Single Men, Single Stories: Alternative Paths in the Transition from the Late Soviet to the Neoliberal Market Economy in the Light of Life Stories

Abstract

This research investigates life strategies of physical worker Russian men, belonging to the generation of people who were the most active group in the late Soviet period, went through the collapse of USSR and the transformation to capitalism. The historical biographic perspective allows reproducing common social experiences which have formed this generation. The in-depth biographical interviews were conducted with six men of age 46–63, single, with officially low income, who started their working lives in the public sector. The research shows the diversity of men’s alternative life strategies to adjust to the neoliberal economy established after the collapse of the USSR. The paper explores the biographies as representations of diverse forms of masculinities formed along gender, age, social position and marital status-based marginalization processes emerging in the transition context.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• Masculinity
• late Soviet period
• transition period
• immaterial assets
• biographic method

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Lidia Kriulya for her contribution into research development as an initiator of the project and a lead of the research group, and considerable help with collecting the empirical data. The authors would also like to thank Olga Pospelova for her contribution into the project as a scientific adviser.

Notes

1. Other challenges include the normativity of heterosexual couple relations.

2. Bourdieu, P. The Forms of Capital.

3. Bourdieu, P. The Forms of Capital.