The British Journal of Sociology 2014 Volume 65 Issue 1

Russias social upper class: from ostentation

to culturedness
Elisabeth Schimpfossl

Abstract
This article discusses examples of strategies employed by representatives of
Russias new social upper class to acquire social distinction. By the late 2000s many
of the upper-class Russians included in this study distanced themselves from the
conspicuous ostentation ascribed to the brutish 1990s. Instead, they strove to gain
legitimacy for their social position by no longer aggressively displaying their
wealth, but instead elaborating more refined and individualized tastes and
manners and reviving a more cultured image and self-image. These changes found
their expression in various modes of social distinction ranging from external signs,
such as fashion and cars, to ostentation vicariously exercised through the people
these upper-class Russians surrounded themselves with.
The article will trace these interviewees strategies for distinction in the late
2000s by discussing tastes in lifestyle and consumption as well as adornment
through sartorial signs and through vicarious ostentation, as exemplified by their
choice of female company. Changing attitudes towards vehicles and modes of
transport, with special regards to the Moscow Metro, will serve as a further illustration of modes of distinction. Crucial for this discussion is the role of the Russian/
Soviet intelligentsia, both for vicarious status assertion and elite distinction
anchored in the interviewees social backgrounds.
Keywords: Social distinction; Russia; elite; social class; glamour; intelligentsia

Introduction
This article discusses the strategies adopted for social distinction among representatives of Russias new upper class as a means of gaining legitimacy for
their position in society. These strategies will be explored using examples of
adornment, such as sartorial displays and female companions, attitudes to

Schimpfossl (Department of Russian and East European Studies, University of Manchester) (Corresponding author email:
elisabeth.schimpfossl@manchester.ac.uk)
London School of Economics and Political Science 2014 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12053

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Elisabeth Schimpfossl

transport as well as the striving for a more cultured image by aligning themselves with the intelligentsia. Central to my analysis are the strategies by which
these social actors reinterpreted their experiences and reoriented their
demeanour and tastes in order to keep up with the social changes in postSoviet Russia and, in particular, towards the end of first decade in the new
millennium.
Whilst the 1990s had been dominated by a small group of oligarchs, during
the course of the 2000s the organization of social life went beyond the basic
liaisons which had been necessary for survival in the dog-eat-dog world of the
1990s. Against the background of the oil boom, a wider layer of the wealthy
emerged and established a place for itself close to but below that of the top
elites. By the late 2000s, upper-class members seemed to have become accustomed to their material wellbeing. Things other than money began to matter.
Especially with the arrival of the 2008 economic crisis, a concern emerged
about how to strengthen their position and status in society and have them
become enduring. This article takes as its starting point the assumption that for
social relationships of domination to be enduring the dominating classes have
to be considered legitimate and that this legitimacy is derived from a valid
source of authority.
As Weber (1978[1922]: 213) reiterated, authority originates in both the
belief in legitimacy [Legitimittsglaube] and the prestige of exemplarity and
ideality [Vorbildlichkeit]. Authority is considered legitimate when it conforms
to the values dominant in society and when it satisfies normative expectations
(Beetham 1991: 10ff.). In this quest to gain worthiness and legitimacy for their
position in society, the holders of power, status and wealth try to convince
themselves and others that they have what they have because of who they are,
that is, because of the quality of their own being. One important way in which
dominating classes achieve exemplarity and legitimacy is, alongside meritbased achievements and care for the less fortunate, by demonstrating their
social worth through distinction from others. Using a Weberian framework,
this article seeks to analyse which strategies are deployed by representatives of
Russias contemporary upper class to obtain legitimacy through practices
aimed at achieving social distinction, in society in general as well as vis--vis
their peers, people in adjacent classes further up and down the social ladder
and, not least, themselves.
The forms through which the upper-class members considered in this study
attempted to obtain social distinction by the late 2000s differed strongly from
the demonstrative ostentation and conspicuous consumption of the 1990s (cf.
Lipovetsky 2003; Oushakine 2000; Shlapentokh 1999). This article suggests
that the new manners and demeanour these individuals feature, and the tastes
they claim to identify with, is a reworking of culturedness, or kulturnost. One
way to understand kulturnost, a term which goes back to the 1930s, is to see
it as a behaviour code that guides civilized consumption, tastes and manners;
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however, it is more of an internalized unconscious disposition not unlike

Bourdieus notion of habitus1 than explicit formal rules of good behaviour
(Gronow 2003: 147).
Dunham (1976: 22) described the evolution of kulturnost in the 1930s as
first denoting little more than personal hygiene and a minimum knowledge of
high culture and good manners. In the late Stalin era, however, it began to
mean the self-image of dignified citizens and turned into a fetish notion of how
to be individually civilized. The special function of kulturnost was to encode
the proper relationship between people through their possessions and labels;
between mores and artifacts (Dunham 1976: 22). According to Dunham,
kulturnost might even shake the individuals grip on his possessions: for
instance, a strategic abstinence from acquisitiveness for the sake of displaying
good taste . In this trajectory, kulturnost bestowed attributes of dignity and
virtue on material possessions (Dunham 1976: 23), and it functioned as social
glue between cultural and material goods (Kelly and Shepherd 1998: 304). This
articles claim is that today, again, kulturnost serves the quest for social
distinction, thereby bridging the gap between money and culture.
This article further argues that kulturnost is one of the main pillars that
bestow on their holders the discreet and seemingly natural superiority which
Bourdieu (1984) ascribed to dominant classes. For the feeling of superiority to
develop a more discreet nature, modes of distinction had to change from
primarily quantitative to more qualitative strategies, and various forms of
capital (Bourdieu 1986) had to be converted into others, in particular economic capital into cultural capital. These processes were, in some ways, following a shift from the typical Veblenian forms of aggressive ostentation
(1994[1899]), to what Elias (2005[1989]) considered to be the norm in industrialized societies, where one feels able to enjoy great prestige without having
to provide permanent public proof of it through costly display and where
peoples habits and manners are subject to ever-stricter control. However, this
is not a linear process, and in particular in Russia, against the background of
the countrys distinctive post-Soviet economic and social developments, these
processes have been full of reversals, tensions and ambiguities. Therefore,
following Daloz (2009), who has compared the ways in which elites in different
cultures display themselves publicly, it is crucial within the Russian context to
also include ostentatious forms of distinction.
For present-day visitors to Russia, conspicuous consumption might still
seem omnipresent. Indeed, several types of social logic exist in parallel. In the
2000s, newcomers made their way up into the ranks of the rich and kept
Russias glamour culture flourishing (Goscilo and Strukov 2011; Menzel
2008). Putins elite started to rise. Russian provinces became stronger.
Resource-rich former Soviet republics produced new layers of wealthy people.
For these groups, visible pomp and opulence appeared to be indispensable and
they started living their new wealth, in a Veblenian sense, ostentatiously.
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Veblen (1994[1899]: chapter V) and later Simmel (1919) argued that new
fashions, introduced via the elite, would pass down through the status
hierarchy. Aspiring middle-class groups in Russia have acquired a fixation on
certain branded clothes, expensive cars and glamorous leisure time activities.
Due to their visibility, these are the groups which are still the most prominent
in the public consciousness, and which have been the focus of popular
stereotypes.
My empirical data include 40 qualitative narrative-biographical interviews,
conducted in Moscow and in London between 2008 and 2011, with rich
businessmen, businesswomen, their spouses and their (adult) children as well
as with public figures in the arts, media and politics. These people come for the
most part from the lower end of the richest one per cent of Russian society;
they are millionaires and multimillionaires, but (with four exceptions) not
billionaires.2 I have updates to the present time for about a third of them,
either because they regularly feature in the news, because they are friends of
friends, or because they have become friends with me on Facebook. In addition
to these elite interviews, I carried out participant observation, and I researched
the lives and activities of upper-class Russians online (using blogs, media
reports and interviews in newspapers). I also undertook approximately 40
additional interviews with people who have known the wealthy from a particular perspective, the type of people Goffman (1951) called curator personnel, among them wealth managers, personal assistants, journalists, art experts
and interior decorators.
The article first traces the changes of the last twenty years, evolving from the
demonstrative ostentation of the 1990s to new forms of flamboyance in the late
2000s, as expressed in the interviewees lifestyles. The second section will
discuss two forms of adornment: first, the expression of superiority and status
through sartorial signs; and, second, vicarious ostentation via female
companions. Another, though less obvious, expression of modified tastes are
attitudes to means of transport, the Moscow Metro in particular. A final
section will discuss the importance of the Russian/Soviet intelligentsia as a
bridge between money and culture3 as expressed in my interviewees
statements.
Post-Soviet transformation
The break-up of the Soviet Union left a vacuum in terms of what constituted
markers for social distinction. People were thrust into a context in which many
of their assumptions about status, professionalism and respectability no longer
held in their familiar ways (Patico 2008: 6). The New Russians of the 1990s had
no established role models to emulate (cf. Graham 2003). A specific of postSoviet society was that everybody with money had acquired it just recently.
Thus, in economic terms, everybody who became rich was a parvenu.
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In this specific context, economic resources were the primary basis for the
social position of the new moneyed classes, as well as their most prevalent
virtue (Goscilo 2003: 10). In many aspects, Russias nouveaux riches followed
the logic described by Veblen (1994[1899]: 24) in relation to Chicagos leisure
class of the 1890s, where private property had become the basis of esteem and
the new rich marked their social position through the parading of wealth. As in
the USA a decade earlier, in Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s the quantitative element and conspicuousness in consumption dominated (cf. Oushakine
2000). Many people eagerly embraced everything that was new and superlative
in size, quantity and novelty, of which they had felt deprived in Soviet times.
Naked economic power was aggressively put on display. By bluntly displaying
their quickly and often brutally achieved success, the nouveaux riches exhibited quite plainly the arbitrary force by which they originally accumulated
their wealth (cf. Bourdieu 1996).
In the course of the 2000s, however, some parts of the elite began to distance
themselves from glitz and glamour. Two famous people in public life illustrate
this recent development. Kseniya Sobchak, born in 1981 and the daughter of
the first post-Soviet mayor of St Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, became a
household name as Russias Paris Hilton and the it girl of the Putin era.
(Putin is, incidentally, widely rumoured to be her godfather.) Goscilo and
Strukov (2011: 11) excluded her from their volume on glamour in contemporary Russia because of the nature of her notoriety which rendered her a
too-obvious case. In the winter of 2011/12, however, Sobchak became one of
the faces of the opposition movement and joined the street protests. During
these months, she dated the political activist Ilya Yashin, born in 1983, who
stood in stark contrast to the elderly rich businessmen she previously chose as
boyfriends. While still being a media celebrity, she now enjoys new prominence
as a journalist and political activist, rather than as a glamour queen.
The second example is Mikhail Prokhorov. Formerly the richest Russian and
the stereotypical playboy oligarch, he was detained on his holiday in the
French ski resort of Courchevel in the winter of 2007 on suspicion of providing
prostitutes for his male entourage. Since then, Prokhorovs public image has
changed radically. He launched the media project Snob with which he
endeared himself to upper-middle-class intellectuals, and ran for the presidency in 2012. The projection of this new and serious image was enhanced by
the oligarchs highly educated and articulate sister, the founder of New Literary Observer, one of the first intellectual journals and publishing houses in
independent Russia, who supported him in the election campaign.
Both these examples are certainly not uncontested, and many criticize these
individuals both for their pasts and for their current half-hearted positions
between Putins regime and the opposition. However, they reflect a shift away
from an endless party lifestyle to more discerning, cautious tastes and values
and to a new modesty. Modesty in this study is not to be understood in terms
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of a frugal lifestyle or radical cuts in ones expenditure. It means, in the

first place, that people, to some extent, turned away from the ostentatious
behaviour and the demonstrative display of wealth which was typical of the
preceding years.
To refrain from the open display of wealth was important for Arkady4, one
of Russias longest-standing businessmen. The 49-year-old earnest and quiet
man from a Jewish intelligentsia background touched upon the changes of the
last two decades:
At first we tried to understand what kind of opportunities we had based on
our material resources, but now we dont think about that anymore. We
started to live in a different way. We started to think in a different way.
For his wife, Larissa, modesty did not mean self-restraint. She explained her
idea of modesty to me while we were driving in her Porsche from her house to
a nearby restaurant:
What is modesty? Modesty can express itself in many things. I cant quite say
that I live ascetically. I think that modesty is the antonym to ruthlessness,
and ruthlessness is absolutely the worst thing you can find in a person.
The couples affluence posed a challenge in the upbringing of their two sons.
Larissa explained:
We know a huge number of golden youth; they are destroyed by money and
opportunities from the very beginning. Back in the Soviet era that was less
the case, though it did exist then as well. Its not in the childrens interests. I
tried hard to limit the influence of our affluent material conditions on my
children . . . We had to think about it all the time and control the process
very strictly.
Larissa and her husband Arkady are trend-setters for some aspects of new
tastes. The couples summer house is located in a new housing complex in the
north of Moscow which was built in conscious dissociation from the 1990s
grandiose palaces of the nouveaux riches found in Moscows notoriously luxurious suburb of Rublyovka, where Putin has his residence. The housing in their
area is newly built in the traditional wooden style with modern elements
similar to the contemporary wooden architecture in Scandinavia and Switzerland, albeit in far bigger dimensions. The individual houses disappear into the
forest and thus follow the trend to stay private and be invisible to observers.
There are also globally recognized luxury features: yachts and other boats, a
sailing club and a golf club. Arkady stressed the exclusivity of the area:
This is a kind of a closed club. There is nothing comparable in the whole
country. I think even in the West there are only very few such places . . . The
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most renowned architects have worked for us, Russian and foreign
architects. Many architects dream about working for us.
After a day out at this dacha, Arkady explained to me that his aim was to
show me that his family has little in common either with ordinary Russian, or
the tasteless rich.
Thirty-two year-old Maksim, a businessman and lawyer, rejected some forms
of ostentatious behaviour. However, he indulged in others. Social distinction
does not necessarily exclude eclecticism and cultural omnivorousness, as
Peterson and Kern stated (1996) and Bryson (1996) corroborated vis--vis
musical taste. High-status groups not only participate more than others in
high-status activities, but also tend to participate more frequently in many
different kinds of leisure activities, partly even poor chic (Halnon 2002) a
recreational and temporary consumption of poverty which she described as a
short, safe, socially-distanced and sanitized experience. It was precisely the
eclecticism in his lifestyle which this young businessman (who, according to the
contact person who gave me his phone number, had first made his money by
trading in Duma seats in Russia and trading in land mines in Africa) seemed to
enjoy. This father of two (his older child, a son, is already 13) likes gambling in
casinos, going to strip clubs, indulging his extravagant eating habits, and staying
only at the best hotels when travelling. Yet in some matters he also exercises
practices that could be described as a flamboyant reversal from these norms
(shopping at cheap street markets and upholding some liberal and left-wing
views, vocally defending gay rights, sending his children to the Pioneers and
admiring Stalin). During our opulent dinner, he reached for his wallet and
pulled out a Metro ticket:
I can waste money on deluxe hotels but I can just as easily take the Metro
. . . I travel by Metro every day. I even have a monthly travel card. Have a
look! My friends always make fun of me. I can allow myself to do that.

Adornments: sartorial signs and women as means of display

Changing tastes and social hierarchies are easily gleaned from how people
dress (cf. Klingseis 2011). According to Simmel (1919), fashion is an excellent
means of achieving, on the one hand, cohesion or group identity, and, on the
other, differentiation and individuality. Through fashion people align with a
certain group and differentiate themselves from others, and at the same time
fashion is a widely understood way of expressing ones status, wealth and
power. The display of the people one surrounds oneself with can be part of
ostentation. Particularly visible in Russia are female companions. Veblen
(1994[1899]), and later Sombart (1967[1913]), linked the first conspicuous form
of property to the ownership of women. In Veblenian terms (1994[1899]: 27),
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youthful wives and mistresses are trophies designed to show off a mans
success, not only suggesting sensual pleasures and, in their quantitative dimension, promoting an image of exceptional virility (Daloz 2009: 142), but often
carrying added enhancements (dress, jewels, etc.).
Fashion statements identified by this study mirror the trend away from
glamour culture and the rising prestige the intelligentsia now enjoys. The
fashion historian Alexandre Vassiliev observed that glamour is out (Klingseis
2011: 105). There is instead a new trend emerging new modesty, with
fashion becoming intellectual. However, this process is far from linear and
unambiguous. The new modesty in fashion is characterized by two codes; first,
avoiding being overdressed (and preferably being slightly underdressed) and,
second, dressing appropriately for every specific situation and occasion. This
does not mean spending less money on clothes or a greater relaxation in dress
codes but rather a new form of conspicuousness. Dressing down is less
standardized and reveals more of ones individual tastes, which symbolically
constitute the sum of the holdings of ones cultural capital (cf. Savage, Warde
and Devine 2005: 40). Misconceived aesthetic decisions might convey even
damaging messages about the self (Warde, Olsen and Martens 1999: 120).
Moreover, it involves getting changed frequently. (Now foreigners in Moscow
are easily identifiable by their inappropriateness; for example, Russians
would not go to certain upmarket nightclubs in suits, but Westerners do when
they come straight from work without getting changed.)
According to his self-presentation, Maksim was the height of ostentation
with regards to dressing down. (This young man was rather large, so it was
difficult for me to make out the cut and style of his jeans and shirt.) He
described his shopping behaviour:
I can buy myself a shirt for 1000 dollars but I wear a shirt costing 100 roubles
[GBP2], because thats not important to me at all. For my wife its a little
more important, but not fanatically so. She likes comfortable clothes, and the
problem is that comfortable clothes are usually branded clothes, which are
expensive. Just recently she took ages looking for a pair of glasses. In the end
she bought Gucci glasses which were incredibly expensive. She didnt buy
them because they were from Gucci but because they really fitted well. If she
had found suitable glasses for 500 roubles [GBP10], she would have bought
them. By the same token she can buy shorts for the kids at the market for
250 roubles [GBP5] and shorts in a boutique for 250 dollars . . . These jeans,
I think, I bought second-hand.
There is no guarantee in Russia that the people Maksim encounters possess
sufficient symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1989) to be able to evaluate his statements of new simplicity. The entrepreneur is aware of this, and so were other
interviewees, which is why they often combine their simple clothing with
carefully chosen luxury items that signal more conventional status markers.
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These are primarily watches, shoes, and, most importantly, delicately manicured hands. Maksim uses an ultra-expensive phone:
The only little thing that is important to me is my phone. Ive got a golden
mobile phone. I dont like expensive watches. But sometimes in meetings its
necessary to show a phone that is more expensive than an average car. This
will put the opponent in the right place.
The advantage of using a phone as a status marker is that it can remain
invisible if the owner wishes.
Dressing down is not a mass phenomenon, and the various new fashions
exist alongside old ones among the people I could observe. In particular, at
semi-formal events such as private receptions, it is not unusual to see men in
their best suits and young model-like women in designer dresses alongside
sloppily dressed male guests (for dressing down is generally a male phenomenon, with the exception of some highly successful females). Breaking free
from certain conventions is one way of asserting ones superiority over others
(Daloz 2009: 68). Fashion choices seemed to reflect the status hierarchies
among the guests at a preview party hosted by Sothebys, which took place in
2008 at Barvikha, a town of villas in Moscows luxury suburb Rublyovka. The
scruffily dressed guests were all big names; owners of publishing houses,
famous art collectors and wealthy businessmen.
Dressing slightly scruffily is not uncommon among privileged circles in many
cultures, for instance, among some English aristocrats. There were a fair
number of the latter at an art opening in Norfolk in May 2013 which was
exhibiting masterpieces from the Hermitage. Prince Charles was the exhibitions patron. His helicopter was met by the wife of the lord who was hosting
the event; she was dressed in what one of the guests called pyjama trousers and
a vintage blazer. The former model, 23 years younger than her husband, later
joined a table with her similarly informally dressed friends. Meanwhile, the
sponsors of the exhibition were queuing up to greet the Prince of Wales. One
of the sponsors waiting patiently was Alexander Lebedev, the funder of the
Independent and London Evening Standard. The Russian billionaire was in
white high-top basketball shoes, a jacket, a waistcoat, a thin tie and superskinny black jeans. He was accompanied by his wife, a model 26 years his
junior, who was wearing a long, low-cut, very tight dress which showed off her
slender figure.
It could be argued that the sloppy attire of some of the status-high individuals at both of these events served to stress their superiority over the
common guests, who, with the exception of some artists, stuck to the rules and
dressed smartly. Yet the basic codes were very different. The Russian billionaire, although securing a handshake from the Prince of Wales and presumably
showing some respect by means of his waistcoat and tie, at the same time
alluded to his merit-based success by emulating Bill Gates more than the
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English aristocracy. The youthfulness and exceptional beauty of the two wives
referred to above were vicarious assertions of these mens status, however
different the womens fashion statements were, with the hostess demonstrating
that this was her home and the billionaires wife stressing her femininity.
A strong accentuation of femininity and physical attractiveness was characteristic for post-Soviet Russia and was intensified through the trade some
engaged in, seeking material security and financial benefits by making a good
deal (Zdravomyslova and Temkina 2005: 110). The economic meltdown of the
1990s further strengthened the commodification of personal relationships. One
of my interviewees, Dmitry, a well-known politician, aged 36, made the point
that flaunting stunningly beautiful wives and mistresses, dressed in the most
elegant and expensive attire, was a substitute for buying yet another Mercedes
which nobody would notice anyway. However, even here the quantitative
dimension and sensational beauty have lost some of their importance for social
distinction in Russia. Indeed, Nikita, the head of a large consulting agency,
asserted that socially inferior women,regardless of their beauty,might now even
undermine ones standing in society:The fashion to go out with and maybe even
marry models has disappeared here in Moscow.This has moved to the provinces
and lower social strata. Instead, women who were still unquestionably attractive but at the same time highly sophisticated could boost ones image more
effectively.As he put it:Now women must be very well educated and cultured.
In addition, some of my interviewees remarked that having a long and stable
marriage had become an insignia of distinction in todays Russia, and this was
even more the case if the marriage predated the acquisition of riches.
All the same, keeping mistresses appeared to be tolerated, if not almost
expected. Even if my male interviewees stressed their conservative family
values and were proud of their stable marriages, some of them still alluded at
some point in the interview to extra-marital activity, including hints about
prostitutes. Pyotr is a businessman who is also highly regarded among the
Moscow intelligentsia and considered to be one of the cultured entrepreneurs.
This man, in his early fifties and a married father of three, was born into the
intelligentsia and taught at a prestigious Moscow university. I met him again
18 months after the interview at a conference on a Greek island, which was
financed and hosted by a Russian oligarch and featured ultra-conservative
speakers from all over the world advocating traditional family values. Pyotr was
accompanied by a young woman who was not his wife and who looked as if she
was in her late teens. When I expressed my surprise about the age difference to
the friends I was sitting with, i.e. male sociologists from Moscow, they defended
the businessman by referring to the West where men were simply more hypocritical and pretended to be prim and proper. My friends, who were the same
age as Pyotr, acknowledged that they would not be able to enjoy comparable
female company themselves due to their meagre university salaries, but they
very much approved of the businessmans achievements.
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Vehicles and transport

Vehicles and other means of transport satisfy various needs and desires. These
needs and desires can be practical as well as symbolic (Daloz 2009: 76). They
provide distinction vis--vis other classes (this is especially the case with the
visibility of cars), protection from observers (e.g. cars with opaque windows)
and differentiation between elites themselves, as demonstrated by the world of
yachts, helicopters and private jets.
The connection between social hierarchies and vehicles has had enormous
significance throughout cultures and history. Gronow and Zhuravlev (2010:
133; 13240) analyse the role of cars, scarcity and luxury in stratifying Soviet
society. The highest ranks of the leadership travelled in Chaikas. These black
seven-seater limousines were produced in small numbers at the Gorky car
factory after 1958 exclusively for the highest-ranking state and party officials.
KGB officers and other privileged members of society used chauffeur-driven
black Volgas. In theory these could be bought by ordinary citizens, but as only
a relatively small number were produced, to drive ones own Volga was, as
Gronow reminds us, probably the greatest unattainable dream of many Soviet
citizens.
Aleksei, a 49-year-old businessman who built up a brand empire every child
in Russia knows and who is listed at about 100 on Russias Forbes rankings,
recalled a childhood memory:
Back then a black Volga was an important status indicator. It was a sign that
its owner had achieved something. You had to be a boss or a director. I
always wanted to be a director and drive a black Volga. It was the smell of
this car. My father often took me on business trips to Moscow.You had to get
up early. Then you had to wait for this car to come out of the factory gates.
The town was still asleep, so you could hear the car minutes before you
would see it. Then the road, the conversations in the car. Its a memory so
vivid and close, as if I was this little boy again. Now Ive got many cars and
no longer any Volgas. But, sadly, the excitement has gone. Everything
becomes routine. But exactly these feelings of youth and these desires can
move and motivate a person to achieve something in life.
In contrast to adornment and sartorial considerations, elite modes of transport also have concrete functions of comfortableness and rapidity (Daloz
2009). When they come with a chauffeur, they clearly facilitate everyday life,
enabling the owner to make use of the time spent travelling.This logic does not
pertain just to the vehicles themselves but also to certain accessories and how
vehicles are used. Russias elites appropriated advantages for their own benefit
which were designed for special public purposes. Certain number plates and
emergency sirens confer the right to exceed the legal speed limits. Express
lanes in particular are a huge practical convenience when the streets leading
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from the luxury suburbs to Moscows city centre are blocked by traffic jams,
which are frequently caused by street closures to let high-ranking officials pass
at high speed.
Following the near collapse of the citys road infrastructure, some of my
interviewees have adopted traditional symbols of the lower strata and started
using Moscows Metropolitan Transport System. Boris Groys (1992: 1606)
described Stalins grandiose prestigious project with its beautiful stations as
both utopia and hell. It is one of the most brilliantly designed underground
systems in the world, not always pleasant to use but quick, efficient and
comprehensive. As expected, for most of my interviewees, the idea of using the
Metro was utterly absurd. They treated the Metro with indifference or disdain.
Viktor, 42, a businessman from a Jewish intelligentsia background who had
also set up a foundation for social science research, was surprised at the
suggestion: No, I never use the Metro. Ive got my driver. My children? No
idea. Many passed on their disdain to their children. Twenty-one-year-old
Andrei, the son of a businessman who had set up the second largest company
in its field in Russia, told me:
When I went to the kindergarten, I already had a driver. I only used the
Metro on weekends to meet up with friends when the driver had a day off.
Public transport is very unpleasant, stuffy, the queuing. The Metro is just
terrible.
All the same, some people are slowly changing their minds as Moscows
traffic jams have begun to make it impossible to get to their destination. The
oil-businessman Ivan, in his early sixties, lives in Surgut, an oil-rich city in
Siberia. He tries to avoid using the road when in Moscow:
In Surgut I go by taxi, in Moscow by Metro. I simply cant stand these traffic
jams here. Id go completely mad . . . I know, Im an absolute exception.
Nobody else goes by Metro. I love it that my life is so different from that of
other people of my kind.
Ivan is not actually as exceptional as he might think. The businessman
Aleksandr, also in his early sixties, returned to using the Metro after one and
a half decades of abstinence:
In the early 1990s, I stopped using the Metro. But two or three years ago
when these crazy traffic jams started, I started using the Metro again when
I had to get somewhere quickly . . . I enjoy going down to the Metro. It works
very well and there arent actually that many people . . . You can see normal
people there and I like watching their faces.
I asked Aleksandr, a calm person and originally a trained accountant, how
people reacted when he arrived at his destination by public transport. My
question provoked surprise. How would people know? The businessman
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Russias social upper class: from ostentation to culturedness 75

usually sent his driver on the long traffic jam route hours ahead of him, so that
he could be picked up shortly before reaching his final destination.
A certain nostalgia for the Metro as it used to be is evident in Alekseis
remark:
Recently, about four months ago, when the traffic was just terrible, I used the
Metro. Im not scared to go down there. The only thing is that, compared to
two years ago, I can clearly see how much poorer the folk have become.What
unhappy people there are! And its dirty, very dirty. My Metro is definitely
cleaner. My Metro is the Metro of the 1980s; my Metro represents Moscow.
Vitaly, a real estate developer, made a similar observation: I use the Metro
twice a year. Its shocking sometimes what you see down there. The atmosphere has become so much worse compared to what it was like in Soviet times.
Some of my interviewees made their children use the Metro as part of their
upbringing. Kirill, a slick and earnest businessman and art collector in his early
forties, was concerned that his daughters were getting spoilt:
I came from a simple social background. Ive seen everything. I served in the
army. There is nothing much that can surprise me. Of course, I want my
children to start off at a very different level than I did. But this involves the
risk that they might not be aware that life can be very different as well. Our
children use the Metro. We made a point of teaching them how to use it. We
want them to use it as well as wanting them not to think that fashion is the
most important thing in life but to develop different interests.

Kulturnost via the intelligentsia

The accumulation of economic capital during Perestroika and in the post-Soviet
period was heavily dependent on non-economic resources, such as cultural
capital and social networks. Post-Soviet studies have suggested that many
supposed newcomers to the upper layers of the 1990s were not real parvenus
from simple social backgrounds, but were the descendants of privileged and/or
highly educated families (cf. Hanley, Yershova and Anderson 1995; King 2002;
Szelnyi, Eyal and Townsley 1998). They made practical use of their cultural
capital in the first years of social transformation, often assisted by the social
capital they acquired in prestigious educational institutions or the Komsomol,
which they turned into economic capital. In the new millennium, there has been
a further shift in the dominance of capital forms. The accumulated economic
capital has been increasingly transformed into cultural and symbolic capital.
This continuity of social class was also frequently evident in the interviews I
conducted. Many of my interviewees had inherited cultural capital through
their families, some over several generations. The overwhelming majority of
my interviewees were born into socially and culturally privileged families,
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Elisabeth Schimpfossl

many of them belonging to the Soviet intelligentsia. One of these is Russias

most famous gallery owner Marat Guelman:
Its a bit of a paradox, but I would place myself amongst the intelligentsia.
First, because of my family background; my father was a famous playwright.
Gorbachev called him the father of Perestroika because he influenced
Gorbachev a lot. They are still friends. Second, the nature of my professional
activities; I deal with art. Third, I work with my mind. Im a political consultant and for a long time Ive worked as a spin-doctor [ politekhnolog] for
the president, which is like being a playwright in politics.
Many interviewees parents, and in many cases also their grandparents, had
pursued successful careers during Soviet times, mainly in science or
engineering. There were also whole dynasties of people in academia. The
family of the businessman Gregory is an example of a prestigious intelligentsia
family. Gregorys parents were geophysicists: They did groundbreaking work
in engineering back in the 1960s. My father received a state award for what
he had discovered and his name was entered into one of the republics
encyclopaedias. The shy IT-entrepreneur in his mid-forties, whose start-up
business put him on Russias rich list, is in some ways an idol for Russias
creative intelligentsia scene. His business biography features in a 2013 movie.
However, there was a novel aspect to this situation that came across strongly
in my interviews: people ascribed symbolic significance to their social backgrounds and utilized them to position themselves in society. Social distinction
needs to extend back into the past, and in particular to the grandparents
generation. Whereas in the early post-Soviet years it was fashionable to discover aristocratic roots, today a Soviet intelligentsia background provides the
ideal provenance for upper-class Russians. The intelligentsia has, as Gessen
stated (1997: 102), with the exception of a short break in the 1990s, produced
a steady stream of trends and fashions. Now, references to the intelligentsia
have returned as a basic ingredient for kulturnost, and people from a prestigious intelligentsia background, such as the IT-entrepreneur Gregory, have
gained in status among upper-class Russians.
Karina and her husband, a wealthy businessman, offered an example for this
shift: Financially, we belong to the upper class. But wed certainly like to
ascribe ourselves to the intelligentsia, beginning from our grandfathers
generation. Of course, there are artists and writers in our circle. Thats a must.
The 38-year-old woman explained further:
You can place us in the intelligentsia also in terms of our attitude to life and
our moral and spiritual values, such as support for others, friendship, love,
mutual understanding. The most important values are certainly integrity,
propriety and good manners as well as ethical and aesthetic values. But of
course, without money its all difficult.
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Russias social upper class: from ostentation to culturedness 77

Karinas statements are reminiscent of how Patico (2008: 77) traces

kulturnost in her research. Social and hereditary factors were understood to
play a significant role; however, individuals were implicitly held responsible for
their own level of kulturnost.
Many of the mythologies historically surrounding the intelligentsia, including
its late-nineteenth century humanistic search for truth and its desire to serve the
people, are not very relevant today. Nor is the dedicated, self-effacing, quixotic
character which is often ascribed to the intelligentsia (cf. Leatherbarrow and
Offord 2010). In fact, some of these features were already irrelevant to the
Soviet intelligentsia, which was particularly status-anxious and concerned to
keep its distance from the ordinary people (Gessen 1997). Nevertheless, this
does not challenge the intelligentsias symbolic power and its elitist connotations. Boris, a 24-year-old banker, is the son of a businessman who made a
fortune in the 1990s, and yet he sees himself as part of the intelligentsia:
In Russia there are two major social groups in society, the intelligentsia and
the majority of the population.These two groups have no relation whatsoever
with one another, except that they live in the same territory. The majority of
Russians are totally different; Ive got nothing in common with them.
Boriss understanding of the intelligentsia and of the structure of Russian
society reflects the hierarchies and gaps between the classes. He was born into
an intelligentsia family with a Jewish background. His grandfathers were
scientists. His father quickly became one of the first three hundred richest men
to appear on the worldwide Forbes rich list and used to be a player in Russian
business. Boriss upbringing in a luxury suburb was remote from the lives of
ordinary Russians. In addition to this, it could be argued that his understanding
of society as being based on two diametrically opposed groups, the intelligentsia versus the ordinary population, is the product of the interplay between the
historically developed social hierarchies in Russia and the ways in which
people in Russia have learned to understand the world (not least through
classical literature).
The symbolic significance of the cultured classes today is embodied by the
businessmen among my interviewees who now spend most of their time on
their art projects. According to Bourdieu (1984: 55), the fundamental advantage gained from membership of a privileged class is distance from economic
necessity. This has resulted in some people becoming dismissive of their own
involvement in business. Yevgenys wife has taken over business matters so
that he can devote almost all of his time to art. He explains why:
I belong to the professional intelligentsia. My business is just a means to an
end. Im interested in dealing with global cultural projects. I belong to the
part of the intelligentsia which seeks answers to eternal, philosophical
questions [ishchushchaia intelligentsiia].
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Elisabeth Schimpfossl

Yevgeny, 60, sets the tone for members of an upper class who do not need
to concern themselves with money-making but are free to ponder their
individuality.
Conclusion
The aim of this article was to analyse strategies of distinction and symbolic
expression of status which the upper-class Russians included in this study
pursued in order to entrench their legitimacy. Using a Weberian framework,
the article began with the assumption that these individuals wish to feel worthy
of their positions in society, and they wish to be convinced that they deserve
their position because of who they are and because of their qualities. To this
end, they had to reorient their demeanour, manners and tastes in order to keep
up with the social changes in post-Soviet Russia. The search for more enduring
modes of distinction became particularly intense at a point of time when new
wealthy layers in Russia had gained distance from economic necessity after the
years of the 2000s oil boom, and yet they saw their position challenged by the
arrival of the 2008 economic crisis, which confronted them with increased
pressure for legitimation.
In addition to Weber, Bourdieusian concepts proved helpful in tracing this
search. Many of my interviewees, in one form or the other, converted the
economic capital they possess in abundance into cultural and symbolic capital:
i.e. ostentatious behaviour turned into a more moderate and private affair. The
area where Arkady and Larissa built their dacha is an example of this where
the logic of the housing complex is based on privacy and exclusivity. The
modern woodwork aims to dissociate their tastes from the tastes of other
upper ranks who built grandiose palaces in the 1990s. All the same, they have
adapted to globally recognized luxury tastes.
With their closeness to the intelligentsia, individuals of the kind analysed
here potentially set the preconditions of the classe dominante, as formulated
by Bourdieu: a social class dominating not only the economic and political
sphere, but also culture and society. Many of my interviewees ascribed great
significance to their intelligentsia roots and social circles, which served as an
important pillar of elitist distinction and helped with the articulation of bourgeois ideas, such as those embodied in kulturnost. Both in historical and
contemporary contexts, kulturnost has bestowed attributes of dignity and
virtue on material possessions. It has instilled more discerning tastes, good
manners and civilized consumption into its holders, thereby acting as a bridge
between economic capital and cultural capital. Some of my interviewees aimed
to make this bridge more durable, and ensured that it reached into the future,
by passing on kulturnost to their children.
However, these processes are far from linear. Most of the changes described
carry their own new forms of flamboyance. Dressing down appears to be one
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Russias social upper class: from ostentation to culturedness 79

straightforward, yet conspicuous way of demonstrating superiority over ones

peers. Moreover, Maksims golden mobile phone might not only be seen as a
strategy to assert wealth and power, but also as an expression of status-anxiety.
Apparent democratic openness to crossing social boundaries by sharing
social space with ordinary people, such as public transport, might not automatically imply that these practices will become routinized. Not least, competing norms and expectations, partly anchored in Russias patriarchal structure,
might reverse a move to more privacy, as seems to be the case regarding the
permissibility of openly displaying mistresses. In more general terms, it is still
open which changes the latest political developments will bring to Russias
social structure and what this will mean for the social and economic position of
these individuals and, hence, for the symbolic expression of their status and
their understanding of kulturnost.
(Date accepted: October 2013)

Notes
1. Against the background of unstable
systems of dispositions in the late Soviet
period and in early post-Soviet Russia,
people consciously experimented with their
socially learned dispositions and skills in
order to mobilize their resources. Unlike
Bourdieu, I consider the dominating practices and ideas to be, at least in part, more of
a conscious process than a case of forgotten
history because in post-Soviet Russia
routine daily practices had to be newly
established. This is why I talk of strategies
and not of habitus.
2. Both class and status considerations
were important in my study. According to a
Weberian understanding, class is defined in
terms of property and status in terms of the

principles of the consumption of goods as

represented by special styles of life (Weber
1978 [1922]: 937).
3. To put it simply, the intelligentsia can
be described as an educated populace (intellectuals and professionals engaged in the
cultural and educational sector), from a culturally privileged background, imbued with
certain (even if minor) social obligations.
This group is not homogenous. My interviewees primarily mingled with elitist representatives of the intelligentsia, such as
successful artists, filmmakers, writers and
journalists, not with the poor(er) mass intelligentsia (cf. Shlapentokh 1999).
4. I have changed the names of my
interviewees.

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