Pioneers of Gentrification: Women Entrepreneurs Prospecting in a Post-Soviet Industrial City

Abstract

After the introduction of market reforms in the post-socialist coal-mining city of Mezhdurechensk (Russia), the original urban planning rooted in Soviet industrial modernity adapted to the logic of globalization and gentrification. One way this played out is the conversion of streets into sites of consumption, with the appearance of numerous ground-floor shops that gave underemployed women an opportunity to facilitate early gentrification. This dynamic ended in the mid-2010s, when more prominent market players began to dominate the city space with franchise shops. This article is an ethnographic exploration of how working-class women, drawing on their gendered and class-based skills, demarcate a place for themselves in post-Soviet industrial settings and become the pioneers of gentrification. I also explore the limits of women’s self-employment activities and the narrative of individual responsibility for entrepreneurial failure, namely the eventual closure of their businesses twenty-five years later.