If be interested in the book club. Your description of the Red Bourgeoisie reminded me of Grossman’s Everything Flows when the the recently released prisoner of the gulag meets the person who denounced him as the denouncer is getting into a limo.
Thanks for the thoughtful article. I downloaded McDonell's book and plan to read it soon. Can you recommend any Russian works in a similar vein?
The way you describe him and his writing made me think back to Lewis Lapham, so I asked ChatGPT to summarize Lapham's critiques of the "meritocracy". A lot of parallels!
🎭1. Meritocracy Is a Myth That Masks Inherited Power
"The American faith in meritocracy is a magnificent alibi for privilege."
Lapham argued that the idea of a "level playing field" is a convenient fiction. He believed American elites used meritocratic language—“hard work,” “talent,” “education”—to mask systems of inheritance, social connections, and cultural capital that reproduce privilege across generations.
Elite prep schools and Ivy League colleges, he pointed out, claim to admit based on merit but disproportionately select from the same wealthy families.
Success, in his view, was more about being “born into the right house” than innate ability.
🧳 2. The Ruling Class Has Simply Rebranded Itself
In Money and Class in America, Lapham describes the postwar elite as a new aristocracy disguised as self-made men. While European aristocrats flaunted their inherited status, the American rich pretended to have earned it.
The nouveau riche co-opted the language of merit to make their power seem legitimate.
He noted that “the ruling class... now wears the clothing of egalitarian democracy while arranging the laws to serve its own convenience.”
🧠 3. Elite Education Is a Gatekeeping Mechanism
He relentlessly mocked the Ivy League as an elaborate credentialing system for the upper class.
The purpose of elite education, he said, wasn’t to cultivate intellect but to signal status and provide access to elite networks.
Lapham saw prep schools and Ivies not as meritocratic ladders but as “courts of entry” to an exclusive club.
“The SAT is merely a secret handshake.”
🗣️ 4. The Language of Meritocracy Silences Class Critique
Lapham believed that the American obsession with meritocracy discourages real conversations about inequality.
If the poor are poor because they didn’t try hard enough, then the system doesn’t have to change.
The myth lets the winners moralize their success and blame the losers.
🪞 5. America Worships Winners, Not Virtue
He often mocked the way society confuses wealth with wisdom, success with virtue, and celebrity with credibility.
“Wealth confers prestige, and prestige substitutes for virtue.”
The meritocracy, in this sense, becomes a religion of appearances, not substance.
Yeah I guess I kind of read it as though you were being specific to "now" - But I guess nothing at all in terms of class [traitor] criticism in the past ~30 years. So there's literally nothing? That's interesting. Fiction maybe?
Thanks. So, I cannot find an English version of the title "Generation P" anywhere, but I did notice that it's a title of a chapter in his other book "Babylon" - is that the same thing?
I'd be interested in a book club. I'd be curious to know what Evgenia makes of the Russian authors who do well in the West - most notably, Vladimir Sorokin. I don't read a word of Russian but, in translation, he reads like another Bret Easton Ellis type with a post-Putin twist. I could be very wrong but don't see it as regards viewing him as a novelist comparable in quality to other Eastern European novelists of roughly the same age - for example, Olga Tokarczuk or László Krasznahorkai.
If be interested in the book club. Your description of the Red Bourgeoisie reminded me of Grossman’s Everything Flows when the the recently released prisoner of the gulag meets the person who denounced him as the denouncer is getting into a limo.
I also liked your recent mention of Platanov.
Thanks for the thoughtful article. I downloaded McDonell's book and plan to read it soon. Can you recommend any Russian works in a similar vein?
The way you describe him and his writing made me think back to Lewis Lapham, so I asked ChatGPT to summarize Lapham's critiques of the "meritocracy". A lot of parallels!
🎭1. Meritocracy Is a Myth That Masks Inherited Power
"The American faith in meritocracy is a magnificent alibi for privilege."
Lapham argued that the idea of a "level playing field" is a convenient fiction. He believed American elites used meritocratic language—“hard work,” “talent,” “education”—to mask systems of inheritance, social connections, and cultural capital that reproduce privilege across generations.
Elite prep schools and Ivy League colleges, he pointed out, claim to admit based on merit but disproportionately select from the same wealthy families.
Success, in his view, was more about being “born into the right house” than innate ability.
🧳 2. The Ruling Class Has Simply Rebranded Itself
In Money and Class in America, Lapham describes the postwar elite as a new aristocracy disguised as self-made men. While European aristocrats flaunted their inherited status, the American rich pretended to have earned it.
The nouveau riche co-opted the language of merit to make their power seem legitimate.
He noted that “the ruling class... now wears the clothing of egalitarian democracy while arranging the laws to serve its own convenience.”
🧠 3. Elite Education Is a Gatekeeping Mechanism
He relentlessly mocked the Ivy League as an elaborate credentialing system for the upper class.
The purpose of elite education, he said, wasn’t to cultivate intellect but to signal status and provide access to elite networks.
Lapham saw prep schools and Ivies not as meritocratic ladders but as “courts of entry” to an exclusive club.
“The SAT is merely a secret handshake.”
🗣️ 4. The Language of Meritocracy Silences Class Critique
Lapham believed that the American obsession with meritocracy discourages real conversations about inequality.
If the poor are poor because they didn’t try hard enough, then the system doesn’t have to change.
The myth lets the winners moralize their success and blame the losers.
🪞 5. America Worships Winners, Not Virtue
He often mocked the way society confuses wealth with wisdom, success with virtue, and celebrity with credibility.
“Wealth confers prestige, and prestige substitutes for virtue.”
The meritocracy, in this sense, becomes a religion of appearances, not substance.
Did you finish my piece? I do say why books like quiet street don’t exist in Russia.
Yeah I guess I kind of read it as though you were being specific to "now" - But I guess nothing at all in terms of class [traitor] criticism in the past ~30 years. So there's literally nothing? That's interesting. Fiction maybe?
Generation P by Pelevin is the best book about the 90s, he is not a class traitor, but def he is satirical and detached enough
Thanks. So, I cannot find an English version of the title "Generation P" anywhere, but I did notice that it's a title of a chapter in his other book "Babylon" - is that the same thing?
I'd be interested in a book club. I'd be curious to know what Evgenia makes of the Russian authors who do well in the West - most notably, Vladimir Sorokin. I don't read a word of Russian but, in translation, he reads like another Bret Easton Ellis type with a post-Putin twist. I could be very wrong but don't see it as regards viewing him as a novelist comparable in quality to other Eastern European novelists of roughly the same age - for example, Olga Tokarczuk or László Krasznahorkai.
Interested in the book club too!
Interested in the book club. For "fiction" -- Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. For "non-fiction" -- something by Peter Turchin