The Buoyant Class: Bourgeois Family Lineage in the Life Stories of Czech Business Elite Persons

Abstract

Life-story interviews carried out in the Czech Republic confirm that the new business elite is dominated by men who had already achieved high managerial positions in the Communist era. More surprisingly, however, they also reveal a marked overrepresentation within this group of descendants of the national bourgeoisie that was expropriated when the Communists came to power in 1948. These ‘buoyant class’ life stories show some of the ways in which children of bourgeois lineage were able to negotiate their way around the Communist regime's ‘class politics’. They also show how bourgeois family lineage can now be used as a resource for averting the potential moral stigma of a Communist-era senior executive career. The ‘buoyant class’ appears to be a self-confident and significant component of the new Czech business elite.