ABSTRACT

This chapter explains the context of twenty-first century Russia and insistently to wider classed concerns and class processes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union not only marked historical change but could justifiably be seen as having epochal historical significance. The very temporal proximity of the changes to the political, economic, social and cultural spheres mean that attendant changes to class relations can hardly be ignored. The hate-figures of the English chavs or the Russian gopniki are only the most extreme examples of the ways in which class distinctions are drawn through the ascription of negative identities. The naturalisation of social characteristics is one very powerful form that such a sociodicy can take. In other words, the 'correct' middle-class social competences, tastes, distinctions, and dispositions are always learned, but that learning is eclipsed in a kind of 'social magic' that turns them into natural characteristics.