ABSTRACT
The transformations from a Soviet to a market society, which had begun in Russia in the 1990s, raised a fundamental issue for the analysis of social change, which is our concern in this chapter: what happens to men and women when basic social structures and institutions, which have hitherto provided meaning and order in their lives, begin to change radically; fragment, even vanish from view? How do men and women develop new systems of meaning and order to make sense of their changing world? How far do they wish, or are they able, to make new kinds of life choices? And, in particular, to what extent do their own private resources, through their personal and family experiences, either constrain or encourage their adaptation to radical change?
