Eras of rapid social change underscore important issues in the study of lives by generating problems of human dislocation and deprivation, as well as new opportunities. The extraordinary loss of life during World War II illustrates this point through a distorted sex ratio and its continuing influence on the social choices of women (Linz, 1985; Velkoff & Kinsella, 1993). Today Russian women over the age of 65 outnumber men by a factor of three to one, an imbalance that is greater than that of any other country in Europe, East or West. From 1940 to the present, the long arm of wartime mortality has shaped and limited their work and marriage options.

The historical record of the 20th century is filled with powerful changes of this kind – violent swings of the economic cycle, rapid industrial growth, population dislocations, mass migration, and political fragmentation. Such times prompt fresh thinking about life trajectories, human agency, and their relation. Indeed, contemporary thinking about such issues in the life course dates back to the changeful times of the early 20th century and especially to the pioneering work of W. I. Thomas and his monumental study with Florian Znaniecki (1918–1920), The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. This study investigated the migratory experience of Polish peasants as they left their rural homeland for urban centers in Europe and the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.