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Soviet Union [USSR] FORMATION OF SOVIET SOCIETY
From 1861 to early 1917, the population of Russia officially
consisted of six social categories: the nobility, clergy,
distinguished citizens (professionals), merchants, townspeople (a
catchall term for city artisans, clerks, and workers not included
in the other groups), and peasants. The intelligentsia, consisting
of those who created and disseminated culture and often served as
social critics, was not considered a separate class but rather, as
one scholar put it, "a state of mind."
The upper level of the nobility and military officers were
further hierarchically ordered according to the Table of Ranks
issued by Peter the Great in 1722, which based rank on service to
the tsar rather than on birth or seniority. This table continued in
use, with some modifications, until abolished in 1917. The tsar was
at the apex of this system, from which Jews, Muslims, and many of
the smaller non-Russian nationalities were excluded.
The peasants, who were liberated in 1861 from serfdom and
obligatory service on private or government lands, were at the
bottom of the pre-1917 social pyramid. Before 1905 the government
required peasants to obtain permission from the local peasant
community--the
mir (see Glossary)--before leaving the land.
Although much of the peasant migration before the Bolshevik
Revolution was seasonal, some permanent migration into the cities
did occur, especially during the 1890s and after 1906, when the
peasants were freed from obligations to the mir. The move from
village to city was naturally accompanied by the move from farm to
factory. Between 1895 and 1917, the factory labor force tripled to
more than 3 million as Russia began to industrialize. The urban
population of Russia increased from 9 percent in 1860 to 16 percent
in 1910. Traditionally, urban life in Russia had been connected
with government administration; but at the turn of the century, it
began to be tied to industry.
The revolutions of 1917 overturned the old social order. In
that year, the new
Bolshevik (see Glossary) government nationalized
private estates and church lands, and it abolished class
distinctions and privileges. Workers' councils
(
soviets--see Glossary) took over the operation of factories
and were given the
right to set production goals and remuneration levels. Banking was
declared a state monopoly. Thus, the economic foundations of the
old social order crumbled. The new ruling elite, the BolshevikMarxist intelligentsia, drew its support from what it called the
proletariat--workers, landless peasants, and employees--while the
formerly privileged--the clergy, nobility, high-ranking civil
servants, and merchants--found themselves stripped of their
property and even hindered in obtaining housing, education, and
jobs. The Bolsheviks lifted some of the restrictions a short while
later when they realized that they needed the professional
knowledge and skills of some former members of the elite to operate
the government and the economy. Yet the children of the formerly
privileged were barred from educational and career opportunities
for nearly two decades after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Vladimir I. Lenin's nationalization of the land, factories, and
financial institutions destroyed the prerevolutionary social
system. In turn, Joseph V. Stalin's forced collectivization of
agriculture, which began in 1929, annihilated the more prosperous
peasantry during the early 1930s, while his industrialization
program destroyed the new elite class that had developed as a
result of Lenin's New Economic Policy
(
NEP--see Glossary). Seeking
political scapegoats in the 1930s, the government directed
widespread purges against the technical experts operating fledgling
industries. In the late 1930s, Stalin's purges also destroyed much
of the military and party elite.
During the 1930s, the social system adapted to the
industrializing economy. Stalin ended the official leveling of
incomes in 1931, when he announced that needed increases in
production could only be effected by paying more to skilled workers
and the intelligentsia. The new system provided incentives for
workers and partly ended legal discrimination against some of the
former privileged classes. Official discrimination against the
former "exploiting classes" (nobles, priests, and capitalists) was
abolished by the 1936 constitution.
Other events at that time reflected Stalin's move away from the
egalitarian ideas that the regime had promoted during its first
decade. In 1934 egalitarianism itself was repudiated, in 1935
military ranks were introduced, and in 1939 the Stalin Prize was
created to reward favored artists. In 1940 school fees were
reestablished for the final year of secondary school and for
universities, and in 1943 and 1945 inheritance laws were made more
favorable to inheritors.
From Stalin's death in 1953 to the late 1970s, an expanding
Soviet economy continued to provide ample opportunity for career
and social advancement. The state increased incomes of and benefits
for the lowest-paid strata of society while providing more
privileges for the elite. Beginning in the 1960s, however, access
to higher education became increasingly restricted, thus impeding
social advancement by this means. In the early 1980s, a stagnant
economy reduced overall social mobility, a situation that
highlighted differences among social groups.
In 1989 Marxism-Leninism, the official Soviet ideology, held
that social classes have been historically defined by their
relationship to the means of production, i.e., land and factories.
The official view was that Soviet society represented "a new and
distinctly different human community, free from traditional class
antagonisms and contradictions." Soviet society supposedly
consisted of two classes, workers and peasants, with those who
engaged in nonmanual or intellectual labor forming a stratum within
both (see
table 17, Appendix A). These two classes were considered
to be nonantagonistic because neither exploited the other and
because they jointly owned the means of production.
Stratification in the Soviet Union, according to Soviet
officials, was based only on merit and not on the ownership of
private property. Privilege proceeded from one's position in
society and not the reverse. Soviet ideology held that this
stratification would disappear in the future as Soviet society
progressed from socialism to communism. In contrast, capitalist
society, according to Soviet ideology, was torn by class conflict
between the capitalists, or those who owned the means of
production, and the workers. The capitalists ruthlessly exploited
the workers, who had only their labor to sell. This exploitation,
Marxist-Leninists believed, created class antagonisms and
inevitable conflict.
The official ideology ignored some very profound cleavages in
Soviet society, and it created some that, in fact, had not existed.
For example, despite overwhelming similarities in income, lifestyle , education, and other determinants of social position, only
those employed in agricultural work on a
collective farm (see Glossary) were considered to be peasants,
while those employed in
agriculture on a
state farm (see Glossary) were called workers.
Moreover, a bookkeeper on a collective farm, a schoolteacher, and
an armed forces general, all of whom performed mental labor, were
considered to belong to the nonmanual labor strata, often and
imprecisely called the intelligentsia. This classification also
failed to take into account the role political power and party
membership played in social stratification within a one-party
state. If under capitalism power flows from ownership, then under
communism power confers the effect of ownership because political
power in the Soviet Union determined who controlled collective
property.
Data as of May 1989
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