The lives of wealthy people have long held an allure to many, but the lives of wealthy Russians pose a particular fascination. Having achieved their riches over the course of a single generation, the top 0.1 percent of Russian society have become known for ostentatious lifestyles and tastes. Nevertheless, I argue in this book that their story is far more complex than the caricatures suggest.
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Books
Gender and Choice after Socialism
This edited volume explores the complexity of choice in Russia and Ukraine. It seeks to understand how the new choices available to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union have interacted with and influenced gender identities and gender, and how choice has become one of the driving forces of class-formation in countries which were, in the Soviet era, supposedly classless.
Co-editors: Lynne Attwood and Marina Yusupova
Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives: Area Studies and Global Theories
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. Two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union discredited the idea of socialism for generations to come. It was seen as representing the final and irreversible victory of capitalism. This triumphant dominance was barely challenged until the 2008 financial crisis threw the Western world into a state of turmoil.
Co-editor: Pete Duncan (UCL SSEES)
Russia’s Media Elite
In this book, we will tell the history of post-Soviet media and politics from perestroika to that of Putin’s post-Crimean Russia. It will be structured around the stories of Russia’s most prominent media managers and editors-in-chief and the outlets they either set up or ran for many years. Dissecting today’s media elites in Russia, we will scrutinise their entanglement with the Kremlin and assess their potential to play a significant role in re-democratising Russian politics.
Co-editor: Ilya Yablokov (University of Leeds)