6 - Market Values and the Economy of Survival

Summary

If we can discern resilience not only in one’s position within estatist society but also in practices intrinsically at odds with Marxist-Leninist dogma, we would have greater confidence in the plausibility of the account of social autonomy presented here. The chapter locates this possibility in the market-reproducing values and networks among the most persecuted strata. I also introduce the hitherto neglected element of diasporic transnational ties that not only aided survival but sustained, nurtured, and engendered specific sets of practices and knowledge. I perform cross-regional statistical analysis of market legacies as linked to the urban estates. Archival, interview, and memoir materials then help tease out the mechanisms of transmission of market-supporting human capital and values. An analysis of transnational–local ties, which the state itself facilitated as it sought to replenish currency reserves, helps dissect their role both in generating “one-off” infusions of wealth for survival and in sustaining links to private banking and enterprise via more temporally protracted flows of remittances. The private wealth and market aspects of the bourgeois legacy are also seen as facilitating what I call hedging, encompassing both private enterprise and public sector professions, which was a career risk-minimizing strategy of the educated estates in evidence long before the Revolution.