URBAN MIDDLE STRATA IN POST-REFORM RUSSIA: STATUS AND SOCIAL POSITION IN THE ASSESSMENTS OF GERMAN HISTORIANS OF THE 1970- IES AND THE 1990-IES

Abstract

Since the late 1970-ies the Germanic studies of Russia had a certain interest in the position of the urban middle strata in the Russian Empire of the post-reform era. At the same time, the attempts were made to determine the composition of this population category, to correlate its status with traditional philistinism, to reveal the process of capitalist transformation of the latter in the second half of the nineteenth century. When they consider the position of the corresponding social group, researchers usually adhered to a formal legal approach, referring to "philistinism" as a class category. At the same time, since the last two decades of the 20th century, the Germanic studies of Russia accept the stratification of philistinism, and the considerable conventionality of this definition concerning the middle urban layers of the late 19th century. Recognizing the transformation of philistinism in the structures of the emerging bourgeois society since the 1860-ies with the influence of government policy, German researchers, especially M. Hildermayer, who paid the most attention to the problem, also point to the complexity, the unevenness of this process, as well as to a certain inconsistency of the imperial power in its assistance. At the same time K. Gestwa’s research testifies a certain stability of traditional middle layers that are not always imbued with a specifically bourgeois worldview.