Sofiia Chuikina, Noble Memory: "Former People" in the Soviet City. Leningrad, 1920S-30S/Dvorianskaia Pamiat': "Byvshie" V Sovetskom Gorode. Leningrad, 1920E-1930E Gody (Book Review)

Sofiia Chuikina, Dvorianskaia pamiat': "Byvshie" v sovetskom gorode. Leningrad, 1920e-1930e gody [Noble Memory: "Former People" in the Soviet City. Leningrad, 1920s-30s]. 260 pp. St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta, 2006. ISBN 5943800557. Sofiia Chuikina is a sociologist who completed a dissertation at the European University in St. Petersburg. Her fascinating book examines the life of the Russian nobility after the October Revolution and, in particular, the ways in which this prerevolutionary elite ih Petrograd/Leningrad sought a "compromise between the past and the present" (9). Given the new government's hostility to the old bourgeoisie, so-called "former people" were forced to transform themselves in the Soviet era. Chuikina examines the nature of this transformation, how aristocratic traditions and memories were maintained, hidden, transformed, or extinguished under Bolshevik rule. The author dedicates the book to her grandmother, whose two-volume family chronicle and extensive stories about the past inspired her to explore the memory of aristocratic Russia in the Soviet era.