Murray Yanowitch - The Social Structure of the USSR: Recent Soviet Studies

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE USSR

Recent Soviet Studies

Recent Soviet Studies

Edited with an introduction by
MURRAY YANOWITCH

First published 1986 by M.E. Sharpe.Inc

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1986 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

Russian texts are translated by arrangement with VAAP, the USSR Copyright Agency.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Published simultaneously as vol. xxiv, nos. 1, 2, and 3 of Soviet Sociology .

Translated by Liv Tudge

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Main entry under title:

The Social structure of the USSR.

Translations from the Russian.
Published simultaneously as Soviet sociology, vol. xxiv,
no. 13T.p. verso.
Bibliography: p.
1. Social classesSoviet UnionAddresses, essays, lectures.
2. Social structureSoviet UnionAddresses, essays, lectures.
3. Soviet UnionSocial conditions 1945 Addresses, essays,
Lectures. I. Yanowitch, Murray.

HB530.Z9S645 1985 305.5'0947 85-18322
ISBN 0-87332-362-9

ISBN 13: 978-0-87332-468-7 (pbk)

MURRAY YANOWITCH

With one exception, the materials included in this volume originally appeared in Soviet publications during the early 1980s (the one exception, selection 4, was published in 1977), An earlier collection of Soviet writings on social structure, which I edited jointly with Wesley Fisher, acquainted Western readers with some of the principal Soviet studies in this field of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although in most respects the final years of the Brezhnev regime and the period immediately thereafter (the years in which the selections which follow originally appeared) hardly strike most observers as particularly "innovative," the professional literature in sociology in this periodand social stratification and mobility research, in particulardeveloped an intellectual momentum of its own. The result is that, while staying largely within the boundaries laid down in the formative period of Soviet sociology (as represented by the studies included in the earlier collection referred to above), the more recent studies included here have gone beyond the earlier ones in a variety of ways. To put it more directly, we may observe here both a basic continuity and a partial break with the limits of earlier studies. The remainder of this introduction will provide a few illustrations of this theme.

1. Like those in earlier years, the more recent studies present abundant empirical evidence of inequalities in earnings, status, and educational attainments and opportunities within Soviet society. Now, however, the range of occupational groups included and the particular types of inequalities disclosed have been extended, In the late 1960s and early 1970s the more serious studies by Soviet sociologists moved beyond the earlier, simplistic threefold division of Soviet society (into the working class, the collective-farm peasantry, and the intelligentsia) to eight or nine "socio-occupational groups" (ranging from unskilled manual workers to "organizers of production collectives"); today, we have available measures of the relative economic status and degree of managerial authority and job autonomy for more than 70 occupational titles (see selection 4, particularly ). Not only is the range of inequality between the extremes of the occupational hierarchy thereby extended, but the legitimacy of introducing such occupational groups as party functionaries and army officers into studies of social structure is implicitly affirmed. The readiness to compare the value of' 'property" holdings (presumably consumer durables and perhaps the value of private household plots and vacation homes) for a limited range of occupational groups (see selection 6) is another novel feature of the recent Soviet literature on social structure.

2. Quite apart from disclosing additional empirical evidence of social and economic inequality, recent studies also provide some illustrations of changes in the concepts and ideas commonly relied on in Soviet discussions of this subject. For example, although the familiar notion that the Soviet Union is moving toward "full social homogeneity" continues to be reiterated (see selections 4 and 5), it is now explicitly recognized that socialism may also generate new forms of social differentiationnew strata and social groupsand that it is just as important to study this process as to look for signs of movement toward the ultimate goal of "social homogeneity" (see selection 3). Is this the initial phase of an explicit examination of "privilege" in the Soviet sociological literature?