Working-class life and struggle in post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

Drawing on multi-sited ethnography, this research examines the everyday lives and struggles of workers in two industrial neighbourhoods located in the Russian cities of Moscow and Yekaterinburg. The study addresses three interrelated sub-themes: workers' lives in urban industrial areas; the everyday inequalities they face; and the everyday struggles in which they engage. The data upon which the project is based includes 53 interviews and more than 150 pages of field notes and visual data produced by the researcher and research participants. The analysis of this material is conducted through the lens of a theoretical framework constructed through critical engagement with three key bodies of thought: Williams's (2009 [1977]) understanding of working-class life and structure of feeling; Bourdieu's (2010 [1984]) concepts of a sense of place and class habitus; and theories of everyday resistance and struggle (Foucault, 1991 [1977]; Scott, 1989, 1990). The study's overarching research question asks why workers living in particular socio-material conditions become engaged in specific forms of everyday struggles - or do not. The thesis criticises the dominant argument of the 'patience' and 'passivity' of workers and their 'incapability' of resistance and collective protest. In contrast to this, the thesis argues that in Russia workers are engaged in a wide range of everyday struggles taking place in industrial neighbourhoods that allow them to improve life from the bottom-up or to make it more bearable. The Russian neoliberal authoritarian regime, which combines Soviet and post-Soviet structures, generates possibilities for multiple forms of struggles, on the one hand; but on the other, it produces objective barriers that prevent workers and other subordinate groups from involvement in open political actions. The thesis explores how workers form multiple dispositions and subjectivities, including those of resisting and protesting, through their involvement in practical activities and social networks in their industrial neighbourhoods and beyond. The particular consciousness of workers, both practical and political, emerges within these specific socio-material environments as workers' reactions to the challenges of neoliberalism. The thesis shows that workers imagine Russian society as divided between the rich and the poor and explains how they re-signify 'the working class' as a social category that comprises both industrial (Soviet, socialist, residual) and post-industrial (post-Soviet, post-socialist, emergent) meanings. Finally, instead of the Marxist understanding of 'class struggle' as an irreconcilable conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie, I argue we must analyse class struggles in terms of everyday struggles taking the forms of everyday resistance. Doing so helps to explain the spontaneous and organised collective actions of workers against the expansion of neoliberal policies and the downsizing of the social welfare state in post-Soviet Russia.

Date of Award	19 Mar 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Hilary Pilkington (Main Supervisor) & Wendy Bottero (Co Supervisor)