- CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The World of Ostap Bender -- CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Con Man as Jew -- Afterword -- CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Becoming Post-Soviet -- Suggested Further Reading -- Index
Summary: 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400843732

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE. Becoming Soviet -- PART I. Class Identities -- CHAPTER TWO. The Bolshevik Invention Of -- CHAPTER THREE. Class Identities In NEP Society -- CHAPTER FOUR. Class and Soslovie -- PART II. Lives -- CHAPTER FIVE. Lives under Fire -- CHAPTER SIX. The Two Faces of Anastasia -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Story of a Peasant Striver -- CHAPTER EIGHT. Women's Lives -- PART III. Appeals -- CHAPTER NINE. Supplicants and Citizens -- CHAPTER TEN. Patrons and Clients -- PART IV. Denunciations -- CHAPTER ELEVEN. Signals from Below -- CHAPTER TWELVE. Wives' Tales -- PART V. Impostures -- CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The World of Ostap Bender -- CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Con Man as Jew -- Afterword -- CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Becoming Post-Soviet -- Suggested Further Reading -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)