Tear Off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia

by Sheila Fitzpatrick

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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 show more 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 1920's and 1930's, 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 1990's--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. show less

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29+ Works 2,082 Members
Sheila Fitzpatrick is an Australian historian, born in 1941 in Melbourne Australia. She earned her BA from the University of Melbourne and received her PhD from St Antony's College, Oxford University. She is the a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, and Emerita Distinguished Service Professor at the University of show more Chicago. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and book reviews. Her first book was The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet organization of education and the arts under Lunacharsky, 1917-1921 (1970). Her recent work includes My Father's Daughter (2010), A Spy in the Archives (2013), and On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics. Princeton University Press (2015) for which she was a joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2016, Nonfiction. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Common Knowledge

Original publication date
2005

Classifications

Genres
Nonfiction, History, Sociology, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Politics and Government
DDC/MDS
305.0947Society, government, & cultureSocial sciences, sociology & anthropologySocial group - Age, Gender, EthnicityOther subdivisionsHistory By RegionEurope
LCC
HN523 .F58Social sciencesSocial history and conditions. Social problems. Social reformSocial history and conditions. Social problems.By region or country
BISAC

Statistics

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35
Popularity
818,493
Rating
(4.00)
Languages
English
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
3