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For a period of over seventy years after the 1917 revolutions in Russia, talking about the past, either political or personal, became dangerous. The new policy of glasnost at the end of the 1980s resulted in a flood of reminiscence, almost nightly on television and more formally collected by new Russian oral history groups and western researchers. This book is a fascinating collection of life stories and family history interview material collected by the editors and two Russian groups of interviewers.

This review examines recent developments in the use of life stories (i.e. oral, autobiographical narratives), placing particular emphasis on work done in continental Europe. Two main trends are identified. The first focuses primarily upon the symbolic in social life and meaning in individual lives. Ways of collecting and analyzing life stories within this perspective (e.g. the narrative interview, objective hermeneutics) are described. The second main trend considers interviewees as informants--in ethnographic fashion. The aim is to get accurate descriptions of the interviewees' life trajectories in social contexts, in order to uncover the patterns of social relations and the special processes that shaped them. The emphasis here is on comparison, on searching for negative cases, and on reaching the point of saturation whereby the sociologist's mental representation of given patterns may be generalized to a whole social milieu. The first trend is now developing faster in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries, while the second attracts more attention in the Latin countries of Europe and America. Because life stories are put to multiple uses, no standard methodology is expected to appear in the near future. But several well-tested ways of collecting, analyzing, and publishing life stories should emerge. Life stories are shown to be a rich ground for the formulation of substantive theories, which are conceived of as interpretations rather than as scientific explanations. Different ways of assessing the validity of interpretations are mentioned. Work done with life stories in some other disciplines such as linguistics, history (i.e. oral history), psychology, and anthropology are briefly discussed.

The mechanics of social mobility in Soviet Russia are explored, drawing on results of 45 case studies conducted as part of an ongoing project that is attempting to reconstitute histories & lineages of families through archival research & interviews with family members. Highlighted is the widespread phenomenon of use of connections by families & individuals to realize social & professional aspirations. A parallel is drawn between this phenomenon & the functioning of the Soviet apparatus, which was wholly centered on the political power dimension. 1 Figure, 28 References. Adapted from the source document.