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Osipova, master's thesis, 2020.pdf (568.9 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Engineering a Soviet Life: Gustav Trinkler's Bourgeois Revolution

Osipova, Zinaida
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3340-682X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1588365551985983

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Arts, Miami University, History.
This thesis examines the life of an engineer and professor Gustav Trinkler under the Imperial and Soviet Russia. By using archival materials, such as letters, certificates, reports, questionnaires, and a memoir, it explores his living conditions and interactions with authorities before and after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Trinkler was born in 1876 to a prosperous family of a predominantly German ethnicity. Despite his origins, he identified as a Russian throughout his life. Before the 1917 Revolution, Trinkler enjoyed cultivating his estate, sent his family on vacation to the south and petitioned his superiors requesting positions and financial assistance. After 1917, Trinkler aspired to maintain his living standards and re-engineered the life he knew: he obtained a new summer house, enjoyed family vacations in the south and kept sending petitions asking new, Soviet, authorities for assistance and benefits based on his technical skills. He managed to manufacture a Soviet life that was strikingly similar to his Imperial one even after his imprisonment as a "bourgeois" specialist in 1930. Using Trinkler's biography as a microhistory, this thesis points to the need to examine individuals' lives before 1917 to better understand the Soviet system and what constituted novel, "Soviet," behaviors.
Stephen Norris, PhD (Advisor)
Scott Kenworthy, PhD (Committee Member)
Francesca Silano, PhD (Committee Member)
75 p.
History; Russian History
Soviet Union; USSR; Russia, Russian history; Russian Empire; Imperial Russia; Nizhny Novgorod; Nizhnii Novgorod; Gorky; Sormovo; petitions; nationality; bourgeois specialist; technical intelligentsia; engineer; microhistory; Stalinism; forced labor

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Osipova, Z. (2020). Engineering a Soviet Life: Gustav Trinkler's Bourgeois Revolution [Master's thesis, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1588365551985983

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Osipova, Zinaida. Engineering a Soviet Life: Gustav Trinkler's Bourgeois Revolution. 2020. Miami University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1588365551985983.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Osipova, Zinaida. "Engineering a Soviet Life: Gustav Trinkler's Bourgeois Revolution." Master's thesis, Miami University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1588365551985983

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1588365551985983
42
© 2020, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.