Andrei Markevich will give a lecture on, “Social Mobility in Times of Revolutions and Regime Changes: Persistence of Elites in 20th Century Russia” on Thursday, September 5, 2024 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive.
About the Lecture: How much do radical changes of social order affect the persistence of elites? To address this question, we analyze the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolution, measuring the spread of Tsarist elite surnames among Soviet and modern Russian high-social-status groups. We document a quicker decline of elite representation at the start of the Soviet era, most pronounced for political and military outcomes during Stalin’s reign. Over the longer haul (1914-2022) we find that, despite a series of post-revolutionary shocks during the 20th century, elite persistence was substantial and very similar for elites from different backgrounds. However, the persistence rate of 0.5 is smaller than the multi-generational estimates Gregory Clark finds for other countries (0.7-0.8). We also provide evidence about the substantial contribution of Soviet anti-elite repression policies to the loss of social status before WWII.
About the Speaker: Andrei Markevich is a university lecturer at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and a professor (on leave) at the New Economic School (Moscow, Russia). He studies the economic history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the 18th – 20th centuries. His research focuses on the interconnections between institutions and economic development, the political economy of state socialism, and the long-run consequences of history. His papers have been published in such outlets as The American Economic Review, The Journal of Economic Literature, The Journal of Economic History, The Journal of Development Economics, and others. His paper on Russian national income in 1913-1928 was awarded to Russian National prize in applied economics in 2011. He was a Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Warwick in 2005–2007 and a national research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford in 2014–2015.
This event is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45.