Daniel Bertaux is Directeur de Recherches at the Centre d’Etudes des Mouvements Sociaux, Paris. For several years after 1991 he organised the collection of case histories of families in Russia in order to document what ordinary Russians had been through during seventy years of state ‘socialism’., Paul Thompson is Research Professor in Sociology at the University of Essex, and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Community Studies, London. He is FounderEditor of Oral History and Founder of the National Life Story Collection at the British Library, London., Anna Rotkirch is a sociologist at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has specialised in comparative research on families and sexuality, autobiographical research and Russian studies.

• Chapter 1 Introduction, Daniel Bertaux, Anna Rotkirch, Paul Thompson; Part 1 Creating Soviet Society; Chapter 2 The Cultural Model of the Russian Popular Classes and the Transition to a Market Economy, Daniel Bertaux, Marina Malysheva; Chapter 3 Equality In Poverty, Victoria Semenova; Chapter 4 Coping With Revolution, Ekaterina Foteeva; Part 2 Personal and Family Life; Chapter 5 ‘What Kind of Sex can you Talk About?’, Anna Rotkirch; Chapter 6 Family Models and Transgenerational Influences, Victoria Semenova, Paul Thompson; Chapter 7 ‘Coming to Stand on Firm Ground’, Anna Rotkirch; Chapter 8 The Strength of Small Freedoms, Naomi Roslyn Galtz; Part 3 The Marginal and the Successful; Chapter 9 Memory and Survival in Stalin’s Russia, Irina Korovushkina Paert; Chapter 10 The Return of the Repressed, Nanci Adler; Chapter 11 Success Stories from the Margins, Marianne Liljeström; Chapter 12 Epilogue, Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson, Anna Rotkirch;