The Two-Pronged Middle Class: The Old Bourgeoisie, New State-Engineered Middle Class, and Democratic Development

We contribute to research on the democratic role of middle classes. Our paper distinguishes between classes emerging autonomously during gradual capitalist development and those fabricated rapidly as part state-led modernization. To make case for a conceptual distinction these groups within one national setting, we employ author-assembled historical district data, survey, archival materials pre-Revolutionary Russia its feudal estates. analysis reveals that bourgeois estate meshchane covaries with post-communist competitiveness media freedoms, our proxies regional variations. propose two causal pathways explaining puzzling persistence social structure despite Bolsheviks’ leveling ideology autocratic consolidation: (a) processes at juncture familial channels human capital transmission revolutionaries’ modernization drive (b) entrepreneurial value outside state policy. findings help refine recent work political regime orientations public-sector-dependent societies subjected authoritarian