On the Verge of Convergence: Social Stratification in Eastern Europe (Ceu Medievalia)

ON THE VERGE OF CONVERGENCE

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ON THE VERGE OF CONVERGENCE Social Stra tifica tion in Eastern Europe HENRYK DOMANSKI

Central European University Press

First published in Polish as“Na progu konwergencji” by Wydawnictwo IfiS PAN, Warszawa, 1996

English edition published in2000 by Central European University Press Oktbber 6. utca 12 H-1051 Budapest Hungary

400 West 59“’ Street New York, NY10019 USA

0 1996 by Henryk Domanski and Wydawnictwo IfiS PAN Distributed in the United Kingdom and Western Europe by Plymbridge Distributors Ltd., Estover Road, Plymouth, PL6 7PZ United Kingdom

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 963-9 1 16-8 1-5 Cloth

ISBN 963 91 16-82-3 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available upon request

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CONTENTS

List of Tables List of Figures

vii X

Introduction: The Constrained Plurality of Stratification Systenls 1 Peasant Societies-Market Societies: The Touch of Modernization 2 Two Transformations and Social Mobility 3 Social Mobility Patterns: A Basic Continuity 4 Economic Stratification: Similarities, Differences, and Emerging Change 5 The ‘Owners’ Debate: Nomenklatura or Self-Recruitment? 6 Income Distribution 7 Culture and Lifestyle 8 Religion-A Stage on the Road to Modernization?

69 91 107 129 145

Conclusions: Modern and Traditional Social Structures

159

Appendix

167

References

173

Index of Authors

183

9 25 45

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L I S T OF T A B L E S

Table 1. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 andin 1993. Men. Bulgaria Table 2. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Czech Republic Table 3. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, andrespondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Hungary Table 4. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1994. Men. Poland Table 5. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Russia Table 6. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent’s first job, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 andin 1993. Men. Slovakia Table 7. Total mobility rates. Percentages of mobile men in 19481952and1952-1963,andin1983-1988and1988-1993 Table 8. Results of fitting models to three-way men’s tables of origin category by destination category by time (1948-1 952 and 1952-1963) Table 9. Results of fitting models to three-waymen’s tables of origin category by destination category by time (1983-88 and 1988-93) Table 10. Men’s inflow rates to the intelligentsia, lower nonmanuals, owners, skilled workers, unskilled workers, and farming Table 11. Coefficients of canonical correlations between occupational categories of fathers andsonddaughters in 1988 and 1993

17

17

18 18

19

19

33 36

37

41

54

...

Vlll

Table 12. Discriminant weights on first and seconddiscriminant functions for tables of mobility from fathers’ to sons’ categories in 1988 Table 13. Discriminant weights on first and second discriminant functions for tables of mobility from fathers’ tosons’ categories in 1993 Table 14. Mean monthly family incomes per capita (in US dollars) Table 15. Mean monthly individual incomes (in US dollars) Table 16. Ownership of motor vehicle, separate deep-freeze, microwave oven, personal computer, satellite receiver, telephone. Synthetic index of material position (100 - owning all 6 items, 0 - none) Table 17. Ownership of savings Table 18. Ownership of shares Table 19. Logistic regression analysis of being an owner in 1993. Effects of membership of nomenklatura in 1988, ownership of firm in 1988, years of schooling, and sex Table 20. Logistic regression analysis of being an owner in 1993. Effects of father’s father’s and father’s ownership of firm Table 2 1. Multiple regression analysis of income from main job. Metric coefficients divided by grand mean of incomes x 100 Table 22. Monthly incomes of men and women, and gender gap Table 23. Monetary returns for graduates of university, some high schools, and secondary, basic vocational, and elementary schools. Metric coefficients in multiple regression analysis divided by grand mean x 100 Table 24. Monetary returns for graduates of university, some high schools,and secondary, basic vocational, and elementary schools in theprivate and public sector. Metric coefficients in multipleregression analysis divided by grand mean x 100 Table 25. Multiple regression analysis of income from main job. Coefficients of semipat-tial correlation Table 26. Going to libraries, museums, opera, theater, listening to classical music, reading serious books. Means of synthetic index of cultural participation Table 27. Multiple regression analysis of respondent’s occupational status on cultural participation and selected variables. Partial correlation coefficients and zero-order correlations Table 28. Number of books

56

57

70 78 82

86 88 97

103 110 113 124

125

126 133

134 136

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Table 29. Multiple regression analysis of cultural participation. Partial correlation coefficients Table 30. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultural participation, and political involvement among atheists and religious denominations. Bulgaria Table 3 1. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, participation in culture, and political involvement among atheists and religious denominations. Czech Republic Table 32. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultural participation, and political involvement among atheists and religious denominations. Poland Table 33. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultural participation, and political involvement among atheists and religious denominations. Slovakia Table 34. Changes in religiosity. Bulgaria, CzechRepublic, Poland, Slovakia Table A1 . Percentage of car owners Table A2. Standardized effects of nomenklatura membership in 1988, ownership of firm in 1988, education, sex, age, and size of place of residence in logistic regression of being an owner in 1993-94 Table A3. Standardized effects in logistic regression of being an owner in 1993-94 Table A4. Standardized effects in logistic regression of being an owner in 1988 Table AS. Religion in childhood by religion in 994. Poland Table A6. Religion in childhood by religion in 993. Bulgaria Table A7. Religion in childhood by religion in 993. Czech Republic Table A8. Religion in childhood by religion in 1993. Slovakia

139 147

148

149

149

154

170 170

171 171 171 172 172 172

L I S T OF F I G U R E S

Figure 1. Bulgaria, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 2. Bulgaria, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 onfirst and second discriminant variate Figure 3, CzechRepublic, 1988. Discriminant weightsfor sons’ categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 4. Czech Republic, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 5. Hungary, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 6. Hungary, 1993. Discriminant weightsfor sons’ categories in 1993 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 7. Poland, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 onfirst and second discriminant variate Figure 8. Poland, 1994. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1994 onfirst and second discriminant variate Figure 9. Russia, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 10. Russia, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on first and second discriminant variate Figure 11. Slovakia, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 onfirst and second discriminant variate Figure 12. Slovakia, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on first and second discriminant variate

58 58 58 59 59 59 60

60 60 61

61 61

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INTRODUCTION

THE CONSTRAINED PLURALITY OF STRATIFICATION SYSTEMS

THE CONCEPT of the ‘ppstcommunist society’ concisely depicts a common heritage. This book has beenwritten with the intention of considering how long this term will continue to encapsulate really common features. I ask whether, in the first half of the 1990s, there were still similarities between Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia. I analyze the social structure of these six countries using survey data from research carried out in 1993 within the ambit of an international project which was designed to grasp the social transformations taking place in Eastern Europe after 1989. In the Appendix, I provide detailed information on the project, and discuss the strict comparability of the data collected. Since, in all countries, the surveys covered random national samples of adults, there are solid grounds for believing that the diagnosis and conclusions presented in this book are reasonably comprehensive and valid. What I shall discuss concerns cross-national similarities and differences along the pivotal axes of social stratification and macrostructure. I will focus on patterns of occupational movements, social fluidity, and rigidities and distances between basic socio-occupational strata. Taking these components into account, I will attempt to outline a stratification ladder in East European societies. The question must be faced: To what extent do the intelligentsia, lowernonmanuals, private entrepreneurs, skilled and unskilled workers, and farmers tend to hold similar positions in the hierarchies of income, material standards of living, cultural participation, and so on? How much dothey differ across our six nations? Although I refer to data snapshots at a given point in time, my analyses address not only the statics of social stratification but also tendencies to transformation over time. Insofar as social dynamics are concerned,

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I attempt to go beyond a narrow East European context. Changes are looked at from two standpoints: (i) the convergence of societies and (ii) their emerging differentiation. From its very inception, the notion was passionately contested from various theoretical positions. If famous names count in terms of significance and popularity, one need only read the roll-call of researchers who claimedagrowing similarity between Eastern Europe and the West: Aron,Bendix,Lipset, Zetterberg, Dahrendorf, Bell, and Galbraith. In the decades which followed, the theory of convergence gained further support (see Treiman, 1977). The adversarial camp included students of stratification in communist societies. What, then, is the specific contribution which I hope to make in the following chapters? Certainly,the watchword of ‘convergence’ refers to the postcommunist societies which are approaching the standards of the Western world. I look at the question of convergence, examining how well it fares in the light of the evidence, but also in relation to the revelations of previous studies. The thesis to the effect that convergence is going on between different political, economic, and cultural systems was formulated in the 1950s. Convergence theories of the 1960s and 1970s predicted that the two rival political and economic systems would inevitably move towards and assimilate one another. The communist East was to be enriched with market elements, while the economic order of Western capitalism hadalready adopted elements of state intervention in production and distribution. In fact, both Eastern and Western societies became more ‘mixed’, although the process was more advanced in the latter.Concessions were made to political liberalization, national independence, decentralized forms of ownership, a competitive economy, of self-governing bodies in enterprises, fostering andthefoundation ‘economic democracy’; nevertheless, ‘Western ‘admixtures’ in terms of economic and political organizations were not allowed or were withdrawn. Hungary and Poland were the only countries which managed to win moderate reformmeasures. The rapid flow of events whichaccompanied the upheavals of 198991 made the transition of East Central European countries to Western patterns a real issue. Economically and politically, these countries have no choice but to copy the institutional framework of the capitalist world. They are dependent on it mostly in the economic sphereprogress depends on assistance and support from the West-and all postconmunist regimes have become the object of paternalistic Western strategies in the

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political, economic, and military domains. The question arises whether the convergence going on in terms of political democracy and the capitalist market economy is as overwhelming as it seems-and is it also paradigmatic in termsof social stratification? This brings us to the influence of social stratification on other aspects of life in the industrial world. In the case of systemic transformation in Eastern Europe, theproblems of social mobility, distribution of material goods, social justice, recruitment to new elites, and the looming ‘new middle class’ which are now on the agenda, have raised a number of theoretical and empirical questions (Stark, 1992; Kovacs, 1994; Lane, 1996; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Offe, 1996; Szelknyi et al., 1996; Marshall, 1997). The variety of findings paints a fragmented and unfocused picture. It is difficult to formulate a precise image of the reshaping social stratification, either because of the lack of detail in particular studies or because of the impossibility of achieving comparability across the different analyses. Nonetheless,an impressive start has already been made. Since the present volume makes no pretence of being a textbook on class analysis in postcommunist countries I will not attempt a systematic review of the latest analyses. However, two aspects of the discussion areworth mentioning in outline. The first deals with the implications of these data for understanding the different paths of convergence. Research in this branch extends beyond convergence between the postcommunist and capitalist worlds. Under the label ‘transition to democracy’ three groups of countries have been considered in the comparative perspective of political modernization processes since the Second World War: (i) the ‘postwar democracies’ (such asItaly, Austria, Japan, and West Germany); (ii) Greece, Portugal, and Spain, which underwent democratization in the 1970s; and (iii) the authoritarian regimes of South America which collapsed in the 1980s (O’Donnel et al., 1989). East Central European countries constitute a fourth group, broadening the scope of comparative analyses of transition. What differentiates the three above-mentioned cases from transitions to democracy following the breakdown of communist regimes is that the modernizing processes of the former are of a political kind, whereas the emerging democracies of the East face the additional task of reforming the economy. The implications of this for class formation reside in the need to transfer state-owned assets to private hands, the creation of an entirely new class of owners, and the ‘installation’ of mechanisms of income distribution organized around the principles of a competitive market.

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The second point concerns the interplay between the convergence of, andthe differences between, countries. Despite important features which all East Central European countries have in common, they are rooted in different historical soil. The planned economies of the Czech Republic and Hungary, among the most successful in 1989, might expect steady economic growth thanks to market reforms. Poland, despite deepand urgent economicproblemsin 1989, hasmanaged,through radical reform, to jointhe Czech Republic and Hungaryin the economic vanguard of Eastern Europe. Bulgaria, by contrast, began with one of the most impoverished economies of the region, and its halting reforms have brought great hardship without accomplishing asystemic transition to the free market. The main problem in Russia is a strong pro-statist bias and its associated excessive regulation, particularly in respect of foreign trade, which-as in many developing countries-breeds inefficiency and rent-seeking (see Balcerowicz, 1995). Throughout the period under consideration, 1992-93, real economic activity in.Russiacontracted at unprecedented rates: GDP fell 29 per cent from 199 1 levels and industrial production fell 3 1.3 per cent over two years (Ericson, 1995). Slovakia lies somewhere between these two groups: its economy showed promise, but the commitment to reform of the governing elites wavered.Despite the troubling political climate, the fledgling Slovak economy has fared well, and its 10 per cent inflation and 6.6 per cent growth in 1995 were impressive. Still, Slovakia stands alongside Bulgaria-and Romania-as the states which have yet to implement largescale privatization. Bulgaria and Romania, the region’s poorest countries in 1989, saw their GNPs drop by about IO per cent each year from 1989to1992.TheBulgarianandRomanianeconomies did grow in 1995 (by 2.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively), but suffered the region’s highest rates of inflation (60 per cent and 32 per cent respectively) (see Economic Intelligence Unit[EIU] ViewsWire, 1996). Finally, Slovakia, Bulgaria, andRomaniahave received comparatively little foreign investment (according to the Financial Times of 15 April 1996). A preliminary examination of the states of the region reveals Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary as economic success stories, while Bulgaria and Romania are struggling to reverse steep declines in production. As already mentioned, Slovakia lies somewhere in between. It is clear that intercountry disparities and differences represent the reverse side of convergence. Notwithstanding its pivotal role in my discussion, I refer to the term. ‘convergence’ in only two places: in the Introduction and in the Con-

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clusion.Everythingwhichcomesin between does concern the ‘convergence’ question, but boiled down into digressions and hypotheses. I cannot go beyond merely hypothetical interpretations due to the lack of comparable data fromWestern countries which might be subjected to serious examination. However, data with a limited degree of comparability do exist and I draw on them in seeking general regularities which seem common to Eastern Europe and a wide range of postindustrial societies. Thus, my treatment of the convergence issue takes the form of references to cross-country distinctions and similarities, and so is restricted to commentaries on the central problem, the comparison of six East European countries. The latter, though, revolves around social universals and differentiation within the East European region. Asfarasthe universals of social stratification are concerned, the problem resides in the degree to which those nations drew close to each otherduringtheir common past under communist rule:thatwhich brought them together must have been embedded, above all, in a uniform political and economic system which left its stigmata on the shape of social barriers and distances. This thesis may, of course, be challenged. Nevertheless, we shall see that postcommunist societies preserve certain unique features in comparison with developed capitalist countries, a fact which-as I shall argue-may be attributed to the effect of a common institutional context inherited from the recent past and greatly influencing social hierarchies and divisions. The results which I report in the following chapters allow one to formulate such generalizations. They show that postcommunist societies maintain disparities in relation to the West in both the shape and the mechanisms underlying income distribution. In Chapters 4 and 6, I elaborate on the effects of the command economy in this area. One question which is peculiar to Eastern Europe concerns the conversion of members of the former communist nomenklatura into owners of firms. The nomenklaturaproblem has become a controversial issue in politics and has been vigorously debated in the mass media. In Chapter 5 , I deal with this question on an empirical basis. It is clear that, while the movement of formernomenklatura members into business was by no means negligible, in all six countries it was substantially exceeded by the self-recruitment of owners. However, East European uniqueness must be set against the background of processes which are shared by East and West. This highlights areas of social stratification which remain impervious to the effects of the political and economiccontext: in other words, they are cross-

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systemic. In this study, one will find that such features have been disclosed in many prior studies, expressed in-for example-the relentless effects of family background on socioeconomic attainments across countries which, for several decades, differed in type of economy and political system. In light of the evidence presented in Chapter 3, we can claim that intergenerational mobility patterns in Eastern Europe did not diverge in a substantial way from those described in capitalist countries. In the area of cultural participation too, there are similarities. I deal with these in Chapter 7. In Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia, it appearsto be the intelligentsia which is primarily involved in cultural activity, in contrast to other basic class segments, as is the case withprofessionals in the United States and Great Britain, the c0unterpart.s of our intelligentsia. According to Bourdieu, intergenerationaltransmissionof cultural capital tends to underlie the cultural dominance of the upper classes. I provide some insights into this question for Eastern Europe by testing the strength of cultural inheritance in our six nations.Additionally, I highlight ‘cultural distances’ between the intelligentsia and other basic strata in this perspective. It will not come as a surprise that things which look inherently uniform in aWestern perspective may be overlooked or rejected by insiders who emphasize clear distinctions between, say, Russians, Hungarians, or Czechs. Uneven standards of living are indisputable, as were the national divisions which led to the separation of Czechs and Slovaks into different states. Strong differences in religiosity are also evident. Some kinds of religiosity entail traditional orientations which, under particular circumstances, may constitute obstacles to the transition of East European societies to market-oriented systems. In Chapter 8, I examine the pace of secularization in postcommunist societies: how they differ and where secularization is the most advanced. In fact, the unequal progress of secularization may be subject to different interpretations. According to one of them-which I follow-widespread religiosity, as displayed in the attitudes of East Europeans, may slow down adaptation to modern capitalist structures. Polish society is peculiarly subject to delay on the road to a market society because of its retentive religiosity-in marked contrast to the CzechRepublic, where, in 1993, more than SO per cent of the adult population declared their atheism. As may be clear from this overview, I shall attempt to portray the social macrostructure in East European countries within the framework of the transformations in the politic.al and economic systems of the region. Given the strictly comparable data-sets of the six countries, gen-

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eralizations are easier. One must acknowledge that the question of systemic transformation in postcommunist societies makes for a natural, promising, and fruitful theoretical framework for the analysis of social hierarchies. The challenge of attempting to account for the relationship between changes going on in stratification systems and economic and political institutions cannot be avoided. My treatment of this issue is inherently limited in that I rely, in the main, on hypothetical interpretations of cross-country coincidences between, on the one hand, the extent of mobility, economic inequalities, and openness of social structures, and, on the other,macroscopic characteristics of economic development, cultural traditions, and so on. I cannot apply any rigorous tests in this area. What warrants this type of speculative explanation is that relationships between macrosystemic parameters can never be ultimately verified. We can only compare various phenomena registered in time, and in different historical and systemic contexts, in order to ensure that relationships between them really did exist. My impression, gained after reading the first draft of this book, is that many of the findings presented identify the disintegration of an East European uniformity enforced over recent decades. The postcommunist constellation of social barriers, class distances, and channels of recruitment to newly emerging positions highlights unprecedented, unique features of stratification with the emphasis on similar problems in all countries in the region. Over and above this, one must deal with nationally specific transition paths, the course of which will be determined not only by the communist history of the individual countries over the last fifty years, but also by their histories over centuries. Almost ten years of research into the sociology of social stratification have shown convincingly that the transition in East Central Europe is not following any single logic of ‘market modernization’, but is progressing along diverse routes determined by country-specific route dependencies and institutional contexts (Parrot, 1997; Mach and Dievald, 1998; Nee and Matthews, 1996; Szelenyi et al., 1997). Looked at in this way, asking about the filture prospects of the postcommunist societies is tantamount to asking not only whether it is possible to emulate capitalist democracies in respect of culture and history, but also whether postcommunist social development will set out along a range of trajectories of social stratification. This leads us to expect constrained plurality. Although it may well be that, in the course of the transformation of these societies, similarities will emerge once again, they will be shaped by a logic hitherto absent-that of the capitalist market.

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CHAPTER 1

PEASANT SOCIETIES-MARKET SOCIETIES: THE TOUCH OF MODERNIZATION I INTEND in thischapter to establish the direction of change. To this end, we shall follow long-term trends in occupational differentiation. Occupational structures are a valid-perhaps the best-reflection of social distances and class divisions. In recent centuries, the occupational system has undergone a conversion froma pre-industrial toamodern, postindustrial stage. This transformation was, in fact, a long-lasting movement away from traditional structures. One hundred and seventy years ago, only England had moved beyond the stage of a predominantlyagricultural society with (by 1831) no more than 25 per cent of the economically active population working in agriculture (Thompson, 1992, 159). In other countries, this percentage exceeded one-half of working adults, reaching in some societies alevel of 70-80 per cent. By the time ofthe industrial revolution, agricultural workers were still the overwhelming element in the social structure. Development of a factory system brought about the replacement of these rustics with manual industrial workers, and the growing capitalist market engendered the numerical expansion of small owners outside agriculture. Now, in the late twentieth century, it is the professions, managerial cadres, and sk.illed sales and service categories which are growing at the fastest pace. This has become the main developmental trajectory of socio-occupational structures in the Western world. I will discuss these long-term paths of development in an attempt to determine the main direction of societal transformation in East Central Europe. Which countries have already abandoned peasant-like occupational structures or have been moving away from them? How .far are they advanced in the development of structures more typical of contemporary market-oriented systems?Whichmechanismscouldunderpin

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these transformations? Of special interest is the question of how they might have been affected by the consecutive political changes in this region in the late 1940s andat the end of the 1980s. We will look for these transformations by examining the changing proportions of basic socio-occupational strata. I will compare percentages of the intelligentsia, top-level managerial staff, clerical workers, private entrepreneurs, working-class categories, and peasants in five successive elements of the biographies of persons surveyed in 1993: starting from occupational distributions in the generation of their grandfathers, followed by those of their fathers, then distributions established at the time of their first entrance into the labor force, in 1988 and in 1993. The time-span is great and the social space will be mapped in terms of basic class and strata divisions. The relevant metaphorical name of these processes is that of ‘social metabolism’. The ‘founding fathers’ of the great sociological systems of the nineteenth century drew analogies with mechanics andnature in their descriptive analyses of social dynamics on a macroscale. I will refer to similar processes in this chapter, though drawing on only oneaspect of social metabolism, that restricted to the growing size of particular segments of the social strata and the decrease of others. This will be a first step in an attempt to establish common patterns and differences in social stratification in East Central Europe.

THE UNIVERSAL LOGIC OF INDUSTRIALISM MODIFIED BY POLITICAL CONTEXT AND TRADITION Under this heading, 1 outline the main conclusion of my analysis of the changingshape of socio-occupational structures in our six countries. The data whichI will now present suggest that processes endogenous to industrial development trajectories, as initiated in the nineteenth century, are also exhibited in East Central Europe. At the same time, it appears that, despite these common roots, it, was the different historical circumstances and political fluctuations in this region over the last fifty years, along withthe installation of the command economy, which came to shape the direction of changes. The logic of industrialism collided, first, with the logic of central planningand state monopoly,and recently-since1989-the inherent lawsof industrialism havebeen modified by the logic of the natural retrieval of social hierarchies suppressed under communistrule.

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The inherent laws, referred to above, resided in the universal, evolutionary changes of socio-occupational structures characteristic of industrial societies. According to some influential theories, industrial societies in recent decades have moved on to a higher stage, that of postindustrial systems. Bothterms accentuate technological features, nevertheless, the changes were much more comprehensive and encompassed the evolution of the institutional framework of the economy, political systems, values, orientations, and lifestyle, All of these changes may be properly analyzed in many other, slightly different theoretical perspectives. We could replace, for example, ‘postindustrialism’, as coined by Bell(1973),withsuch concepts as ‘service society’, ‘post-Fordism’, ‘consumption society’, ‘civil society’, or ‘postmodernism’, depending on which aspect of the long-term tendencies is to be placed in the foreground (see Esser, 1990; Hardiman, 1990; Featherstone, 1991; Gilbert and Burrows,1993; Crompton, 1993). Even the label ‘disorganized capitalism’ has gained popularity: the exponents of the vision of the disorganization of the contemporary capitalist system are pessimistic about the progressive nature of the changes. In their analysis, the center of gravity is transferred from the changes themselves to the dramaturgy of the developments, where a tone critical of the status pro and gloomy predictions prevail (Offe, 1985; Lash and Urry, 1987; Beck, 1992). Turner’s claim (1988)expresses yet another tone in its concise overview of the mechanisms involved in social status, namely, that contemporary societies have become a battlefield between opposing factions. Each of them fights forstatus and-consequently-a ‘politics of status’ becomes constitutive of the main axes of social conflict. After demolition of the old statussystem by capitalism, differential statuses have been reemerging and once again create the terrain of social divisions, as in feudal society. In fact, any interpretation of the trajectories of the occupational systems in East Central Europe in t e m s of universal tendencies should refertomore general concepts, moving beyond questions revolving around ‘postindustrialism’. In the 1930s Fisher (1939, and later Clark (19S7), put forward one of the earliest conceptions of sequential development.They pointed out the close associations between structural transformations and socioeconomic developments. In brief, in the first stage of development of the capitalist market, the traditional peasant economy was replaced by a more efficient form of farming; subsequently, its contribution to the economy faded, to be replaced by manufacturing, which became the dominant factor. Next, the role of modern

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technologies in manufacturing grew, paralleled by a decline in the position of extractive and, later, processing industries. Finally, manufacturing gave way to multifarious social services: initially, material services associated with transport were in high demand, but a growing demand for an effectively performinglogistics and the rising needs of consumption enforced development of social services in administration, banking, health, education, recreation,and leisure. The theory of sequential stages aimed, chiefly, to explain the mechanics of adevelopingeconomy.In fact, these analyses were overwhelmingly economic, as far as the macroscopic perspective was concemed (Singelman, 1978; Gustaffson, 1979; Gershuny and Miles, 1983; Zagorski, 1986). This did not rule out interesting supplementary contributions by authors who described sequential transformations of occupational structures(Wright and Martin, 1987; Szafran, 1992; EspingAndersen et al., 1993). I will dwell on this expanded schema of evolutionary change in pursuing the trajectories of occupational systems in East Central Europe. But let us recall, first, what constituent processes made up the ‘inherent’ developmental trends in occupational structure which I referred to above. First, insofar as the traditional macrostructure was abandoned, it released great waves of manpower from agriculture to manufacturing. In turn, manufacturing provided the service sector with more and more laborin filrther phases of the transformation. In effect, in developed economies, both a total and a relative decrease of employment in agriculture took place. It declined in some countries from 70-80 per cent of all those economically active in the incipient stage of industrialization to 2-10 at the present day. Thispercentage looks like a limit for the potential efficiency of agriculture in themodern economy. The naturalconsequenceof an inflow to manufacturing was, initially, a growth in the number of manual workers employed in production-this appears as a second universal trend. In developed capitalist societies, the percentage of manual workers climbed to 50 per cent and more. Afterwards, this ascendingtrend gradually slowed down. Relative to the type and pace of changes in the economic structures of various countries, it peaked at 70-80 per cent. In the 1950s and 1960s, official statistics started to show a relative decrease in the number of manual workers and, in the next decade, in the United States and a number of other countries, manual workers lost their leading position, in terms of number, to nonmanual workers (Singelman and Browning, 1980; Singelman, 1978).

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This moderate decline, preceded by a continuing increase in the relative share of nonmanual workers, marks a third turning point in the sequence of structural transformations. Both in total numbers and in percentages the growth of nonmanual workersresulted from the transfer of ‘free’ manpowerfrommanufacturingto administration and services. Greater productivity in manufacturing left amplescope for outflow. ‘Freed’ reservoirs of labor reinforced municipal infrastructures, the demands of the public utilities, as well as the industrial and state bureaucracy-with the latter expanding due to the increase in the regulatory functions of government bodies. Another impetus came from the postwar economic boom (end of the 1940s and the early 1950s) which gave rise to an increase in material welfare on a massscale. Western societies witnessed an explosion of chain-stores, restaurants, show-business and tourist services in response to mass demand. In relation to occupational distribution, it resembled the incessant mechanism of a suction-pump. At the same time, services penetrated the productive sector. An effective administration becamea functional requirement for the operation of manufacturing plants, transport, and building firms. This numerical expansion was accompanied by internal restructuring. Within the differentiated category of nonmanual workers, routine clerks were leaving the stage. They had epitomized the traditional model of the ‘white-collar worker’ performing simple, repetitive tasks. Instead, managerial cadres, professionals, semi-professionals, and technicians underwent a dynamic growth. The fourth of the global tendencies in occupational structures, which paralleled the consolidation of the postindustrial system, is that of contraction-in terms of relative size-in the category of small and medium-sized owners. Their share of the labor force stabilized at a level of 10-1 5 per cent in the majority of capitalist economies. As industrial societies matured, the small-business sector gradually withered before the advance of super-efficient large firms enjoying ever-increasing economies of scale. The numericaldecline was seemingly inexorable. For example, small ownersaccounted for 9.3 per cent in 1984, whereas in 1940 they had represented 20.9 per cent, and in 1880, sixty years earlier, thispercentagehadamountedto 41.8 per cent! In 1985, in the nine countries of the European Union,they accounted for 12.6 per cent of the population actively employed (Steinmentz andWright, 1989, 984-85). It is worth stressing a remarkable exception in the generally bleak prospects for small enterprises, namely, the renaissance of the smallbusiness sector in British society in the 1980s, a widely documented

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process. They grew from 7.7 per cent in 1980 to 12 per cent in 1985. This reversal of a seemingly inescapable historical downward spiral has provoked controversy. Among the explanations offered is that much of this activity is only temporary, consisting of the establishment of new enterprises as an alternative to unemployment or the threat of unemployment.Second,therehave been changes in managerial strategies which, it has been argued, have had the effect of enhancing opportunities for small-scale economic activities. A fashionable managerial strategy in the 1980s was for companies to subcontract such activities as catering, cleaning, and security. Thirdly, it has been argued that the renaissance of small business was in a sense a spurious growth, since the statistics of owners included free professional subcontractors and homebased categories who, in fact, have been satellites of big companies: they are built into their structures and are not autonomous (see Curran and Blackburn, 199 1). Above all, the numerical growth of the category registered asowners has not been impressive and, apart from inthe United Kingdom, has been hardly discernible. Let us establish whether socio-occupational structures in East Central European countries have followed the same patterns. We shall then inquire to what extent our six societies differed over the decades as regards relative proportions of farmers (smallholders), owners, and categories of manual and nonmanual workers, and the pace at which they changed. We shall dwell on the distributions presented in Tables 1 through 6, which express the direction of shifts in occupational structures. I employed a set of categories which is regarded in cross-national studies as the most valid description of basic class--or, interchangeably, occupational strata-divisions in modern industrial societies. This is an EGP categorization, used by students of social stratification in recent years (see Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992). (In fact, Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero constructed it for cross-national studies on social stratification and mobility-see Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero, 1979.) I collapsed the full EGP version into ten categories. As regards the criteria used by Erikson et al., they tend to differentiate positions within labor markets and production units in terms of employment relationships. The EGP version adapted in my study aims to reflect the differentiation of economic rewards associated with jobs, the unequal bargaining power of oc,cupational categories, their material standard of living, social status, and other attributes whichdivide people into ‘better placed’ and ‘worse placed’ in the social structure. Neo-Weberians consider these determinants as critical for class position in modern market-

1s

oriented societies, and Erikson et al. explicitly adhere to Weber’s class theory. EGP has also proven its validity outside capitalist Western societies, namely in Poland. In comparison with standard Polish categorizations, EGP performed well as regards its explanatory power-in a statistical sense-in relation to schooling, incomes, cultural consumption, and differentiation of other aspects of socioeconomic status. A cautionary note is needed, however. Looking through the distributions-stretching fromthe grandfather’s generation to 1993-we can determine no more than the direction of changes. We ought to bear in mindthatthe distributions established for grandfathers, fathers, and those starting their first job do not identi@ a given month or year, but refer to long periods of time. In particular, the occupational distributions for grandfathers bring together the grandfathers of respondents who, in 1993, were 20 years old and those who were 69. In the former case, their occupational activity peaked in 1930-1950, and in the latter group it covered the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, it may be seen that the distribution of grandfathers collects cases far apart in time. Neither distributions for grandfathers nor those for fathers or for thefirst job represent meaningful historical points of time. However, this does not rule out the possibility of outlining the dynamics of change, and its direction and pace. The occupational distribution for grandfathers properly precedes in time ‘average fathers’. The latter, in turn, reflects sociooccupational distributions earlier than those established for those starting their first job. Certainly, this analysis covered only males: it makes sense to compare occupational distributions for grandfathers and fathers withthosefor grandsons and sons. One should inthis case exclude women due to gender differences in occupational structure. Following these five distributions, we can see that at least one of the global paths of occupational transformation is also featured inEast Central European countries. I am referring to the developmental stages characterizing manual workers. Everywhere, in time, they accounted for more and more of the economically active population, after which they stabilized and their relative numbers fell. If we restrict this analysis to men, we can barely trace the continuous development of the nonmanual categories which make up the core of the transformation of occupational structures in the industrial world. Certainly, women, who account for a significant proportion of professionals, clerical workers, and administrative staff, have contributed to this developmental trend. In East Central Europe the turn of the 1980s saw some stabilization of the male proportion of nonmanual categories. Conversely, farming categories and

16

nonagricultural business owners found themselves, demographically, in decline, fading away as in all industrial societies. Nonmanual workers, broadly defined, include the first three categories distinguished in Tables 1 to 6, from the intelligentsia through clerical workers. In the generation of grandfathers only in Russia and Hungary did they account for more than 10 per cent. In the five other countries,this proportion fell to 8.5 per cent-in the case of the former Czechoslovakia-at best, and approached 4-5 per cent in Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia. Over time, the percentage of nonmanual workers, taken overall, increased, and in 1993 reached 20-32 per cent across the six countries. It stood lowest in Bulgaria, at 20.4 per cent. By contrast, in Russia it amounted to almost 32 per cent of males in 1993. It should be noted that I refer to 1993 for the sake of convenience-the Polish data come from 1994 (I will follow this referential convention in the remainder of the present volume). As regards manual workers outside agriculture, manuals in the strict sense include categories of skilled and unskilled workers since ‘technicians andforemen’ cover, apart from manual supervisors, alsolower-grade technicians ‘who overlap with nonmanual workers. In the generation of grandfathers-our starting point-manual workers prevailed over nonmanuals to a substantial degree, although they were outnumbered by farmers. In relative terms, they were most highly represented in the territory of the contemporary Czech Republic (totaling 44.8 per cent). This is in accord with the historical evidence that, with respect to industrialization and urbanization, this region of EastCentral Europe was the most highly advanced. By the 1870s, the urban population in the Czech lands exceeded 50 per cent of the whole (Wereszycki, 1975, 145). This fact necessarily accelerated the numericalgrowth of manual workers. Relatively, the lowest rate of grandfathers belonging to the working class was in Bulgaria (15.8 per cent). In Poland, they accountedfor 2 1.6 per cent, a figure derived from the retrospective reports of adult males in 1994. At consecutive points of biographical time, the percentages of manual categories increased. In the majority of countries, this upward trend stopped in the period preceding 1988-it fell between that year and some earlier point of time which averagedthe dates on which persons surveyed in 1993 started their first job. We may assume-looking through the prism of Clark’s and Fisher’s classical sequential model-that the occupational structures of postcommunist societies, which emerged on the basis of extensive industrialization, have already reached their peak in this regard. Henceforth, the service sector should increase in importance.

17 Table 1. Distribution of socio-occupational categories.for father’s father, father, respondent ’s.first.job. and respondent’s occupation in I988 and in 1993. h h ~Bulgaria . (%) Socio-occupational categories Higher professionals and managers Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers Owners with employees @wners without employees Lower-grade technicians Skilled workers Unskilled workers Agricultural laborers Farmers Total

Father’s Father First job 1988 1993 father 1.0 5.3 4.5 8.0 7.7 2.6 5.7 7.5 10.1 9.5 1.7 3.2 2.7 2.9 3.2 I .7 6.5 0.8 1.4 3.8 0.0 5.1 2.2 2.3 5.5 0.1 2.8 2.0 4.1 3.6 6.2 12.7 26.9 25.1 23.6 9.6 23.3 29.5 33.5 31.8 2.7 27.9 19.2 11.6 9.6 69.6 12.4 4.7 1.O 1.6 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

.father, Table 2. Distribution qf socio-occupational categories for fathers father, ar~drespondent’s occupation in I988 alld irz 1993. responderit ’sjrst job, Men. Czech Republic (%) Socio-occupational categories

Father’s Father Firstjob 1988 1993 father

Higher professionals and managers 1.7 9.5 6.3 14.2 11.4 2.6 11.1 9.3 13.7 13.0 Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 4.2 5.0 1 1.4 3.4 3.8 Owners with employees 11.6 0.9 0.1 0.2 4.8 Owners without employees 0.0 1.2 1.5 0.9 9.5 Lower-grade technicians 1.1 6.6 2.6 7.2 5.6 Skilled workers 20.8 20.0 39.9 26.8 22.9 Unskilled workers 24.0 30.1 27.6 28.1 24.4 Agricultural laborers 7.2 9.3 7.2 5.1 3.9 26.6 Farmers 6.4 1.0 0.3 0.7 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

In the case of manual workers, their increase, stabilization, and, finally, the decline of their relative proportion were constituents of a progression whichconformedto the classical model of macrostructural transformations. This does not seem to be the case with farmers and owners (the term ‘owners’ as used in this book should be understood in the sense of ‘owners of nonagricultural businesses’). In East Central Europe, they were transformed according to a logic which departed, to some extent, from the typical trajectory of the postindustrial stage.

18 Table 3. Distribution of socio-occupational categories-forfather’s father, father. respondent’s firstjob, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Hungaw (%) Socio-occupational categories

Father’s Father Firstjob 1988 1993 father

2.7 6.7 3.2 9.8 8.8 Higher professionals and managers 3.9 8.8 10.3 Semi-professionals 5.7 6.1 4.4 Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 4.3 4.1 3.4 3.6 5.2 1.4 Owners with employees 2.7 0.2 3.8 0.0 Owners without employees 5.4 1.2 3.9 8.8 0.4 1.3 6.3 5.4 Lower-grade technicians 4.2 12.2 18.0 40.8 31.5 30.1 Skilled workers Unskilled workers 11.3 22.3 21.5 26.4 22.2 12.4 17.1 18.0 Agricultural laborers 6.7 5.2 47.4 13.7 Farmers 3.6 1.7 2.3 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Table 4. Distribution o f socio-occupational categories for father’s-father,father, respondent ’sfirstjob,and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1994. Men. Poland (%) Socio-occupational categories

Father’s Father Firstjob 1988 father

1994

Higher professionals and managers 0.S 4.3 6.2 10.1 8.5 1.8 5.3 6.1 7.5 7.0 Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 2.2 3.1 3.8 4.4 4.8 Owners with employees 0.4 2.4 4.3 6.0 2.7 Owners without employees 0.0 4.8 1.6 3.4 7.9 Lower-grade technicians 0.0 2.9 2.9 5.4 4.3 Skilled workers 35.8 35.8 10.4 27.7 25.2 Unskilled workers 11.2 22.9 20.4 24.1 21.2 Agricultural laborers 3.0 16.85.3 4.3 3.3 Farmers 66.3 31 .O 5.5 10.5 11.8 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

It is true that, in both cases, we find analogies with developmental trends involving farmers and owners in Western societies. Analogously with the West, in five of our postcommunist countries the percentage of farmers declined, except for the nontypical case of Polish agriculture. However, this decline was underpinned by mechanisms quite different to those in the capitalist West. The numerical decline of farmers in East Central Europe departed from the classical sequence in that it resulted from the mass collectivization of private farms which took place in the

19

first half of the 1950s (with the exception of Poland). Collectivization accelerated the pace of decline in private farming. Notably, there was a big slump in the percentage offarmers in the workforce in one particular period: between the generations of grandfathers and fathers. We may suppose that, even without the political intervention of the communist authorities, the inherent rules of the industrial economy would sooneror later have resulted in ‘depeasantization’, if not so rapidly. Table 5.Distribtrtion o f socio-occupational categories for father’s father, father, respondent :v-firstjob, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Russia (%) Socio-occupational categories

Father’s Father First father

job 1988 1993

Higher professionals and managers 6.5 16.1 11.0 20.9 19.9 3.2 5.8 9.4 10.5 9.7 Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 2.6 2.5 3.5 2.1 2.4 1.0 0.4 Owners with employees 5.8 0.9 3.3 Owners without employees 0.0 2.0 0.8 1.1 2.4 6.5 Lower-grade technicians 0.7 2.2 5.4 5.2 Skilled workers 17.2 24.5 34.3 29.0 28.0 Unskilled workers 10.2 19.7 22.3 21.3 21.6 Agricultlrral laborers 4.5 19.3 15.8 8.4 7.3 Farmers 2.5 0.4 48.5 0.4 0.3 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Table 6. Distribution of socio-occupational categories for father ’s-father,.father., respondent’s.fir.stjob, and respondent’s occupation in 1988 and in 1993. Men. Slovakia (%) Socio-occupational categories

Father’s Father First job 1988 1993 father

Higher professionals and managers 1.2 6.7 7.4 13.0 10.5 8.3 7.6 1.5 10.8 10.7 Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 1.8 4.4 4.5 4.1 3.9 0.4 6.5 0.3 0.6 4.1 Owners with employees 5.5 Owners without employees 0.0 1.2 1.0 0.6 7.3 Lower-grade technicians 2.5 5.7 0.6 8. I 0.212.2 42.7 33.1 30.9 Skilled workers 16.5 27.7 23.6 23.8 21.8 Unskilled workers 8.6 5.5 4.5 8.4 15.1 Agricultural laborers 1.8 1.4 51.4 0.6 Farmers 0.6 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Total

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As regards owners, we can still trace analogies with the West; these, however, plainly conceal different political andeconomic causes of change. The relative proportion of owners decreasedin the generation of fathers as a result of nationalization at the end of the 1940s. In the next period with which we are concerned, the time when respondents started their first job, private ownership tended to recover, except in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. After 1988 this upturn in the trend became a veritable explosion. As in the case of farmers, the restrictive administrative measures imposed on owners may be regarded as a counterpart of the market forces which brought about the decline of the ‘old middle classes’ in capitalist economies. However, the seeming similarities betweenthe recessions witnessed by both ‘capitalist’ and‘communist’ owners broke down completely after 1988. The dominant tendency in the West was to remainat a standstill, with the proportion of owners not exceeding 10-1 5 per cent. Instead, postcommunist societies saw a marked revival of private business. After the collapse of communism, the institutional impediments to development were to anextent removed and the number of small businesses enjoyed a spectacular upsurge. This growth trend clearly-but perhaps temporarily-departed from the Western pattern. These macrostructural tendencies overlapped with a number of typical trajectories in occupational careers. One of them is evident in the .changing occupational distributions. I am referring to the relative decrease in the proportion of farmers in the distribution established for first jobs. This phenomenon appeared onlyin Poland because onlythere did private farming exist undercommunist rule (collectivization was abandoned after 1956). However, this decrease did not signifL a turning point in the long-range transformation of the occupational system. In particular, one should not conclude that the percentage of farmers among the actively employed population in Poland suddenly declined, only to increase afterwards-in 1988, as may be seen in Table 4-from 5.5 per cent to10.5 per cent. The latter increase reflected the termination of temporary outflows fromthe agricultural sector of sons and daughters of farmers, a regular occurrence often identified in studies of the lifecareers of farmers (see Andorkaand Zagbrski, 1980). Farmerstook temporary, nonagricultural-mainly manual-jobs, only to return to the farm lateron, a return which was generally permanent. It seems likely that identical processes of return mobility took place within the intelligentsia and managerial cadres. In almost all countriesthe exception was Bulgaria-the proportion of this category fell at the

21

time of the first job and increased thereafter up to 1988. It is a ‘norm’ that if representatives of the top social strata leave their original categories, they do so only temporarily. Usually, they experience downward mobility at the beginning of their life-careers. Later on, they move into top positions, which-in a sense-are assigned to them by virtue of social origin and the ‘iron rules’ of reproduction of privilege which maintain class barriers and stratificational hierarchies basically intact. Our data lend support to this regularity. The return mobility of farmers also gives risetotheconsolidationof social distances between them and nonagricultural occupational strata. Returns tothe farm result, in the main, from the difficulties faced by peasants in their acculturation to urban life. Equally, one cannot discount the factor of emotional ties to the land inbred in peasant families: they often find it difficult to abandon the countryfor the alien urban environment. Oddly enough, the relative size of the intelligentsia and managerial cadresdiminished between 1988 and 1993. This occurred in all five countries (that is, with the exception of Bulgaria). Undoubtedly, this has nothing to do with thedecline in the proportion of the intelligentsia and managers observed in postindustrial countries, which may be described as a long-term secular trend in occupational transformation. The sources of the temporary-as I assume it to be-decline in the ‘service class’ of postcommunist societies lay in the peculiar developments which occurred between 1988 and 1993. For example, the process may be attributed to the so-called circulation of elites, both political and occupational, the latter being composed of the highest managerial cadres. Representatives of both elites were included-at least theoretically-in our samples. The outflow from the former elite, which must have occurred after 1988, would have brought about a reduction in the relative size of the intelligentsia and managerial cadres. The ‘circulation of elites’ notwithstanding, the intelligentsia may be trying to find a new place in a changing labor market: for example, some are likely to have moved into the business world. This is another explanation of its decreasing size at the onset of systemic change.

SPURIOUS A N A L O G I E S B E T W E E N E A S T A N D W E S T Transformations of occupationalsystems are of particular interest within the framework of our study in that they may help to indicate the extent to which postcommunist societies are integrated in modern capitalism.

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We have already established that: (i) the developmental trajectories of our six East Central Europeancountries have been subsumed under general evolutionary trends leading to the establishment of postindustrial systems; (ii) within these general trends, unique features emerged which may be attributed to' the policies pursued by individual communist states; (iii) changes in political and economic systems at the end of the 1980s brought about afllrther modification in the transformations of the occupational macrostructure-there was an increase in the relative numbers of owners and an unexpected slump in the relative size of the intelligentsia and managerial cadres. Although the relative growth in the number of owners seems to portend a convergence between postcommunist and market societies, it has not led to their homogenization. In particular, the Polish casecharacterized by a significant percentage of farmers among the actively employed, both before and after the collapse of communism-points to distinctiverouteswhich transformations may traverse. East Central European countries have also faced a temporary decline in the relative size of higher managerial cadres, administrative officials, and professionals-in sum, the intelligentsia. This has not propelled East Central Europe onto a divergent path of structural transformation, but it nevertheless makes it clear that occupational systems, while subject to universal rules of division of labor, remain under the influence of developments connected totheir historical context. It would be extremely difficult to predict coming trends, partly because we did not find many clear-cut changes in occupational distributions for the six countries. But even when such tendencies are detectable, it is difficult to distinguish long-tern1 trends-those indicative of themodernizationof social structures-from short-term processes which obscure the inherent logic of development. The latter may consist of deliberately implemented measures-dictated, for example, by the urgent need to eradicate all vestiges of the communist economy. Predictions concerning the development of professionals and managerial staff are necessarily the most vague. In 1988-93, this category declined in relative size, contrary to expectations. This may serve as an exemplary case of a conjunctural effect, resulting perhaps from the circulation of an occupational elite and its transition to private business activities. Obviously, the long-drawn-out collapse of a universal trend may also be involved. The future of owners as a group is also obscure. At the end of the 1980s, their proportion increased in all East Central European countries.

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Thisclearly reflected the effects of systemic transformation ensuing from the removal of formal impediments to privatization and the operation of market rules. Does it also portend the entry of postcommunist societies onto a trajectory leading to a market system? It may, at least in the early part of the 1990s. Nevertheless, we know that in developed capitalist countries, the situation is the opposite: small business came to be a rather stagnant category, in the demographic sense, and its contribution to the national product relatively small. Bearing this in mind, one could scarcely regard the numerical expansion of owners in East Central Europe as a forerunner of modernization. Their numerical increase there proves something rather different: profound upheavals in their political, economic, and social systems.

CHAPTER 2

TWO TRANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

WE SHALL try to assess the dynamics of mobility rates in our six East Central European nations in two historical periods: first, at the turn of the 1940s; second, forty years later, at the turn of the 1980s. The ultimate concern of this chapter is a comparison of the effects of the two systemic ruptures on the social metabolism. We shall establish whether the transitions from the quasi-capitalist, postwar phase in the 1940s and from communism in the 1990s transformedthe processes through which particular individuals were allocated different positions in the division of labor. Patterns of social mobility follow their own logic, which does not necessarily respond to institutional transformations, even if they are systemic. As far as the latter really affected mobility, we might reasonably expect tofind evidence of this shift in the first half of the 1950s and of the1990s. In the first instance, a shift in patterns of social mobility might result from the transformation of socio-occupational structures. In the years following the SecondWorld War the communist leaders of Poland, Hungary, and other countries in the region initiated a major reconstruction of the social order. Particularly crucial, in their view, was rapid industrialization driven centrally by the communist state, the nationalization of manufacturing, transport, and the majority of private firms in other industries, and, starting from the late 194Os, the collectivization of private farms. These measures compelled a transfer of manpower from agriculture to heavy industry, together with the introduction of large numbers of workers and peasants into government and industrial bureaucracies. We may recall the implications of these structural changes for the composition of specific classes in Poland. As of the early 1970s, men of

26

peasant and of working-class origin made up 30 per cent and 26 per cent of nonmanual workers respectively (Zagorski, 1978, 132). As far as the consequences of these mass transitions for class mobility are concerned, Erikson and Goldthorpe(1992, 101) showed that the two most rigid barriers-those separating the intelligentsia from manual workers and from peasants-were almost nonexistent in Poland or at least clearly weaker than in any of the other eight nations included in their study. Notably, both barriers were apparent in Hungary, which experienced a similar trajectory of socialist transformation in the early postwar era. It would appear that policiesdirected towards shaping new hierarchies and patterns of mobility in Poland did the trick, resulting in a temporary weakening of social rigidities. At the same time, strict limitations were placed on private entrepreneurship: while private firms continued to exist, they did so only in vestigial form. We must determine the extent to which the reconstruction concomitant with the emergence of a market society in the 1990s compared, in scope, with that of the1940s and 1950s. Of particular importance here is the rapid expansion of the private sector after 1989, engendering a massive inflow to the category of owners, prompting an overall increase in mobility. For example,in 1994 ownersaccounted for 10.4 per cent of all those actively employed in Poland. Thisproportion stood at only 4.3 per cent in 1988, before the systemic upheaval. In our treatment of the dynamics of mobility in postcolnmunist societies, we shall focus on the influx to the social category of ‘owners’, an important element in the forination of new social strata in this region. One widely held view of comparative macrosociology is that its prime objective must be to demonstrate differences between aspects of socialstructure and then to accountforthesedifferencesthrough analyses in which nations serve as the basic units of observation. As regardsstudies of socialmobility,onecanscarcelyfindsystematic cross-national variation in respect of both total mobility and its relative rates. In other words, any variation is scarcely attributable to differences in, for example, the level of economic development orof democracy in contrast to totalitarianism in the political system (see EriksonandGoldthorpe,1992).Theexistenceofsuchrelationships sketched in a number of studies (for example, Tyree at al., 1979) has been contested by recent national mobility inquiries which introduced higherstandardsofdatacomparability(Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992). In a cross-time perspective too, students of mobility have emphasized the absence of directional trends (Featherman and Hauser,

27

1978;GanzeboomanddeGraff,1984;Payne,1993;Yamaguchi, 1987; Jones et al., 1994). The question inevitably arises as to whether these results are applicable to postcommunist societies, given that all the findings referred to above reported on social mobility in stable societies which had not faced systemic changes: the East Central European countries have a distinctly differentsetofexperiences. The most pertinent question is whether mobility rates altered significantly with the rise of the communist system, after its collapse, and in the early stages of the creation of a new social order. Furthermore, if they did, was the trend towards greater openness, particularly in respect of the increased flow into the ‘owners’ category in recent years, the rising ‘old middle class’? Indeed,one cannot overlook the difference between the ‘phenotypical’ level of actually observed mobility rates and the ‘genotypical’ level of the pattern of relative mobility opportunities which underlies these rates (see Featherman et al., 1975). Looked at in terms of the ‘phenotypical’ level, changes can easily be anticipated, precisely because observed rates are greatly influenced by the structure of the division of labor and, in turn, by effects deriving from a range of economic, technological, and demographic circumstances, all of which are known tovaryover time. Insofar as mobility is considered net of all such changes, the thesis of the basic invariance of fluidity patterns in time has received empirical support also in respect of communist societies. Studies on long-term trends carried out in the 1980s in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Russia proved that mobility regimes had not altered in a substantive way over recent decades and that they conformed to the patterns described in the West (see Haller and Mach, 1984; Andorka, 1990; Boguszak, 1990; Marshall et al., 1995; Marshall, 1996). Let us look now at the consequences of the two transformations. Did they give rise to any change in the dynamics of social mobility? Did mobility barriers open up? Is it true that the inflow into the ‘owners’ category significantly affected the transitions taking place after 1989? Finally, which of these two waves was greater in terms of the volume of transitions, on the proviso that the substantial shifts in mobility attributed to the transformation of the political system really occurred?

28

HYPOTHESES: TRANSITION TO AND EXIT FROM COMMUNISM Social mobility tables reflect both relative opportunities for movement and the constraints of occupational origins and opportunities. Sociologists have for some time recognized this duality and have attempted to distinguish total movementsbetween socio-occupational categories-which include both structural constraints and opportunities-from relative rates which may be attributed to ‘circulation’, ‘exchange’, or ‘pure’ mobility. The latter encapsulate mobility rates net of changing distributions of origin and destination categories. Analyses of these aspects address different theoretical and substantive issues. While totalabsolute-rates can be used to map configurations of basic social distances as established by determinants of movement and the‘inheritance’ of position, relative rates refer to the openness of specific social strata and global social structure. Previous cross-time mobility studies which covered long periods of time reported changes in total movements over decades (Glass, 1954; Svalastoga, 1958; Featherman and Hauser, 1978). It was convincingly proved that such changes, insofar as they took place, were ‘phenotypical’ in nature, that is, they were mediated by a wide variety of economic, technological, demographic, and political influences largely exogenous to the dynamics of social stratification. Above all, they derived chiefly from transformations of origin and destination categories. The driving force of occupational transformations in Western countries was the economic boom after the Second World War. Its counterpart in East Central Europe was the mass mobility associated with extensive industrialization, followed by a decline in total flows (Andorka and Zagbrski, 1980). Although the decline was detected as early as the 1960s, we might expect the transformation of economic and political systems to haveoccasioned a new growth of mobility. Since we are seeking the effects of these institutional changes, a good referential base for the 1990s is the 1980s, the immediately preceding period of communism. The present study will compare and contrast mobility rates in 1983-88 and 1988-93. As far as thefirst transformation is concerned, we will compare mobility rates in 1 9 4 8 4 2 and 1952-63. Onemightexpect that in the 1990s the total volume of mobility would increase as the outcome essentially of structural changesconcomitant with systemic transformation, including the emergence of new

29

jobs and skills. Developmentof capitalist markets in postcommunist societies carried with it the expansion of the financial sector, including banking, and of marketing and a wide range of other services. Ensuing demand gave rise to the creation of occupational roles which had had no counterparts in the communist economy. One example of a new business sector is private security, which employed 200,000 persons in Poland in 1996: in terms of numerical size, it was the third largest occupational category, after teaching and mining. There was also a rapid expansion in the category of owners ofprivate businesses. In studies of social mobility, changes in occupational distribution are considered as belonging to the ‘demand’side of the rules governing the flow of persons through the life cycle. Newly created positions tend to ‘attract’ mobile persons. The ‘supply’ side consists of relative advantages afforded to individuals by different class origins, which may be thought of in terms of economic, cultural, and social resources. In the interplay of supply and demand characteristic of the 1990s, the expansion of business may be attributed a decisive role. Representatives of the intelligentsia, working-class categories, and farmers (smallholders) witnessed the tangible effects of growing opportunities to succeed in business. After 1989, the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ and ‘possessive individualism’-which hadbeenblockedundercommunism by administrative obstacles-found an outlet. New patterns of mobility might also result from changing educational channels and new forms ofjob training. The rules of the capitalist market tend to convert the general knowledge received in schools into practical skills. Since the beginning of the 1990s, in Hungary, Poland, and Czech society, new vocational courses have been developed which are based on Western models. These haveprovided individuals with new opportunities and encouraged them to set out on new occupational career paths. But as the newly emerging education system has been the subject of a certain amount of experimentation and modification, it has been difficult to establish institutions and mechanisms whichmightrelease even greater flows. Nevertheless, educational restructuring is a fairly new element in a changing context which should reshape the structure of occupational opportunities. At the same time, there has been an increase in various parts of the welfare state, such as new pension schemes or insurance systems which differentiate life-careers in the West. The same is true of wage bargaining strategies adopted by trade unionsagainst employers and the manner in which they attempt to restrict access to particular jobs or firms (see Esping-Andersen et al., 1993). In East Central Europe, new labor-

30

market mechanisms have begun to consolidate and their mobility effects have gradually come into play. As regards mobility rates, we will test four hypotheses. First, one may predict that the total number of movements, as attributable to the systemic changes, increased-these movements were higher in 1948-52 than in the maturing evolutionary stages of the communist system. With respect to the second transformation, it is likely that 1988-93 saw more intensesocialmobilitythaninthe period immediately preceding the collapseofcommunism.In brief, social mobility was greater on the verge of each transformation of thepolitical system. Our second hypothesis concerns the relative weight of each transformation, assessed in terms of the size of the mobility flows they produced. There arereasons to expect th& the imposition of the communist system brought about more mobility than its collapse in the 1990s. First, the reshuffles of the social structure at the turn of the 1940s were underpinned by deep changes in the economy and in occupational distributions. It seems that three parallel processes-extensive industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and nationalization of major industries-released larger flows than those prompted by economic privatization in the 1990s. In fact, privatization was the only macrostructural feature which might be set against the three mentioned above which characterized the situation four decades earlier. Furthermore, the communist system was very much imposed. Harsh administrative measures were taken to create a ‘New Man’ and a new social order. The influence of political and ideological criteria over the channeling of persons into and within the educational and occupational system was overwhelming: the advancement of a substantial portion of the working class and the peasantry was actively promoted, while serious career disruptions were inflicted upon the intelligentsia and the former bourgeoisie. The new macrostructural arrangements were implemented exogenously with respecttothe logic of social stratification. Contrariwise, the social changes which have got under way since 1989 can be said to have proceeded relatively ‘smoothly’, much more at an evolutionary than at a revolutionary pace. Finally, the mass shift in manpower which resulted fromindustrialization involved the largest segments of society, the peasantry and the working class. Its scope was much greater than the social transformations brought about by privatization and the new opportunities emerging with the rise of the market economy. In fact, new opportunities could be exploited only by those already possessing superior cultural and social capital.

31

Third, relative mobility during both political ruptures remained basically unchanged.Growthin absolute rates therefore resulted from changing occupational distributions as implied by the increasing size of some socio-occupational segments and the diminution of others. Fourth, as regards the transformation from communism to a marketlike society, inflows to private business might be expected to exceed inflows to other occupational strata. This possibility will be considered in the context of the theoretical debates in the sociological literature regarding class and strata formation.

MOBILITY RATES In pursuit of the effects of systemic transformation on rates of mobility, we used the following strategies. In 0r:der to assess whether the transition to communism gave rise to m a s i LY flows we utilized the data on father’s occupation, comparingo c c u p a h n i mobility between 1948 and 1952 with occupational mobility between 1952 and 1963. As far as the effects of the fall of communism are concerned, we compared the career mobilityof respondents between 1983 and 1988 with their mobility between 1988 and 1993. If our first hypothesis is correct, there should be more mobility between 1948 and 1952 than between 1952 and 1963, and more mobility between 1988 and 1993 than between 1983 and 1988. If the second hypothesis is correct, there should be more mobility between 1948 and 1952 than between 1952 and 1963, but little or no difference between 1983-88 and 1988-93. It is a matter for further debate to what extent these potential changes may be affected by transfcrrmations in the political and economic systems, or derive simply from the ‘endogenous’ logic of social structuration. Certainly, if any disruptioninoccupational careers occurred, there should be no difference between either pair of mobility matrices. In our treatment of mobility in the earlier period of 1948-63, we had to restrict our analysis to five countries, excluding Russia. This is due to the lack of data from Russia for 1948 and 1952 concerning father’s occupation. Two-way (6 x 6) EGP categorizations for 194842 yielded only 83 men in Russia, while for the 1952-63 matrix we obtained only 163 cases, making reliable estimates impossible. There are two technical problems with the earlier comparison. First, a sample of fathers is not a representative sample of the 1948-52 or 1952-63 populations. But while we must acknowledge this problem, it

32

should not prevent us from proceeding. The second difficulty is that 1948-52 covers only four years, while 1952-63 covers eleven: we would expect the normal processes of the social metabolism to bring about more mobility in the latter period. The obvious solution is to raise the 1948-52 transition matrix to the third power, which would give the expected 1948-60 table, on the assumption that the 1948-52 pattern continued without change (see Hodge, 1966). In this way we obtained a twelve-year period tocomparewith the eleven-year transition from 1952 to 1963, which is close enough to warrant comparison. We shall restrict our examination of mobility to men. This provides us with a commonly used reference point, bearing in mind that most substantive conclusions on this issue have so far been reached in the analysis of transitions affecting the male population. Women’s mobility would be of interest insofar as meaningful modifications were necessary to our findings inrespect of men. In fact, we replicated the same analyses with the mobility tables of women. It turned out that, in each country, the configuration of intergenerational mobility barriers in the female population closely fits the patterns for men; as a result, we will not discuss women separately, on the assumption that what we found for men more or less represents social mobility patterns overall. The version ofEGP which I introduced in Chapter 1-collapsed into ten categories-I now collapsed into six strata: (i) higher-grade professionals, administrators, officials, managers of large industrial establishments,and large proprietors (referred to, interchangeably, as the ‘intelligentsia’); (ii) other nonmanuals, that is, lower-grade professionals, administrators, officials, higher-grade technicians, managers of small industrial establishments, and routine nonmanualemployees in administration, commerce, sales, and services; (iii) small nonagricultural owners with and without employees; (iv) skilled workers; (v) unskilled workers; and (vi) farmers and agricultural workers.

OVERALL RATES: THE MODEST EFFECTS OF TRANSITION In order to address directly whether mobility rates increased we compare two sets of figures: the percentage of movers in 1983-88 and in 1988-93 and, separately, the percentage of mobile men in 1948-52 and 1952-63, as shown in Table 7. The percentages given there were calculated on the basis of 6 x 6 matrices of movements betweenoccupational

33

categories for the periods 1948-52-raised to the third power-and 1952-63. We established the mobility rates for 1983-88 and 1988-93 (1 994 for Poland)in an analogous fashion. Hence, the mobility rates of persons are simplythe percentages of menin our national samples found in cells off the main diagonal of the 6 x 6 mobility matrices-in other words, the percentage of men whose ‘destination’ category was different from their category of ‘origin’.

Table 7. Total mobiliQ rates. Percentages of mobile men in 1948-1 952and 1952-1963, and i n 1983-1 988 and 1988-1 993

Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia

1948-1952

1952-1963

1983-1988

1988-1993

21.1 3 8.4 38.1 27.1 38.8

12.3 20.9 22.4 12.2

12.2 8.1 13.4 9.7 11.2 8.8

17.2 23.6 19.5 20.0 15.1 19.7

-

25.5

As regards the transition from communism, we cansee that in all six countries overall mobility increased. In the male population, mobility rates were higher in 1988-93 than in 1983-88. In turn, in the maturing stage of communism in the 1950s, rates of mobile mendeclined significantly. It was during the birth and ‘early youth’ of the communist system, in 1948-52, when the dynamics of mobility between basic socioeconomic strata intensified the most. The predictions of our first hypothesis are therefore confirmed: the two fundamental breaks with the past in the political history of East Central Europe were accompaniedby a discernible increase in the volume of flowsin the social structure. Our second hypothesis concerned the relative weight of the systemic breaks for the transformation of mobility barriers. Thedynamicsof mobility proved most intense during the first transformation. In all five countries it peaked in 1948-52, with as much as 38-39 per cent of men in Czechoslovakia and Hungary changing their occupational category. Poles and Bulgarians remained relatively more attached to their sociooccupational positions. In the following years, mobility evidently slowed down. The overall rate of mobile men halved in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1952-63 as compared to 1948-52. Three other societies witnessed a decrease of at least one-third.

34

If we turn tomobility in the period of transition from the communist system,onecancompare its acceleration in 1988-93 as compared to 1983-88, with the pace of its decline in the 195Os, in the aftermath of the most concentrated flows. Differences between the two periods are discernible in the total volume of transitions. The collapse of communism was accompanied by much the same kind of increase in career mobility as that whichoccurred in the period of transition to this system, but on the verge of the emergence of capitalism in the postcommmist world, mobility rates decreased in comparison with the period of enforced industrialization, nationalization, and collectivization of agriculture. Mobility dynamics were most intense in Czech society at the turn of the 1980s: 23.6 per cent of men changed occupational c,ategory between 1988 and 1993, The transitions intensified also in Slovakia and Poland. Mobility was least important in Russia. In the 1990s, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia had the highest overall mobility rates, Bulgaria and Russia the lowest. Our first conclusion is that, in parallel with the systemic changes in East Central Europe, mobility between basic segments of social stratification increased. Thismight be the result of the mutual reinforcement of restructurations in social space and changing economic and political structures. Also, mobility barriers opened up more during the first transformation than during thesecond.

OPENNESS: THE CONSTANT FLUX Strictly speaking, wehavenot yet established whether there was a higher level of openness. What has been established is that there was a fairly systematic cross-time and cross-country pattern of change in absolute mobility rates, viewed through the lens of our class schema. One mayinferfromthis that the underlying cause in both 1948-63 and 1983-93 was shifts in theoccupational structure. We are naturally led to the question of how mobility trends would appear if they could in some way be assessed ‘independently’ of this changing structural context. In studies of social mobility, these net rates ‘allowing for’ changing occupational distributions are regarded as more direct measures of the openness of the social structure. We shall therefore focus our attention on a detailed examination of the set of relative mobility opportunities-the ‘mobility regime’, as Hauser (1978)termed it.

35

In dealing with this question, sociologists have taken a number of different approaches. However,all of them rest on a distinction between ‘structural’-or ‘demand’ or ‘forced’-mobility, and ‘exchange’ (or ‘circular’ or ‘pure’ or ‘relative’) mobility. The former is defined as that part of total observed mobility which is directly attributable to changes in the structure of objective mobility opportunities, and the latter as that part which is not associated with such changes. The present account will also rely on this conceptual distinction. A number of writers have approached the problem of ‘allowing for’ structural changes by drawing on theapplication of log-linear models to theanalysisof multivariate contingency tables (see Goodman, 1972; Hauser,1978; Hout, 1980; Ishii-Kuntz, 1994). In comparing mobility between 1948-52 and 1952-63, and between 1983-88 and 1988-93, we employ two models in particular which were applied in previous mobility studies. (4 The diagonals model. The simplest constrained diagonals model specifies a single parameter for all diagonal cells in the mobility table, testing the proposition that immobility exceeds what would be expected on the basis of perfect mobility by the same proportion in all occupational categories (see Goodman, 1972, 661-71; Hout, 1980, 28). The diagonals model refers to a state in which change occurs only in occupational distributions, but not in structural or exchange mobility: self-recruitment in six occupational strata accounts for all association in mobility tables. I made the comparison first for both 1948-52 and 1952-63; and second for both 1983-88 and1988-93 in each country. Adequacy of fit for this model should cast much light on the question of openness in stratification systems since we are comparing transitions taking place over very short periods of time. It seems unlikely that radical changes in mobility opportunities emerged over fifteen (1948-63) and ten (1983-93) years. One may hypothesize that it was self-recruitment rather than circulation which shaped occupational careers during this time. (ii) The constant fluidity model (CFM). In this case, as the name implies, the effects of origin and destination vary in time, while the association between them is constant. We thus have variations in absolute mobility between 1948-52 and 1952-63, but constant relative mobility. Alternatively, changes in structural mobility account for all changes in overall observed mobility. The same is hypothesized for 1983-88 and 1988-93. Did postcommunist societies become more fluid at the beginning of the 1990s, in parallel with the increase in overall mobility rates? Was

36

Czech society ahead in terms of relative flows, and were rigidities most marked in Russia in the 1990s? More generally, did 'mobility regimes' change as a result of the systemic transitions, especially during the first political transformation, at theend of the 1940s? And if substantial changes really did take place, where did they take place? In fact, this would be an unprecedented finding, bearing in mind that relative mobility rates appeared to be more or less constant over time. This is what results of cross-time mobility studies carried out in various countries suggest.

Table 8. Results ofJitting modelsto three-way men's tables of origin category by destination category by time ( I 948-1 952 and1952-1 963) Modela ~

Bulgaria G2 rG2 P Czech Republic G2 rG2 P Hungary G2 rG2 P Poland G2 rG2 P Slovakia

GZ rG2 P df for ail countries

~~~

ODT

OTDT

OT DT DIAG

2 754 0.00

2 541 1.3 0.00

180 93 .O 0.00

66 97.4 0.01

-1 20

2 629 0.00

2 539 3.4 0.00

264 90.0 0.00

97 96.3 0.01

-96

2 798

2 768 1.1 0.00

301 89.2 0.00

95 96.6 0.0 1

-1 08

2 447 0.00

2 445

1 77 92.8 0.00

83 96.6 0.01

-1 02

0.9 0.00

940 0.00 60

922 2.3 0.00 50

124 97.0 0.00 49

36 99.1 >0.05 25

-1 30

-

0.00

BIC for OT DT OD OT DT OD

in 1948-1952 and 1952-1963 tables; D - category of destination in 19381952 and 1952-1963 tables; T - time (1=1948-1952,2=1952-1963); DIAG (I=off-diagonal cells; 2=diagonal cells) a 0 - category of origin

37 Table 9. Results offitting models to three-way men's tables of origin category by destination category by time(1 983-88 and 1988-93) Modela

Bulgaria G2 rG2 P Czech Republic G2 rG2

P Hungary G2 rG2 P Poland G' rG2 P Russia G2 rG2 P Slovakia G? rG2 P df for all countries

OT DT

BIC for OT DT OD OT DT OD

ODT

OTDT

5 288 0.00

5 219 1.3 0.00

161 97.0 0.00

36 99.3 >0.05

-1 62

6 498

6 233 4.1 0.00

197 96.7 0.00

45

-1 59

99.3 0.03

139 96.9 0.00

34 99.3 0.10

-1 62

0.00

4 478 1.4 0.00

4 231 0.00

4 176 1.3 0.00

202 95.2 0.00

52 98.7 0.00

-140

4 903

4 871 0.6 0.00

141 97.1

-1 76

0.00

21 99.6 >o. 10

5 920 2.3 0.00 50

181 97.0 0.00 49

52 99.1 0.00 25

-151

-

0.00 4 543 -

-

0.00 6 060 -

0.00 60

a 0 - category of

origin in 1983-1988 and 1988-1993 tables; D - category of destination in 19831988 and 1988-1993 tables; T- time (1=1983-1988,2=1988-1993); DIAG (l=off-diagonal cells; 2=diagonal cells)

The results of applying these models are set out in Table 8 (the first transformation) and in Table 9 (the second). We considered oursix countries separately, and in each case fitted both the diagonals and the CFM models to a three-way table which comprises six categories of origin, six of destination, and the two transitions (1948-52 and 195263, and 1983-88 and 1988-93). In Tables 8 and 9 I also present the results of applying twoother models. The first tested the hypothesis of the

38

conditional independence of class origins and destinations. Usually, this model is employed toserve as a useful baseline, with reference to which we can assess how much of the total association between class of origin and class of destination the diagonals and CFM models are able to account for. The calculated G2 statistics are given in the first row of each country’s cell and the diagnostic rG2statistics (0 < rG2< 100) are given inthe second rowfor each country. The rG2refers to ‘coefficient of multiple determination’ as implemented in log-linear modeling by Goodman (1972). The statistics concerning fit in the case of the conditional independence model are shown in the first colunm of the tables. In the second column, I report statistics for the model, which assumes that occupational distributions for origin and destination changed between 1948-52 and 1952-63 (Table Sj, and 1983-88 and 1988-93 (Table 9), while still maintaining that categories of origin and destination were independent. What, then, can we learn from Tables 8 and 9? The results do not describe a radical change, but something did change with respect to the dynamicsofmobility characteristic of the decline ofthe communist system, followed by its collapse and the emergence of a new social order. In accordance with the findings of previous studies, mobility barriers in East Central European countries basically remained as open (or closed) in the 1990s as they had been in the preceding decade. As regards mobility during the transitionto communism, rather unexpectedly, the constant fluidity model does not reproduce core fluidity satisfactorily in all five nations. The secondmodel,whichexaminesthehypothesisthatoccupationaldistributionschangedinthetwoconsecutive decades-the 1980s and the 1990s-produces values of G’, which are significant in all six countries. This explains no more than 1-4 per cent of the total association, as we can seein the second colulnn of the tables. Even so, it improved the fit to a significant degree. The result is direct support for the thesis that, at the turn of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1990s,occupationaldistributionsunderwentsignificanttransformation. Turning to the diagonals model, we see that it performs fairly well, While it does not fit the observed data in each country in accordance with the conventional 0.05 criterion, statistical significance is not the only measureofsubstantive sociological significance. Allowing for constant immobility in 1948-63 and in1983-93-exceeding what we would expect on the basis of perfect mobility-it accounts for no less

39

than 89-93 per cent of all associations. It must have been the case that self-recruitment prevailed over mobility in both 1948-63 and 1983-93. Nevertheless, the reduction in G2proved unsatisfactory, which indicates that there was circulation between the six categories, in addition to the strong tendencyto remain withinthem. It is appropriate, therefore, to consider whether the constant fluidity model, which assumes that circulation took place, will improve the fit. From the fourth column of Table 9, in which the results of fitting the CFM are presented, it is apparent that circulation between six occupational strata remained basically intact in 1983-93: the CFM reproduces the observed data almost exactly-for each country it accounts for 99100 per cent of the association between class of origin and class of destination. Statistically significant deviations are present only for Czech society, Slovakia, and Poland. The caveat must be that in these countries some significant portion of the discrepancies between observed and expected values, which more detailed analysis could reveal, pertain to circulation. Nonetheless, even in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia, circulation rates appear to be largely captured by the core model of constant fluidity over time at the turn of the 1980s. Stability predominated insofar as we are concerned with openness of social structure. It seems reasonable to suppose that the collapse of communism and the rebirth of capitalism in East Central Europe affected the occupational system by relaxing rigidities and closures in social space. Yet no support for this assumption can be found in the current data. Even the transformations of the political and economic system, with their concomitant institutional changes, did not suffice to make class barriers more fluid. In fact, there had been no such development even by the middle of the 1990s. Certainly, delayed potential for growth in circulatory rates of mobility does exist, and may have remained dormant only to emerge and to reshape life-careers in later years. Thus, the unchanged openness of social structures paralleled a slight increase in overall mobility after 1988. The sources of the ascendant trend consisted in changing occupational distributions-we have already shown that the class of proprietors demonstrated particularly rapid growth in the 1990s in all six societies. The shift towards greater overall mobilitysupportsour third hypothesis, that increasing flows in the 1990s resulted from macrostructural changes, enforced chiefly by economic transformations which created new positions in the division of labor. The mobility regimes remained stable.

40

This is even more true of the transition from the communist system. Fluidity patterns did not come to be a sociological constant during the period when the system was being imposed. In all five countries, the G2s returned by the constant fluidity model account for no less than 98 per cent of the G2s returned by the independence model.Nevertheless, these results indicate significant deviations in the core, unchanging fluidity pattern, except for Slovakia.' It is true that the deviations are small and not sufficient to cause us to abandon the idea of basic continuity over time: stability in terms of patterns of opportunity, rather than dynamics, also predominated several decades ago. Nonetheless, despite the overwhelming stability, the implementation of communism opened up the social structure to some extent.

INFLOW TO BUSINESS The upturn in overall mobility in the 1990s may be attributed exclusively to the transformations of occupational structures. In this respect, the differentia speczJica of the exit from communism became the expansion in the number of private businesses. But did the resulting rise in inflow to this category from the other strata account for the increase in overall mobility during this period? Table 10 shows the proportion of men across our six societies who in 1988 and 1993 found themselves in an occupational category different from the one they had been in five years previously. The table shows the inflow rates to the intelligentsia, lower nonmanuals, owners, skilled workers, unskilled workers, and agricultural categories. The general impression gained from Table 10 is that in the 1990s owners clearly accounted for the highest proportion of newcomers relative to the other categories. Between 1983 and 1993, the class of lower nonmanuals-clerical workers, teachers in elementary schools, technicians, shop assistants, receptionists, and so on-was also a significant external recruiter of labor. Indeed, in1983-88, this category had the highest rate of inflow. For example, in Poland, the inflow rate to lower nonmanual occupations stood at 77.1 per cent in 1988 and in Russia it amounted to 86.4 per cent. Although in the 1980s the inflow to lower nonmanuals ranged from 77 per cent to 86 per cent in five of the six nations, it had decreased greatly by1993-exceptin Slovakia, where it had actually increased. Simultaneously, the rate of inflow into ownership was generally either maintained or increased, Bulgaria being the

Table 10. Men 's injlow rates ,to the intelligentsia, lower nonmanuals, owners, skilled workers, unskilled workers, andfarming Socio-occupational categories

Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Hungary

Poland

Russia

Slovakia

1983-88 1988-93 1983-88 1988-93 1983-88 1988-93 1983-88 1988-94 1983-88 1988-93 1983-88 1988-93

9.1

17.1

8.2

16.1

16.7

16.5

7.2

13.1

8.1

15.7

8.1

20.0

Lower nonmanuals

79.3

15.3

80.6

19.9

79.4

12.6

77.1

1.3

86.4

11.0

17.0

21.4

Owners

65.0

55.7

55.0

90.2

40.8

40.6

50.8

59.1

35.8

67.6

70.0

89.5

Skilled workers

10.8

11.1

8.0

11.0

7.9

11.0

11.5

8.6

10.0

11.3

6.4

8.0

8.7

14.7

8.9

13.6

12.2

12.3

14.7

11.4

11.4

15.1

8.5

15.5

14.1

15.6

11.7

19.1

16.5

26.4

19.7

10.0

8.5

12.3

4.3

20.5

Higherprofessionals-intelligentsia

Unskilled workers Farmers and farm workers

42

only exception, experiencing areduction of 10 per cent. In consequence, owners remained the most transient category at the beginning of the 1990s. They accounted for the highest influx in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where only 10 per cent of owners found themselves in 1993 in thesamepositionas in 1988.The intelligentsia, lower nonmanuals, manual workers, and farm categories were self-recruited to the extent of 78.6 per cent (in the Slovakian case) or more. If we look at the volume of mobility the issue of class formation inevitablyarises.Discussionofthe homogeneity of different strata in terms of their recruitment patterns is another way of looking at the degree of their ‘demographic identity’ (Goldthorpe, 1987), that is, the degree to which they haveformed collectivities of individuals and families identifiablethroughthe continuity of their association with sets of strata-positions over time. From this standpoint, a number of national differences can be identified as regards the self-recruitment of owners. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, owners seem the least homogeneous category in terms ofbusiness experience. Nine out of ten owners in 1993 had recruited themselves from another category of origin as of 1988. In Bulgaria, Poland and Russia, on the other hand, this proportion did not exceed S O per cent. Given such heterogeneity of origin, one can scarcely predict the direction in which the formation of owners into a sociocultural entity might proceed. In Slovakia and Czech society, they were an amalgam of various social circles. In fact, this is a new social category, composed of social backgrounds, orientations, lifestyles, and value systems which originated in different strata. Mobility into business, which derives fi-om systemic transformations, has led to the disintegration of this category as a class. As far as the consequences of social mobility for class formation in postcommunist countries are concerned, the considerable heterogeneity of owners seems the most striking byproduct of thesystemic changes.

CONCLUSION: MORE OPENNESS DURING THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM THAN AFTER ITS COLLAPSE? What do our findings on mobility tell us that is of relevance to our central concern? The years immediately following the Second World War saw fundamental transformations in the economies and political systems of East Central European countries. These changes have their counter-

43

parts in the 1990s. The aim of the present study is to establish mobility rates in both critical periods. Overall rates appear higher in the 1990s than in the preceding decade: in terms of comparative macrosociology, this was to be expected. The six national economies with which we are concerned began to switch over to mechanisms governed by the rules of the capitalist market, and the democratization of public life removed formal obstaclesto prominent positions in politics and private business. Which of the two transformations did more to disrupt the hindrances to occupational mobility? According to our data, the transition to communism in the late 1940s released more intensive flows between basic segments of the social structure than occurred during the exit from communisminthe 1990s. Social mobility in East Central Europe responded to institutional transformation in a way predicted by Sorokin (19%). If we turn to mobility into specific social strata, we find, not surprisingly, thatthe class ofowners experienced the highest influx in the 1990s. Due to mass privatization, social space was ‘freed up’ for those who wished to go into business. As far as international comparisons are concerned, it is important to mention that in the 1990s mobility increased the most in Czech society and the least in Russia. Regardless of the generally low variation between our six countries in respect of increasing mobility, the same pattern is repeated in the case of other changes in the occupational system. The relative size of the ‘owners’ category also increased the most in the Czech Republic (followed by Slovakia). Indeed, this category experienced the highest influx in the 1990sin all six countries. Selfrecruitment into business was the highest in Russia-its social composition changed the least in comparison to the other five societies. As we areseeking consistency between the transformation of the economic system and the dynamics of mobility, the data give us reason to regard the lower level of mobility in Russia as indicative of a slower pace of social changes overall, in stark contrast to Czech society, whose social upheaval seems to have been the most striking.

44

Note 1 The statistics of fit for the models are shown, by country, in the third rows of Tables 8-9. As regards mobility in 1948-63, the CFM model produces a satisfactory fit by conventional standards only for Slovakia, that is, as indicated by p values. This exceptional case can be explained in terms of a relatively small number of men-357 and 368 respectively-in mobility tables for 1948-52 and 1952-63. In the last column of both tables, BIC statistics are given-only for the CFM model--which are not sensitive to the number of cases employed in the analysis. The BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion) is the statistic of a model fit which is independent of sample size and is especially recommended for selection between models if the number of cases involved in the analysis is very large, that is, when large N makes it almost impossible to get a satisfactory fitin accordance with standard criteria(statistical significance of G2).The rule in this case is that the best model is the one with the smallest BllC (see Raftery, 1987). Applied to Slovakia, the fit of the CFM model falls short of significance for 1948-63 mobility tables.

CHAPTER 3

SOCIAL MOBILITY PATTERNS: A BASIC CONTINUITY

PITIRIMSorokin was probably right in his contention that, on a longterm view, mobility rates display no continuous direction of change but merely ‘trendless fluctuation’. I would extend this statement by saying that not only mobility but processes of social stratification in general tend to fluctuate. They are marked by continuity and not by abrupt changes, a fact which we clearly documented for our six East Central European societies in Chapter2. It seems that in areas strongly exposed to the impact of factors exogenous to the inherent logic of social stratification, even a couple of years may witness rapid ‘ups and downs’, afact convincingly proved by the data, particularly on income distribution. Government welfare policy, resulting in redistribution of economic benefits (Esping-Andersen, 1990), or centrally imposed allocation of financial resources by the socialist state (Domanski, 1990), exemplifL what we refer to as the operation of exogenous forces. While social dynamics constitutes the obverse side of continuity, rapid breakup and upheavals rarely occur in stratification systems. Mechanisms exist which serve to anchor social stratification. By pursuing their dynamics over time we canobtain some insight into the fundamental question: Do really substantial restructurations occur? In what follows, we shall focus on the dynamics of mobility patterns among the basic segments of stratification systems. Mobility patterns, together with their underpinnings, are traditionally regarded as forces which stabilize social structures. Analyses of this kind aim primarily to determine the mapof transitions between socio-occupational strata considered as constitutive of the stratification system. Ultimately, however, they address the more general issue of which social categories are more, and

46

which less, distantfrom one another in a social space defined in terms of patterns of inter- and intragenerational movements. Looked at in this perspective, the configuration of barriers and distances shows the general shape of socialstratification. Weber (1968) and Sorokin (1958) laid out the theoretical rationale for taking mobility patterns as a synthetic outline of the contours of social stratification.In attempts to update these classical formulations, leading neo-Weberians, suchas Giddens (1973), Parkin (1979), Stephens (1979), and Goldthorpe (1987), have specified the composite factors of social mobility which affect social structuration. Among the mechanisms of allocation to consecutive ‘echelons’ of the stratification ladder, the significant roles of cultural and economic capital, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ family background, and finally market capacities are identified as factors which either facilitate ‘getting ahead’ or put obstacles in its way. Therearevarious strategies of obstruction and forms of corporatism which-as applied by trade-union associations or professional bodiestend tosolidifysocialdistances between classes, strata, and occupational categories. In a concise recapitulation advanced by two adherents of the theory of industrial society, mobility is regarded as a crucial mediating process between social structure and the creation of identities, interests, andactions.It determines where, and with what degree of sharpness,linesof cultural, political, and social division aredrawn (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992,2). Solid grounds existfor believing that an analysis of mobility patterns will illuminate the problem of whether continuity or change prevails in synthetically portrayed social divisions in East Central European countries. It seems reasonable to assume that, if any substantial restructurations in these societies have occurred, they came into play at the core whichkeepssocial stratification in dynamic equilibrium. All in all, analysis of mobility patterns should make our conclusions more robust in relation to the dilemma:stability or change? I shall focus on the cross-time consistencies and cross-national similarities found inprevious comparative analyses performed across a number of countries, differing in terms of their level of economic development, political systems, and cultural traditions. What these studies revealed were clear barriers between: (i) the agricultural and nonagricultural populations; (ii) blue- and white-collar workers; and (iii) the occupational elite (managers, high government officials, professionals) in contrast with the remaining nonmanual categories. In some countries, a distinctposition in the structure of intergenerational movements was

47

held by entrepreneurs. Lastly, the most general mechanism governing intergenerational transitions proved to be the location of individuals in the hierarchy of socioeconomic status (Domanski and Sawinski, 1991; Sawinski and Domanski, 1989). Similar results were obtained in studies which used different theoretical approaches and analytical techniques (see Goldthorpe and Payne, 1985; Breen and Whelan, 1985; Hout, 1988; Luijx and Ganzeboom, 1987; Eriksonand Goldthorpe, 1992). Such empirical evidence confirmed the relevance of utilizing mobility patterns to map out the shape of social stratification at the macro level. The findings referred to above are not unique to social mobility, but generally reflect pivotal features of stratification systems: patterns of intergenerational movements closely resemble distances generated by distributions of rewards, resources, and assets strategic for life-careers, and conform to patterns of marital choice, selection of friends, and many otherforms of social structuration (Laumann, 1973; Treinlan, 1977; Mitchell and Critchley, 1984; Hollinger and Haller, 1990).

HYPOTHESES: WHAT MIGHT CHANGE? In which direction might the shape of social divisions be transformed, and which aspects of these changes might be discerned in patterns of mobility? Any attempt to address these questions must be considered against the background of the general context of systemic changes in East Central Europe. The East Central European countries have slowly, but firmly, abandoned the command economy, approaching a system dominated by the capitalist market. As a result, the natural referent ‘in our search for structuralchanges will be contemporary market democracies. Certainly, if stratification systems in East Central Europe have undergonesubstantial transformation, this will be detectable in areas which were mostly subordinated to the logic of ‘socialist’ stratification and regarded as peculiar to this system. Particularly imprinted on the shape of social stratification in East Central Europe was a state-controlled system of economic benefit distribution. In the years prior to the transformation, this underwent change in the direction of an enhanced role forthe rationality of market-like rules of distribution. The data seem to indicate two new elements which might reshape mobility channels in East Central Europe. The first is growing economic inequality, the second, new rules governing income distribution. Cross-time analy-

48

ses for Poland revealed that, in the 1990s, inequality of earnings was much higher than in the preceding decade. This tendency is reflected in the growing span of differentiation. When measured in terms of a coefficient of variation(V), it appears that in 1987 the span ofdifferentiation was 0.44, increasing to 0.87 in 1992, and then falling back a little in 1994 to 0.77. Turning to the whole adult population, it appears that differentiation of family incomes per capita rose from 0.42 in 1982 to 0.82 in 1994 (Domanski, 1994). At the same time, in Hungary the disparity betweenfamilyincomesof the highest andlowest deciles increased from 4.6 in 1987 to 6.3 in 1993 (Kolosi and Rona-Tas, 1993). In Czech society, the Gini coefficient for earnings rose from 0.19 in 1988 to 0.27 in 1996 (Vecernik, 1996). These developments resulted in growing distances between basic socio-occupational strata. Of particular importance was the rise in earnings of the occupational elite in the 1990s: the average earnings of the intelligentsia and cadres, notably underrewarded in the socialist economy, went up, and those of manual workersand farmers (smallholders) fell markedly (Domanski, 1994). These tendencies evidence a basic reorientation in the general rules of reward-from socialist principles of distribution towards meritocracy. In the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia-the relevant data come from these three countries-the demise of the command economy removed the central distribution of financial resources grounded chiefly in a non-economic approach. In the Polish case, analyses document a slight increase in the net effect on earningsof both number ofyears of schooling and occupational status between the late 1980s and 1991-93. Furthermore, the net financial returns for supervisory positions improved from about 10 per cent above the grand mean in 1987, to 20 per cent in 1993(Domanski, 1994). Similarly, in the CzechRepublic, the GDR, Hungary, and Slovakia, personal incomes became more consistent with level of education and occupational position (Kol6si and Rha-Tas, 1993; MachoninandTucek, 1994; Matejuand Rehakova, 1993; Mateju and Lim, 1996; Headey et al., 1995). The consequencesof the apparent redistribution of economicbenefits might stimulate mobility. In particular, higher positions may come to be considered more attractive by members of the lower classes, who will as a result seek to improve their market position and secure higher economic benefits on a competitive basis. At the sametime, however, an increasing propensity to move upward might be counteracted by members of the established occupational elite. The East Central European intelligentsia, traditional in its mentality and

49

orientations is undergoing a transformation into professions. It is perfectly possible that the monopolization of skills and services will enable the former intelligentsia to control the supply side of labor, as in market societies. The growing reliance on credentials will become a precondition of entry to the professions, as well as a handy device for ensuring that those who possess cultural and intellectual capital, skills and expertise, receive the best opportunities to transmit the benefits of professional status to their children. We can reasonablypredict the emergence of strategies of closure and rules of meritocratic reward distribution. We would expect occupational strata to differ in their bargaining power, and that socioeconomic status has much to do with whois more and who is less successful in attaining better pay, insurance schemes, more secure jobs, and so on. Much more than in the past, the relentless forces of the capitalist labor market will shape succession to jobs and recruitment patterns in both an inter- and an intragenerational perspective. Our data make it possible tocheck whether, in the 1990s, a differentiation determined by socioeconomic status hasgrown in importance in structuring intra- and intergenerational movements relative to precedingdecades. Changes in distribution systems have been most tangible in recent years. Nevertheless, the effect on mobility, if it really occurred, was mediated by numerous factors. It may have been restricted to barriers separating off the top positions on the occupational ladder. We might ask which effects might have resulted from the reshuffling of political elites and which were moreproductive in terms of patterns of mobility, so constituting another signzrrn temporum of systemic transformation in East Central Europe. The top political positions have undergone considerable changes in personnel, but it is difficult to say whether the barriers dividing the political elite fromthe other segments of the social structure are solidifling or becomingmore open. Despite the dissolution of the socialist nomenklatura, elite positions remain-as they do everywhere. Recruitment formerly based on allegiance to the Communist Party was replaced after 1989 by a system based on other political and ideological affiliations. What really took place was an exchange of incumbents. This affected individuals, who moved up or down, but not the positions themselves, which, as slotsin a structure, persisted practically untouched. As far as possible shifts in mobility barriers are concerned, we still have to consider the rapid expansion of private entrepreneurial activity. It should be remembered that, in view of the regular patterns character-

so istic of many countries, both nonagricultural proprietors and, especially, farmers exhibit distinct patterns of mobility which determine their location in social space (Sawinski and Domanski, 1989). This clearly demonstrates, by the way, that control over the means of production, so important to Marxist theory, was highly effective in shaping occupational mobility opportunities. The results of mobility studies have shown that the distance between agricultural and nonagricultural categories was the greatest in comparison to all other distancesbetween basic occupational strata, proving that the factors underlying the patterns of transitions for the agricultural and thenonagriculturalsectors were different. The distinctive position of farmers and farm laborers resided in their exceptionally high level of self-recruitment. A syndrome exists which restricts a massive outflow from agricultural categories (as well as preventing any inflow). This includes, first, the particular nature of the farm as a place whose maintenance and operation is regarded by its members as a primary value, a view which leads to continuity and attachment. The second constituent of the stability syndrome in farming is the limited opportunities availableforconvertingland, machines, livestock, and context-specific qualifications into marketable assets. Thirdly, socialization takes place largely in terms of attachment to ‘the soil’ and the farm. The role of education in socializationis very small, as a consequence of which aspirations to upward mobility are relatively low and the universal norms of achievement preponderant in the nonagricultural strata rarely come into play. Fourthly, cultural distinctiveness is considered a positive value, an attitude which militates against changes in social position as incompatible with the need for assimilation and integration-this is felt particularly strongly by the members of traditional communities. Finally, geographical isolation means that aperson’s social passage to a nonagricultural category requires a simultaneous change in place of residence, so putting up an additional barrier to mobility. ‘These mechanisms are strongly embedded in the tradition-oriented structuresandcultureofEast Central Europeancountries;itseems unlikely that their weight had substantially reduced by the beginning of the 1990s. Obviously, one would expect then1 to act with unequal strength in, for example, the Czech Republic and Poland. In the latter, privatefarmingexistedthrough all periods of communistrule.In 1993, Polish peasants accounted for 12 per cent of the actively employed, still working almost entirely on smallholdings which will require considerable restructuring if they are to compete with Western

51

producers. The peasant mentality is very traditional, fostering a tendency to immobility. Apart from Poland, private farming in the other postcommunist societies haseffectively been reinstated. The intriguing question arises: Which factors will shape recruitment into this category-in-the-making? Is ‘peasantification’ taking place or is a modern path of development being followed, inflow being driven by what we have referred to as the allocative power of socioeconomic status, which appears to affect the mobility of the nonagricultural strata dramatically? We should bear in mind the growing marketability of agriculture in East Central Europe, in parallel with the infrastructural modernization of rural communities. Our analysis will shed light on how the first years of renewal of private farming in the postcommunist countries have influenced patterns of entry to the agricultural sector. Previous analyses have shown that, in some countries, nonagricultural proprietors show up in a separate dimension of mobility space. Not surprisingly, their distinctiveness appeared more pronounced in capitalist countries-especially in France-in comparison to Hungary and Poland (Sawinski and Domanski, 1989). Nonagricultural proprietors also stand out because of their considerable self-recruitment and inheritance. The ownership of a privatefirm or of economic assets generally constitutes a specific type of resource, passed down in families of owners from parents to children. Itseems that means of production are less convertible than other forms of capital, so explaining the distinctive location of proprietors inmobility space. Privateentrepreneursarethe second newly emerging category in East Central Europe. But do entrepreneurs constitute a distinctive social segment in the structure of mobility patterns and is their social location similar to that of their counterparts in the advanced industrialized countries?

PATTERNS OF MOBILITY In our investigation of the effects of systemic transformation on the structure of mobility we compared configurations of intergenerational mobility patterns established for two points in time: (i) 1988, the year immediately preceding the collapse of communist rule, and (ii) 1993, wheninstitutional changes in political systems and economies, once brought into effect, might have initiated some restructuration in stratifi-

52

cation systems. Any substantial differences in the configuration of the basic divisions between these two points in time, as reflected in the patterns of intergenerational movement, will be regarded as indicative of changes in social stratification. It is a matter of further debate to what extent these potential changes may be affected by transformations in the political and economic systems, or derive simply from the natural logic of social structuration. We shall look in somedetail at the mobility tables relating to fathers andsons,movingonfromthe short time-perspective of the decade 1983-93 to patterns of intergenerational movement. The latter encompass a more comprehensive set of constraints and opportunities for the transmission of benefits and disadvantages, and so stand as a more valid representation of basic divisions and cleavages in social stratification in comparisonto work-life patterns. In order to figure out distances in mobility space, discriminant analysis will be used, which represents a family of methods particularly suitable for extracting the structure of flows in a two-way table (such as canonical correlation analysis, multidimensional scaling, correspondence analysis, and so on). In order tograsp the configurations of mobility barriers in a comprehensive way, I expanded the sixfold EGP categorization, as applied in Chapter 2, into an eightfold version. A division wasmadebetween: (i) higher-grade professionals, administrators, officials, managers of large industrial establishments, and large proprietors, (ii) lower-grade professionals, administrators, officials, higher-grade technicians, managers of small industrial establishnents, andsupervisors of nonmanualemployees, (iii) routine nonmanualemployees in administration, commerce, sales, and services, (iv) owners with or without employees, (v) lowergrade technicians and supervisors of manual workers, (vi) skilled workers, (vii) semi- and unskilled workers, and (viii) farmers and agricultural workers. The discriminant analysis utilized in this study aims to determinedifferences between two or more groups and a set of discriminating variables (see Klecka, 1980). Since it considers the groups to be defined as a single nominal-level variable-with each value denoting a different group-discriminant analysis can be looked at as a technique which relates onenominal variable to several interval-level variables. Inthis study, a discriminant analysis of intergeneration.al mobility is performed by representing sons’ categories in 1988 and in 1993 as nominal variables, and fathers’ categories when respondents were 14 years of age as a set of dummy variables (explanatory ones).

53

Discriminant analysis fits discriminant functions which are a simple linear combination of the discriminating variables. For the first function, coefficients, referred to discriminant weights, are derived, so that the group means onthe function are as different as possible. The weights for the second function are also derived to maximize the differences between the group means, but with the added condition that values on the second function are not correlated with the values on the first function. The consecutive functions are derived in the same fashion. Each discriminant function also gives score values for group centroids of the nominal variable. These are points in a multidimensional space where all ofthe discriminating variables have their average values over all cases belonging to given groups. We will be interested only in the first two discriminant functions, which in fact account for the vast bulk of relations between ‘origin’ and ‘destination’ categories in mobility tables. The canonical correlation,coefficient will be the measure of association whichsummarizes the degree of relatedness between the groups and thediscriminant function. In sum, discriminant analysis allows one to transform the observed mobility flows between class categories into distances in multidimensional space. If mobility flows reveal the underlying location of the categories within social stratification-as has been suggested in previous theoretical and empirical studies-the discriminant analysis solution can be interpreted in terms of the structuration process. We shall present our findings in the sameperspective.

MAP OF DISTANCES It is a perennial question whether, and to what extent, parents transmit their social positions to their offspring. The strength of correlation between the occupational categories of fathers and their children is commonly taken to identify the degree of intergenerational inheritance of placement in the social hierarchy. In Table1 1, coefficients of first canonical correlation are given. Scanningtheir values, onecan see that in the 1990sbothmenand women tended to inherit the positions of their fathers no less strongly than in the late 1980s. Mobility routes have not been opened up-this is what a decline in correlations would indicate, although mobility barriers have not become morerigid either-since in that case the values of correlation coefficients would have increased.

‘A

P

Table 1 1 . Coefficients of canonical correlutions between occupational categories offathers und sonsh’aughtem in 1988 and 1993 Bulgaria 1988

1993

Czech Republic 1988

1993

Hungary 1988

1993

Po1and 1988

1994

Russia 1988

1993

Slovakia 1988

1993

Canonical correlations between father’s occupational category and category of son/daughter in 1988 or 1993

Men

0.31

0.30

0.34

0.31

0.32

0.32

0.34

0.36

0.28

0.28

0.29

0.31

Women

0.32

0.32

0.35

0.34

0.30

0.32

0.34

0.33

0.25

0.24

0.30

0.29

It is difficult to trace substantial cross-national differences in the openness of the social structure. However, in Poland the ‘father-son link’ is slightly closer and in the Czech Republic slightly looser. Cross-national similarities and stability over time prevail over differences and change. It appears that, at the beginning of the 1990s, people were following in their fathers’ footsteps just asthey had in the preceding decade. In the remainder of this chapter, we shall restrict our treatment of class structuration patterns to the inspection of male social mobility. In fact, we replicated the same analyses with the mobility tables of women. It turned out that, in eachcountry, the configuration of intergenerational mobility barriers in the female population closely fits the patterns for men: as a result, we will not discuss women separately, on the assumption that what we found for men more or less represents the structure of basic social divisions overall. Table 12 presents discriminant analysis solutions for our six countries. In each country’s two columns we show discriminant weights for class categories of sons in 1988 on the first (the dominant) and second discriminant function(that is, the next in terms of discriminatory power). Original, standardized values of weights were transformed into a 0 to 100 points scale. The disc.riminant weights for fathers’ categories are not listed because of space limitations. The focus of our interest will be the recruitment patterns ofthe analyzed classes. In Table 13, we show analogous scores for categories of sons in 1993 (1994 in the case of Poland). By way of visual illustration, the score values are plotted in Figures 1 to 12 with vertical and horizontal axes corresponding to the first and second discriminant functions (scores for the second variate were scaled proportionally to the ratio between second and first canonical correlation). These twelve plots will serve as the basis for a discussion on the dynamics and stability of social distances and divisions under systemic change.

Table 12. Discriminant weights on$rst and second discriminantfinctions for tables of mobilityfrom fathers’ to sons’ categories in 1988 Discriminant weights: Socio-occupational categories in 1988

Bulgaria 1st

Czech Republic

2nd

1st

2nd

100.0

13.1

91.1

Semi-professionals

94.5

50.7

Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers

67.3

Owners

Hungary

Poland

Russia

Slovakia

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

51.2

100.0

39.5

86.0

88.6

98.0

85.4

42.8

75.4

50.9

81.7

700.0

93.2

81.3

50.8

22.4

67.2

94.2

44.0

100.0

100.0

42.2

28.6

100.0

Lower-grade technicians

97.9

83.6

53.3

100.0

34.7

Skilled workers

50.8

93.0

34.1

75.1

Unskilled workers

33.4

100.0

25.9

0.0

0.0

0.0

Higher professionals and managers

Farmers and agricultural laborers

1st

2nd

52.5

100.0

35.4

77.3

63.1

86.9

29.3

84.5

0.0

59.2

49.6

26.4

100.0

82.3

100.0

100.0

77.4

93.3

63.7

80.4

30.9

27.4

46.8

55.6

100.0

20.8

84.2

71.2

0.0

0.1

79.1

20.3

79.5

52.2

9.3

41.6

52.7

12.2

0.9

54.0

15.7

18.4

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

74.8

0.3

0.0

0.0

0.0

Table 13. Discriminant weights onJirst and second discriminantfunctions for tables of mobilivfrom fathers’ to sons’ categories in 1993 Discriminant weights: Socio-occupationalcategories in 1993

Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Hungary

Poland

Slovakia

Russia ~

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

100.0

100.0

100.0

64.9

100.0

Semi-professionals

95.1

50.4

94.4

59.5

Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers

93.4

20.2

66.6

Owners

94.3

51.4

Lower-grade technicians

95.5

Skilled workers Unskilled workers

Higher professionals and managers

Farmers and agricultural laborers

2nd

~~

~~

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

6.8

100.0

75.6

88.4

67.4

91.7

48.2

74.8

82.0

92.4

100.0

95.2

45.8

100.0

47.4

83.7

18.1

89.1

99.1

50.1

50.8

61.0

26.7

34.1

75.7

71.1

56.4

100.0

85.0

54.9

100.0

100.0

74.5

59.4

20.4

66.5

100.0

31.0

64.3

77.0

49.1

70.0

54.0

40.4

94.1

63.4

0.0

35.7

96.3

27.2

92.1

69.9

0.0

16.9

74.4

17.8

100.0

44.9

0.1

28.1

70.8

15.5

47.4

85.6

19.1

18.4

67.8

15.8

0.0

0.0

96.2

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

66.9

0.0

0.0

0.0

17.4

58

RN

sw PR

uw FA

Figure I. Bulgaria, 1988. Discriminantweights for sons ’ categories in 1988 on Jisst and second discrinlinant variate Note: The exact valuesof coordinates are given in Tables 12 and 13. The occupational categories - Semi-professionals; RN - Routine nonmanual, are: HP - Higher professionals and managers; LP sales and service workers; PR - Owners; LT- Lower-grade technicians; SW - Skilled workers; UW - Unskilled workers; FA- Farmers and agricultural workers.

HP

LTLP

sw uw 0 FA

Figure 2. Bulgaria, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on-first and second discriminant variate

PR HP LP ‘RN LT

sw U W m

FA

Figure 3. Czech Republic, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate

59 HP LP 0

p,R RON 4T

sw 0

uw 0

FA 0

Figure 4. Czech Republic, 1993. Discrinzirzarzt weights for sons’ cutegories in 1993 on first crud second discrinhmt vuriate HP 0

LP 0

LT PR RN

sw U

W

o

0

FA 0

Figure 5 . HLrrzgcyv, 1988. Discriminant weights-forsons’ categories in 1988 oll first and second discriminant variate HP 0

LP PR 0

FA 0

Figure 6. Hungary, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on first and second discrinlinant variote

60 PR RN' Hi

LT

LP 0

sw 0

W 0

I

FA 0

Figure 7. Poland, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons' categories in 1988 onfirst and second discriminant variate

RN LP

PR

LT 0

sw a W 0

FA 0

Figure 8. Poland, 1994. Discriminant weights for sons' categories in 1994 on$rst and second discriminant variute

LT 0

FA 0

sw 0

Figure 9. Russia, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons' categories in 1988 on first and second discriminant variate

61 PR

LP

0

0

HP LT 0

RN 0

uw o

w 0

FA 0

Figure 10. Russia, 1993. Discriminant weights-for sons’ categories in 1993 onfirst and second discriminant variate

HP 0

L.p

PR 0

LT

RN

0

0

sw

uw 0

0

FA 0

Figure 1 1. Slovakia, 1988. Discriminant weights for sons ’ categories in 1988 onfirst and second discriminant variate

LP P{ PR 0

LT 0

RN

uw

sw

0

FA 0

Figure 12. Slovakia, 1993. Discriminant weights for sons’ categories in 1993 on$rr.t and second discriminant variate

62

CLASSICAL HIERARCHY Inspection of the plotted configurations of discriminant weights gives the general impression that, in each country, the configuration of distancesapproximates the classical hierarchy of socioeconomic status: that is, an ordering of the class categories on the status scale provides a strong explanation ofthe position of most categories within the structure of intergenerational movements. There is an apparent tendency for higher professionals to occupy an extreme position at one end of the dominant axis. They are situated somewhere close to private entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic (1988), while in Poland and Slovakia they are closer to a number of other nonrnanual strata, and in Russia to both nonmanuals and entrepreneurs. At the other end of the scale are agricultural categories and manual workers. Twomain results are apparent. First, the structure of intergenerational movements in East Central Europe strongly resembles the general shape of basic distances and rigidities in the West which we know from previous studies. Secondly, it is not only the strong cross-national similarity but also the lack of substantial changes in the critical period 198894 which dominate the scene. This conclusion carries a significant inlplication, to which weshall return. For the moment, it is worth pursuing other regularities by considering the most salient distances between the class categories.

AGKICULTURAL/NONAGRICULTURAL DIVERGENCE The distinctive placement in mobility space of farmers and farmworkers emerges sharply from earlier analyses. Our data also show that our six East Central European societies tend to conform to this regularity. Only in Slovakia are male agricultural categories not clearly separated from manual workers. In Hungary, the division between agricultural and nonagricultural categories seems visible,but we can scarcely count it among the basic lines of social structuration. The four other countries exhibit a strong separation of agricultural categories from the remaining classes and this distance reproducesitself over time. In fact, one can recognize on the first and second discriminant functions the same pattern, which displays a sharp contrast between farmers and all nonagricultural categories. They reinforce each other to make the agricultural/nonagricultural division still more evident. Plainly, the

63

considerable distance between these segments in all six countries results from the low level of intergenerational movements between agricultural and nonagricultural strata. The social mobility of farmers and members of non-farm categories is organized around distinct dimensions, a fact determined by the particular nature of social resources in farming, such as their lack of exchangeability on the nonagricultural labor market, as well as other factors already mentioned. Unquestionably, the mechanisms underpinning the unique recruitment patterns to farm categories are connected to their relatively highest rates of self-recruitment. For example, in 1993 the percentages of farmers and farm laborers who originated from farming in Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia stood at 76.1 per cent, 82.4 per cent, and 57.1 per cent respectively. The self-recruitment rates for Czech, Hungarian, and Slovakian farmers and farm workers were markedly lower, amounting to SO per cent, 47.6 per cent, and 41.7 per cent respectively. It maybe that in communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary agricultural categories were more closely integrated with the state sector, in keeping with the higher level of modernization of occupational activities and roles. Farming in these countries seemed organized more in accordance with the requirements of rules of work resulting from technological constraints than in Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia, where agriculture is still characterized by more traditional practices. According to a claim made inearly 1995 by Prime Minister Klaus, Czech agriculture met Western European standards and the Czechs would comply with European agricultural policy after the latter had been reformed (Zagrodzka, 1995). It may be that mobility routes between agricultural and nonagricultural categories in the Czech Republic were, in fact, relatively open, in confirmation of our findings.

THE BLURRED MANUAL/NONMANUAL DICHOTOMY When looked atina cross-national perspective, the mobility barrier between nonnlanual and manual categories appeared the second most conspicuous cleavage within the social structure (Sawinski and Domanski, 1989). With respect to our six East Central European countries, the degree of this dichotomy was conspicuously unequal. A thorough analysis of Tables 12 and 13 shows that, in the early 1990s, it constituted a visible demarcation line in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. The values of discriminant weights identifying manual workers fall clearly below those for nonmanual categories.

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It seems that this dichotomy has proved to be stable in both Czech and Polish societies in recent years. Thesocial distance between these two broad segments was much the same in 1988 as in the 1990s. At thesametime,inBulgariathecontoursofdivisionbetweenthe working-class and nonmanual strata sharpened, in contrast to Russia and Slovakia, where, according to the configuration of weights in the two discriminant functions, this division remained blurred until 1993: that is, categories of workers and routine nonmanuals overlapped. Finally,inHungariansociety,routinenonmanuals closely neighbor skilled and unskilled workers-which would imply that a substantial division is lacking. In hypothesizing aboutthe plausible paths of restructuration between 1988 and 1993, we pointed out some of their potential sources in deep changes in the distributive system. Could it be that the blurring of mobility barriers in Slovakia and Russia reflected a redistribution of incomes? That would be so if-forexample-members of the working class found professional occupations more attractive because of rising financial incentives in the nonmanual sector-as already mentioned, in some other East Central European societies the earnings of the occupational elite increased in relative terms. This may have intensified intergenerational flows from manual to nonmanual categories at the beginning of the 1990s. Since such direct linkages between the dynamics of distributive rules and social structuration occur rarely, we should perhaps not take this interpretation at face value. As in Slovakia and Russia, the ‘manualhonmanual’dichotomy dissipated, whichmayonly reflect a ‘trendless fluctuation’ rather than a long-term trend with strong macrostructural underpinnings. The opposite was true of Bulgaria, where, in 1988-93, the exchange between blue- and white-collar workers decreased. In this case, one maycite the effects of the purportedprofessionalization of the intelligentsia and cadres, on the assumption that the strategies applied by Western professionals are already present in East Central Europe. The claim could be made that the Bulgarian intelligentsia is seeking to secure its prosperous position in the labor market by imposing barriers of entry to candidates from the lowerstrata. Notwithstanding variations in a cross-country perspective, the dominant impression given by the data is one of stability in respect of the position of nonmanual categories relative to the working class. Our maps of intergenerational barriers to mobility also reveal other forms of reshaping, but all of them seem negligible. We are unable to interpret

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them in any meaningfbl way, or to attribute them to transformations of the economicand political system.

THE OPEN OCCUPATIONAL ELITE The same conclusionmay be drawn with respect to the social location of higher professionals, managers, and top administrative officials, which we refer to as the occupational elite. Asfar as the main axis of differentiation between socioeconomic categories is concerned, the salientposition of the occupational elite in capitalist societies seems sufficiently well documented. In EastCentral Europe, as our data show, this distinction is scarcely relevant to 1988-94. Comparison of discriminant scores indicates that it is only in Hungary and-to a lesser extent-Bulgaria, thathigherprofessionalsstandata distance from lower white-collar categories. In the other four countries,the occupational elite tends tobe close to the lower professionals, routine nonmanuals, and proprietors in the structure of intergenerational flows.Access to the occupational elite in the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia seems relatively open. On this basis,we believe that the thesis concerning the invariably salient position of the occupational elite is in need of some qualification. Originally, it was based on findings from capitalist countries. What in fact occurs is that the position of the occupational elite is affected by a multiplicity of factors which do not operate with the same magnitude acrosscountries.Forexample, in postcommunist societiesastrictly formalized path of recruitmentto the civil service has not yet been successfully implemented. By the early 199Os, slight changes in the placement ofhigher professionals,managers, and administrative staffin some East Central European countrieswere detectable, but these did not rearrange the configuration of basic social distances in a meaningfbl way.

OWNERS In the two-dimensional space of men’s intergenerational movements, it is not possible to identifjr a separate location for nonagricultural entrepreneurs as against other class categories in recruitment patterns. Only in Russia-for both 1988 and 1993-did proprietors occupy a discernible position in the second dimension of mobility space.

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In the mobility patterns of a number of capitalist countries-by now well studied-the specific character of recruitment to the entrepreneur category has emerged as a distinct dimension in the multidimensional space of intergenerational movements. The special position of proprietors usually emerges on the third consecutive dimension-that is, it stands third inimportance after socioeconomic status and the farminghonfarming division. This was apparent in respect of capitalist societies and the same patterns appeared in our data, although-due to limitations of space-I shall not present these results here. Our findings do not show that patterns of entry to the proprietors category are less salient in East Central Europe than in Western societies. This distinction exists also in postcommunist countries, reflecting the highdegree of self-recruitment in the intergenerational transfer of property. Interestingly, inflow frequencies for Russia-not presented here-show that not self-recruitment but a substantial flow from the occupational elite-that is, higher professionals and top administrative officials-appears to account for the unique position of ownersin Russia. It bears repeating once again: the most important result of our findings is that no substantial changes are detectable. The numerical expansion ofthe category of small and middle-sized owners, pervasive throughout East Central Europe, did not bring any substantial restructuration in recruitment patterns. In particular, the rules of entry to the group of owners did not change to such an extent that their position became decisively marked in mobility space. Looking at the configuration of discriminant weights, onecan trace only a certain ‘upgrading’ of owners between 1988 and 1993 in Bulgaria and Hungary: in the 1990s they tend to accompany nonmanual categories, while at the end of the preceding decade they were neighboring categories of the working class. What these tendencies reflect is, in fact, the changing composition ofthe social origin of proprietors-while in 1988 they originated mostly from the lower classes, the early 1990s witnessed an increasing inflow of the sons of nonmanual strata.

C O N C L U S I O N : POLITICAL BREAKTHROUGH AND MOBILITY The aim of our comparison was to establish mobility rates in a critical period of the 1990s and to discover patterns of social structuration as exhibited in mobility space. We have noted where ourfindings appear to

67

support,qualifl,or undermine the evidence assembled in previous analyses. As regards East Central European countries, knowledge of the general contours of distances between basic class segments was, at that time, fragmentary, limited to individual societies, and weakly integrated with regularities established for capitalist countries. It represented a missing theoretical link. Of the two theoretical positions-the one claiming a basic similarity in patterns of structuration across contemporary industrial societies and the other pointing out differentials related to specific features of political-economic systems-the results reported in the present study seem to favor the former. We found no evidence that our six East Central European nations were markedly different from capitalist countries. As far as intergenerational flows are concerned, it appears that in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and so on, they have come to be structured along the same core axes and divisions as in the UK, Germany, or the USA. Here we refer particularly to: position in the hierarchy of socioeconomic status, division into agricultural and nonagricultural occupations, thedichotomy ‘manual/nonmanual’ workers, the outstanding position of higher managerial and professional categories, and the separation of nonagricultural proprietors. Our data indicate that these similarities predominate over cross-national variations in respect of the relative magnitude of class distances and crystallization of the hierarchical divisions intimately linked to social mobility. These are the mainimplications of our findings in terms of comparative macrosociology. However, the issue which directly informs this study is the effect of systemic transformations in East Central Europe on thedynamicsof basic social cleavages. Overall, our comparison of mobility patterns between 1988 and the early 1990s did not reveal any consistentchange:the temporal constancy in basic mobility barriers continues. The political break and upheavals in the economic system did not breach the broad similarity in the general shape of social stratification and in its underpinnings.

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CHAPTER 4

ECONOMIC STRATIFICATION: SIMILARITIES, DIFFERENCES, AND EMERGING CHANGE

WHATwe presented in the preceding chapter may suggest far-reaching uniformity and continuity, but this would be an oversimplification. Let us consider instead an area of stratification which seems to bring out the more singular features of our six East Central European countries. Economic differentiation is less vulnerable to the homogenizing effects of what we have called the ‘inherent logic of postindustrialism’. Indeed, both levels of incomes and the rules of their distribution reflect economic crises, the destructive impact of wars, long-standing welfare systems, state interventionism, wage bargaining betweenunionsand employers, and so on: all in all, the historical, political, and economic 1990, 1993). context which is unique to each country (Esping-Andersen, The impact of politics on social stratification was overwhelming in communist societies, since theywere subjected toanencompassing system of direct planning. Nevertheless, centralization of the rules of distribution in the hands of government was weaker in Hungary and Polandthan in Russia. In the present chapter, while seeking crossnational differences in economic stratification in East Central Europe, we will not lose sight of the traces of the different institutional heritages. Obviously, our six nations also differed in terms of level of economic development and the modernization of social structures. In fact, as we shall see, they differed in economic stratification to a slightly greater degree than in respect of their patterns of mobility-although the similarities prevailed over the differences in this respect too.

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FAMILY INCOMES Beginning one’s account with the hierarchy of incomes gives one the advantage of precision. As compared to inequalities of power, social prestige, and other important dimensions of social stratification, incomes precisely locate socio-occupational strata on consecutive levels of social stratification,from the top to the bottom.

Table 14. Meat?nzonth(v.famil’) incowm per capita (in US dollars) ~~

~

Socio-occupational categories Bulgaria Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia 216man137 86 Higher professionals and agers 71 Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and100 67 service workers 104 Owners with employees 72 Owners without employees 79 Lower-grade technicians 65 Skilled workers 56 Unskilled workers 53 Agricultural laborers 67 Farmers 65 Mean 0.76 Coefficient of variation (V) 0.22 Correlation ratio (E)

Czech Republic

168106

26

114

176 147

92 123 84 82

23 19

180 135 107 102 92 84 139 107 0.68 0.20

175 lS5 180 139 127 115 141 147 0.67 0.27

144 102 100 76 77 65 76 93 0.90 0.33

47 66 27 21 19 17 22 23 2.00 0.22

129 109 85 78 78 77 129 85 0.66 0.21

Table 14 gives the mean incomes for the basic socio-occupational categories. This ordering does not depart substantially from the hierarchy of socioeconomic status which we found in the configuration of mobilitybarriers.Mean incomes are shaped according toa classical stratification ladder which constitutes the core of contemporary marketoriented systems.It is appropriate to call it ‘classical’ because status differentiation lies at the origin of the development of macrostructures typical of postindustrial societies; Turner (1988) gives a concise overview of the status-based roots of differentiation. Scanning the hierarchies of incomes we must take into account the fact that, although our samples were representative for adult populations, they covered no more than four or five thousand cases. As usual, representatives of the top level-the old aristocracy or thefinancial elite-were excluded; those at

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the bottom of the ladder in terms of poverty (a prominent part of the economic mosaic everywhere) were treated in the same way. The respondents were asked to report on their total household incomes-coming from all persons and from all sources-over the past three months. The incomes declared in this way were divided by the number of family members and-to make them comparable across countries-they were converted into US dollars. This allows us to underline the monetary divide between East and West. There was an evident gap between the incomes of the inhabitants of EastCentralEurope and of those in the advanced industrialized countries. Average incomes in Hungary were relatively the highest, yet they were still 17 times lower than that of the average American family. Mean annual family income per capita in Hungarian society stood at USD 1,764 in 1993, while in the USA it was USD 30,786 (according to the Statistical Abstract 1994 for 1992). If we consider the total of USD 276 which-if we can rely on the survey data-an average Russian family received, the East-West gap expands from 1 :17 to 1 :112. The contrast is comparable to that between the extremes of wealth and poverty. The ratio of 1:112 seems so great that it obliterates disparities within the postcommunist camp whichuntil recently was unified by a comnlon political and economic system and official ideology. However, it would be wildly inaccurate to regard all six countries as a single, undifferentiated entity and to ignore the differences between them. Hungary and Russia are located at the two poles of the axis of mean incomes. Hungarian family incomes were on average 6.3 times greater than in Russia, 2.3 times higher than i n Bulgaria, and 1.7, 1.6, and 1.4 times higher than in Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, respectively. Average incomes, which approximate the standard of living in particular societies, are only one side of thecoin. Also important is the distribution of incomes across individuals and socio-occupational strata. We shall now enquire about both the degree and the shape of economic inequalities. Let us start with the degree of inequalities, which can be expressed in terms of income dispersion. Strong concentration around the mean implies low inequality and differentiation. Measures of ‘dispersion’ are given at the bottom of Table 14. We took the coefficient of variations (V) which divided standard deviations of incomes by means. It is worth comparing Vs with average incomes for specific countries. In doing so one can see that average incomes and

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their differentiation by nomeans reflected each other. Paradoxically, income differentiation is, on the whole, strongest in Russia, despite low incomelevels:income differentiation in that country is very high, standing at 2.0. This translates to the standard deviation being twice as much as the mean. Evidently, distribution of incomes in Russiawas highly skewed to the right. Everywhere, incomes are strongly concentrated at the lower end-below, rather than above the mean-and the Russian case exemplifies this regularity perfectly. Values of coefficient of skewness are suggestive. In Russia, this reached 20.1, 2.5 times as much as in the Czech Republic (skewness of 8.71, and 5 times more than in Hungary, where dispersion of incomes around the mean was relatively the most equal (4.4). It is worth noting that in the society with, on average, the lowest incomes, the inequalities were the most pronounced. Note, also, thatapart from the Czech Republic and Slovakia-the narrowest dispersion of incomes was displayed in Hungary. Thus, economic differentiation decreased across our six nations with an increase in the average level of incomes, and notthe other way around. The striking Russian case strongly imprints on the specificity of the whole region. The exceptionally low average incomes were accompanied by the highest differentiation. We have, therefore, good reason to think that-quite apart from the poor economic condition of the society as a whole-there still existed a vast area of poverty in contrast to the condition of the financial elite. The spectrum of income differentiation was extremely ‘stretched’, which diverged appreciably from what we found in Bulgaria, Poland, or Hungary. It will suffice if we compare the mean incomes in the highest and lowest deciles in the six societies. This ratio stood at 171.9 in Russia, followed by Poland with only 65.1, and, successively, 53.1 in Bulgaria, 41.8 in Czech Republic, 38.1 in Slovakia, and 3 1.9 in Hungary. Now we can return to the shape of these inequalities. It appears to be similar across the six countries, despite unequal income differentiation. In the first half of the 199Os, agricultural workers received the lowest incomes and this is replicated, without exception, by all six societies. The economic situation of unskilledmanualworkers was not much better. They occupiedthe penultimate position in the hierarchy, except in Poland and Russia. Peasants and skilled workers in Poland fared no better than unskilled workers and, in Russia, clerical staff did poorly as well. As regards nonmanual workers, they are differentiated into three strata. Everywhere, the intelligentsia and managers enjoyed the highest

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incomes, exceeding categories of semi-professionals, middle-ranking administrative staff, and so on. Below them, and separated from the two higher categories, fall routine clerical workers (such as secretaries and filing clerks), and shop assistants. Turning to the broad categorization into nonmanuals, manuals, and farmers (smallholders), we also find basic intercountry similarities. The fanlilies of the intelligentsia, semi-professionals, and clerical staff received, on the whole,higher incomes than manual workers. This applies also to the lowest-ranking clerical staff, although in many societies they happen to fare worse thanthe higher strata of the working class-that is, skilled workers-in other dimensions of economic stratification. Only in the Czech Republic and Russia did the incomes of clerical workers fall below those ofskilled workers. Also, technicians and foremen did better than skilled workers. The strict location of the former within the ‘manual-nonmanual’ division cannot be specified in an unambiguous way since they include-apart from foremen-lower technicians, who, within the framework of a number of classifications, used to be counted as nonmanuals. As regards foremen, they perform supervisory tasks but conjoinedwith manual work; usually, they do the same work as the workers whom they supervise-foremen in construction serve as a good example. Incomes of technicians and foremen were on a par with those obtained by the families of semi-professionals. In Bulgaria, Russia, and Hungary they were even slightly higher. Universal patterns prevail but economic stratification in particular countries is also marked by regional specificity. This is most visibly the case in respect of the position of private entrepreneurs-both owners of larger firms who employ workers and the self-employed who do not hire labor. Insofar as the class position of owners is disputed in sociological theories, it would be difficult to come up with an intelligent interpretation of their placement in the hierarchy of incomes in postcommunist societies. Analogies with the advanced industrialized countries might have been especially helpful. It may, for example, have been attractive to regard larger owners-those with employees-as a potential underpinning of the newly developing East Central European economic elite, by virtue (say) of their high incomes. Self-employed owners can be referred, in turn, to the traditional ‘old middle classes’. The ‘old middle classes’ in modern capitalism are de facto in the ‘middle’, but in many cases the small ownersof repair workshops, craftsmen, and grocers lose out to the working class inthe competition for a share of the income pie (see Curran and Blackburn, 1991; Savage et al., 1992). What do the in-

74

corne data imply asregards the class position of private entrepreneurs in postcommunist Europe? Cross-country similarities emerge, but only in a few cases. Incomes of larger businessmen and small owners are similarly contrasted to other socio-occupational strata in Poland and Hungary. Themean incomes of private entrepreneurs are relatively low. In Hungary and Poland, larger owners received lower incomes than managerial cadres and the intelligentsia. And in Hungary they did almost the same as semi-professionals and medium-level administrative staff, Small businesses proved less profitable as well: in Hungary, the self-employed without employees received significantly lower incomes than manual supervisors (technicians and foremen) and nonmanual workers (but only clerical staff). In Poland, the monetary distance between families in the small business and ‘administration, and semi-professionals’ stood at USD 2 1 monthly, which, as far as 1994 is concerned, was not bad. There is some analogy, in fact, withjhe economic position of small and medium-sized owners in the UK, the USA, Germany, and France-themajority of studies on the ‘old middle classes’ were carried out in these countries (see Scase and Goffe, 1982; Bechhofer and Elliot, 1978). Both in Polish and Hungarian society, private entrepreneurs entered the 1990swith quite decent monetarygains-which put larger owners among the higher reaches of income distribution-but as a whole they were no longer a financial elite. They had ceased to be the privileged category they had been in the 1980s. Over several decades of communist rule, they took a prominent economic position-within the possibilities provided by the system, of course-in the spectrum of basic socio-occupational strata. In the case of Poland, at least, these statements are empirically valid. Data based on results comingfromnation-based representative samples has been available in Poland since the 1970s and 1980s. They document that owners reallydidformaneconomically privileged enclave (Donmiski and Sawinski, 1991; Domanski, 1988 and 1990). Owners were still on top as communism began to decline. But at the beginning of the 1990s this pattern was modified. We can see that at that time the incomes of Polish and Hungarian ownersstood below the mean incomes of managers and professionals. It was otherwise in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Slovakia. This could be said to herald a slowly emerging decline from the favorable position of the past. Some modification might have takenplace and the mechanisms of distribution typical of contemporary market systems may have begun to operate. Under the communist system, private entrepreneurs were privileged by

75

virtue of a well-established monopoly of selling scarce goods and services to meet consumer demand simply because the bureaucratized and inefficient state sector could not satisfy mass consumption needs. This monopoly provided owners with unparalleled profits. Wages in the state sector were established on the basis of rigid rules and could not compete with incomes drawn from business. This monopoly underwent a natural erosion after thecollapse of thesocialist economy. A paradox emerges. First, history created a social system which, with a glut of contradictory rules, fostered a social enclave which, although operating in a politically hostile environment, earned substantial profits. Then, after the fall of the system, fate decreed a new and contradictory scenario, which took those most interested in retaining their privileged conditions by surprise. Under the new circumstances, both the legal system and political infrastructures gave support to the development of private business. However, the rules of the capitalist market have established a new barrier which is probably no less effective in limiting the economic role of the ‘old middle classes’ as the arrangements in the mature capitalism of the West. This is no longer an asset which tends to promote itself. Instead, it involves a multiplicity of threats and enforces a continuous struggle to keep one’s privileged economic position with respect to other strata. This is what Polish and Hungarian owners have witnessed inthe 1990s. Their incomes remained moderately high, but not excessive. It looks as if, in both countries, the dynamics of the income hierarchy followed a pattern governed by the logic of market systems and it appears that this patternemerged earliest in Poland and Hungary. As a result, we must examine the opposite pole. Intheformer Czechoslovakia and in Russia, mean incomes of private entrepreneurs were far ahead of the other strata. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, ownerswithoutemployees did no worse than managerial cadres and professionals which, at the beginning of the 1990s, was astounding, even against thebackground of the region’s current circumstances. Also, intheCzech Republic, incomes of farmers-small agricultural businesses-were unexpectedly high: they were on a par with the highest nonmanual strata. Obviously, owners of larger firms obtained the highest incomes-in the Czech Republic they outstripped the incomes of managers and the intelligentsia by 3 1 per cent, in Slovakia by 22 per cent, and in Bulgaria by 21 per cent. Nevertheless, these advantages pale when set against the incomes of small owners in Russia, who enjoyed the best and most privileged eco-

76

nomic position as compared to other strata. Their incomes exceeded the mean for thesecond category, larger entrepreneurs, by 40 per cent. Then came technicians, foremen, managers, and the intelligentsia, whose incomes, overall, were much below the mean for larger owners. Let us note that the Russian intelligentsia neighbored categories traditionally placed in the lower half of the income hierarchy. As compared with other countries, its economic situation was exceptionally bad in Russia. It looks as if the pace of systemic transformation was too fast for engineers, lawyers, academicians, and medical doctors, and that they failed in competition withthe other strata. But why did smaller businesses profit more than larger owners? In pursuit of this question, we would have to know more about the broad economic and structural underpinnings of private-sector activity in Russia, much more than is contained in standardized information reported by respondents in surveys. The disturbing case of Russia may reside, to some degree, in errors committed in the fieldwork. It might well be that ownerswithemployees underreported their incomes, due-for example-to the systematic omission of important items which they regarded as being irrelevant. Usually, respondents do not realize precisely how large their incomes are and give only estimates based on salaries, wages, and selected sources. Other errors may also be involved. Nonetheless, the threat of systematic error seemsto be reduced in view ofthe fact that family income distribution in Russia is consistent with earned income distribution. The high family incomes of small owners conform to their high position in the hierarchy of individual incomes earned from work (we will deal with this topic shortly). So, although the data are suspect, the hierarchy of incomes in all likelihood does reflect existing patterns rather than artificial reporting. What remains to be explained is the relatively high position of owners in Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic as compared to Hungary and Poland. Above all, different scenarios of economic development seem to lie behind these two distinctive patterns, with unequallevels of economic prosperity in the foreground. Although the countries we are considering are all industrial and display what may be thought of as generic developmental characteristics, the structural contexts for economic disparities which they provide are quite strongly differentiated on acase-to-case basis. In Russia, the gap inmass consumption was greater and could not be filled so quickly. Private firms were more efficient than state ones, but privatization in Russia slowed down. Owners have not yet faced the ob-

77

stacle of competition, nor was the demand for consumption goods satisfied to the same extent asin Poland and Hungary. Lookedat in this perspective, one may conclude that the Russian society of the early 1990s remained at an earlier stage of transformation to the market system. The marked prosperity of businesses also persisted in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. These favorable conditions fadedaway in Hungary and Poland, where small and medium-sized businesses maintained their relatively good economic situation only by virtue of inertia. The economic boom becamea slump.

EARNED INCOMES In order to obtain a better understanding of economic stratification, we shall move on fromtotal family incomes to earnings. These are the basic constituent of total incomes and their distribution underlies economic stratification-a fact well established by analyses of empirical data over many years in various countries (see Psacharopoulos, 1994; Featherman and Hauser, 1978; Kuznets, 1989; Atkinson and Micklewright, 1992). Postcommunist societies are no exception to the general rule. In Table 15 mean individual incomes from work are included for basic sociooccupational strata. Beforewe scrutinize monetary distances between the categories, let us remark on the values s f correlation ratios given in the last row. They indicate how internally coherent are our EGP class categories with respect toincome differentiation in each of the six countries. The higher correlations indicate that these categories are more distant from each other and more internally homogeneous. The magnitude of class structuration in this sense is not low, taking into account that the correlation ratio reaches 1.00 at its maximum value. What deserves more attention is that earnings differentiate the means for categories more strongly than family incomes.The correlations appear systematically higher than the respective values in Table 14 (except for Poland). It suggests what one might have expected-that differentiation in earnings tends to discriminate class segments more strongly (in a statistical sense) thanthe financial situation of families. This has important implications since earnings and family incomes are distributed according to different rules. Earnings depend more on individual pursuits andareembeddedin the labormarket, whereas familyincomes come from all sources, not only from work. How much one earns results directly from one’s occupational and supervisory position, skills,

78

firm, and sector of the economy. Other determinants include age, sex, number of years in the labor force, and level and kind of education, which affect incomes indirectly through occupational status. Then comes the occupational path that one follows after leaving school, which may either doom one to failure or facilitate success. Since these determinants are built into the labor market, this is a critical area, which contributes to the crystallization of incomes within the framework of socio-occupational status. This is most evident in Hungary where, by the way, the grand mean of earnings is also highest (likewise with family incomes). Table 1 ?. Mean nlonthlv individual incomes(ill US dollars) Socio-occupational categories Higher professionals andmanagers Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers Owners with employees Owners without employees Lower-grade technicians Skilled workers Unskilled workers Agricultural laborers Farmers Mean Coefficient of variation (V) Correlation ratio (E)

Bulgaria

Czech

Republic

Hungary Poland

Russia

Slovakia

132

207

303

300

39

181

107 98

148 121

219 178

199 124

32 25

145 118

201 132 139 109 90 82 111 104 0.71 0.29

299 223 165 151 122 111 221 149 1.00 0.27

298 227 252 180 165 143 216 194 0.64 0.34

323 214 209 140 142 ll? 145 169 1.13 0.25

99 140 41 32 27 25 35 34 1.40 0.25

251 214 160 137 125 114 196 141 0.65 0.31

We are still seeking what is universal against a background of the unique features of our six countries. The basic difference between hierarchies of family incomes and earnings is that the rules for rewarding work tend to elevate owners to the detriment of the intelligentsia and managers. In Hungary, larger owners (with employees) gave way, only slightly, to managerial cadres arid the intelligentsia, and in Poland they moved to the top. Apart from in Hungary and Poland, larger businesses stood far above the East Central European service class on the scale of earnings, but notin respect of family incomes. As regards the self-employed (without employees), they stood' second after owners with employees in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

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Future generations will see how prosperous it was to own even a small firm in East Central Europe at the beginning of the systemic transformationsinthe 1990s. Small owners did worse than the intelligentsia only in Poland and Hungary, but better-on average-than the representatives of all other strata. Only in Hungary were individual incomes of technicians and foremen still higher. Summingup, the intelligentsia and managerial cadres in Poland earned less than owners of large firms, in contrast to the situation in respect of family incomes. The Hungarian service class did better than owners in terms of earnings, but not so well with respect to family incomes. In the six countries overall business paid more in terms of earnings than in termsof household income per capita. We have suggested that income hierarchies in Hungary and Poland reflect generic characteristics of the ‘old middle classes’ in Western societies. 1 would risk making one more generalization of this kind, in full awareness of the fact that I am plunging into the swampy ground of speculative predictions and hypotheses. It appears that, in comparison with incomes, the distribution of earnings in East Central European countries diverges from thepatterns typical of market-oriented societies. The patterns of differentiation of total (family) incomes across categories aremore similar between countries than those of individual incomes. Obviously, these analogies are limited to relationships between incomes of representatives of the service class-which are moving upand private entrepreneurs. The economic position of the latter is deteriorating-at least in comparison to the intelligentsia, who did worse under the communist regime. We shall focus on one aspect of income redistribution, but a pivotal one. If it reflects long-wave tendencies-and this is my assumption-one may expect more similarities between the situations of East Central European business and the Western ‘old middle classes’ in coming years. Anobviousconclusion follows: that the rules for distribution of earnings in postcommunist societies remain specific to this region because they-certainly more than family incomes-were shaped by the policy of the socialist state. Nowadays, we still encounter remnants of this heritage. Earnings, which used to be shaped by the rules of the labor market, are vulnerable to interference ‘from outside’-for example, by government legal regulations or bargaining by trade unions. Family incomes, by contrast, are received from various sources by means of the collective efforts of all family members, which keeps them in relatively

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persistent equilibrium. After all, it is easier for the government to raise the wages of miners, or, on theother hand, to put pressure on large firms because they provide them withsubstantial inputs from the state budget, than to change the predilections of married couples of the intelligentsia class for saving money rather than for engaging in lavish consumption like working-class couples. The intelligentsia and professionals find it easier to mobilize cash-this is an empirical fact, confirmed regularly by many studies. It is something that we would envisage as an inseparable link of social stratification, resistant to interventions from ‘outside’, no matter if such attempts are made by the administration of a communist state or by a social-democratic cabinet proceeding according , to the tenets of thewelfare state. The Russian case clearly departs from this general rule. In that country the intelligentsia and managerial cadres have an extremely low economic status. Representatives of the latter may regard themselves as financially deprived, but not only in comparison to owners. The incomes of the intelligentsia also fell-onaverage-below the mean incomes obtained by technicians and foremen. Moreover,they scarcely did better than other occupational strata. Can this be attributed to a complete demolition of the mechanisms governing income distribution in postindustrial societies? This is a strong claim, but possibly a true one. Long-standing political intervention may well have had a profound influence on this. The centralized policy of income distribution in the Soviet Union lasted, after all, considerably longer than in its satellite countries and should be expected to be more persistent. Note that the relative position of managerial wagesdeclined dramatically over the last fifty years: the difference between them and manual workers fell from 1:2.6 in 1932 to 1:l.l in 1986 (Lane, 1992, 168). There is one further vestige of the past in the hierarchy of earnings which lends support to the hypothesis concerning the significant impact of communist policy, namely, the monetary distance between the working class and nonmanual workers such as semi-professionals, administrative staff, sales clerks, and other white-collar workers. In the 1990s, as in preceding decades, working-class categories did relatively better in terms of earnings than of family incomes. Conversely, with respect to mean household incomes skilled workers’ families fared worse thanfor example-the families of office workers or sales clerks. At best-in the Czech Republic and Russia-the family incomes of skilled workers were on a par with those of clerical staff. As regards earnings, skilled workers did better than clerical staff in all six countries.

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Notably, in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Russia skilled workers were rewarded no less than semi-professionals, which in East Central Europe means middle-ranking administrative staff, nurses, and so on. More specifically, the main losers proved to be routine white-collar workers: in theCzech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, andRussiathey earned less than unskilled workers, while in Bulgaria they made only slightly more than the lower manual categories. Only agricultural workers fell below routine white-collar workers-indeed, they were at the bottom of the pile in all countries. Let us also note that, in the past, skilled workers earned more than lower clerical and sales staff in East Central Europe. This situation was typical of the region over recent decades. However, the Hungarian case must also be borne in mind. It was the only example of lower white-collar workers faring reasonably well in the earnings hierarchy. We have remarked onthe economic stratification of Hungary several times because it frequently differs from the dominant postcommunist pattern. Thus, one more divergence has been added to the list, but a stipulation is also needed: the relatively better position of routine nonmanuals does not push Hungary closer to the economic stratification generic to market-oriented societies. Even in the USA or the United Kingdom, clerical workers do not earn almost as much as skilled workers, as was the case in Hungary in the 1990s (USD 178 and USD 180 respectively). Routine clerical work pays less-this tends to be the norm. As regards earnings differentiation, the case of Hungary is somewhat unique.

MATERIAL RESOURCES Not only the possession of cash, but how we spend it determines our socioeconomic status. Differentiation according to material resources constitutes the third axis of economic stratification in East Central European countries. The typical list of material resources which determine standard of living consists of owning a home or apartment, along with household equipment of various kinds, including electrical appliances and vehicles. Instead of analyzing each of these items separately, I synthesized them into onesummaryindexcomposed of six items which were taken asvalid measures of material standard of living (I describe the construction of this index in the Appendix).

82 Table 16. Ownershiy of motor vehicle, separatedeep-j?eeze, microwave oven, personal computer, satellite receiver, telephone. Synthetic index of material position (100 - owning all 6 items, 0 - none) Socio-occupational categories Bulgaria

Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

37.317.5 33.840.335.0 14.0 Higher professional and managers 29.0 12.3 Semi-professionals 27.0 12.7 Routine nonmanual, sales and service workers 43.3 21.3 Owners with employees 35.4 13.2 Owners without employees 28.3 14.0 Lower-grade technicians 23.0 12.6 Skilled workers 20.5 11.9 Unskilled workers 18.4 10.2 Agricultural laborers 32.3 10.5 Farmers 26.1 12.3 Mean 0.34 0.15 Correlation ratio (E)

34.9 27.9

28.2 23. I

13.6 11.4

31.0 27.4

45.5 34.9 28.8 22.1 16.6 12.4 23.2 24.8 0.37

42.7 3 1.9 24.7 18.1 16.4 12.0 17.7 22.4 0.37

23.6 15.6 12.7 9.8 9.0 5.4 14.3 12.2 0.30

43.5 33.2 30.8 22.9 19.9 16.8 29.7 26.0 0.35

The data in Table 16 outline the contours of material differentiation. For eachsocio-occupational stratum I took the mean values of asix-item index, which included: car, microwave oven, separate deep-freezer, personal computer, telephone, and satellite TV receiver. I did not take into account ownership of home or apartment, since, at the beginning of the 1990s, these classical indices of welfare in the West did not reflect one’s socioeconomic status in East Central Europe. The housing market did not exist underthe communist regime. From the beginning of the 1990s, such a market began to develop, but was still far from being an area of safe investment. AccordingtoSaunders (1990), division into home owners and non-owners represents a core dichotomy in British society. Many other students of social stratification see home ownership as a key determinant of socioeconomic status, although they did not share Saunders’ extreme position (for example, Savage etal., 1992). As is evident from Table 16, the ordering of categories according to material possessions appears almost identical throughout the six East Central European countries. Runningfrom top to bottom, we have: owners with employees, the intelligentsia and managers, self-employed owners, middle-ranking nonmanuals, technicians and foremen, routine clerks and sales staff, farmers, skilled workers, unskilled workers, and invariably at the bottom, agricultural workers.

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These results, when set alongside those of Tables 14 and 15, strongly suggest that the hierarchy of material resources adds to the overwhelming gradation of class segmentsaccordingtosocioeconomic status. Owners with employees are consequently at the top. Even in Hungary they found themselves above the intelligentsia. This is not unusual. After several decades of financial domination, business circles could afford to discount accumulated incomes to a larger extent than other strata. One can hardly add anything more to what we already knew about the shape of differentiation according to social status from our ownfindings and previous studies. However, particular intercountry differences in the ordering of categories with respect to material status are also apparent. Thus, we find a clear line of division between the poor southeast, which contains Bulgaria and Russia, and the more wealthy northwest, comprising the four remaining countries. With regard to possession of material resources, the average citizen of Bulgaria andRussia had half as much as his counterpart in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary-although, to be sure, our index does not encompass all aspects of material standard of living. From Table 16it can also be observed that Bulgarians had a low level of material status which corresponded with the low differentiation between upper and lower strata. The overall compression of material inequalities was strong. At the same time, in Russia the symbiotic relationship between low level of economic conditions and high variation is repeated once again. The index of material possessions which was on average low was paralleled by a bigger disparity between top and bottom than in the other countries. Owners with employees were more than four times better off than agricultural workers in Russia, while in Bulgaria they were only half as well off. The rates for the other countries were as follows: 3.7 in Hungary, 3.6 in Poland, 2.6 in Slovakia, and 2.4 in the Czech Republic. We argued earlier that the striking symbiosis of sharp inequalities of incomes with a low average level resulted in Russia from extreme contrasts between wealth and poverty. The mass pauperization in Russia heavily skewed the distribution of incomes tothe bottom. This tendency is also discernible in the distribution of material resources. The peculiarity of the Russian case continues to be confirmed. In Table A1 in the Appendix, I present percentages of car ownership across our class categories. This makes clear how the summary index of material standards of living translates into concrete items. The propor-

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tion of carowners ranged from 40 to SO per cent in most countries, but not in Russia, where in 1993 only one in every four families had a car. Apparently, East Central Europe still deviates significantly from Westem standards of material possession. For example, in the USA, in the same year over 90 per cent of families owned at least one car. In the postcommunist world only owners approached the level of the USA, with 73-83 per cent of suchfamilies owning a car across the six nations. The intelligentsia and managers came next with 61-68 per cent. Needless to say, the ordering of all strata was consonant withthe hierarchy of socioeconomic status. The proportion of car ownerswas generally similar in all countries, perhaps with the exception of farmers, who had more cars in the Czech Republic(73.9 per cent) and in Slovakia (60 per cent). Incidentally, in both societies the percentage of car ownership was the highest in our sample. The Czech Republic was the only country in which more thanhalf of all families had their own car.

SAVINGS AND SHARES Differentiation of savings and share ownership (including stocks, bonds, andinvestment trust certificates) completesour picture ofeconomic stratification. Patterns of distribution of savings and valuable assets do not reflect only differentiation of material wealth. Incomes may be differently consumed depending on one’s willingness to secure and/or accumulate financial resources. Here, we move into the area of calculation of gains and losses: those who prosper need notinvest on the stock market-such decisions depend on life strategies, orientations, consumption habits, and personal predilections. Our task is to establish the extent to which differentiation in the ownership of savings and stocks across basic occupational strata will reveal what we expect to find-a social hierarchy in which owners and the intelligentsia remain at the top and unskilled manual workers are at the bottom. Financial markets in East Central European countries offer a vast range of opportunities. Bold investments in valuable assets may be consideredas indicative of adaptation to changesbroughtaboutby capitalist structures. Conversely,personswho restrict their financial strategies to keeping money in the bank may be condemned for traditionalism and backwardness. This is whateconomists refer to as the basic opposition between modern andtraditional attitudes. According to this argument, investment

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in shares tends to indicate individual initiative, an open attitude to the civilization of the service economy, and a readiness for risk taking. We have to follow the economists, yet without drawing final conclusions about the nature of the motives behindinvesting or saving. The purchase of shares does not mark out only market-oriented attitudes, whether innovation or individualism. True, the challenge inherent in the Warsaw Stock Exchange must stimulate such attitudes, but it does not automatically make them an unequivocalindicator of modernity. For example, in the first stage of capitalist revival, shares were distributed centrally, by virtue of the institutional rules prescribed by law and not on the initiative of stockholders. In Poland, employees in firms undergoing privatization automatically received 15 per cent of the shares by law: no interest was required on their part and their share ownership tells us nothing about their individual initiative. It would be no less of an oversimplification to put the blame for backwardnesson the owners of large bank accounts. Savingsdo not prevent depositors from investing their money in stocks, trusts, or bonds. We may usefully pause at this stage to say that, in light of our data, there was, in fact, almost no correlation between share ownership and bank savings, with the slight exception of Poland and Hungary. In Poland, the percentage of share owners among depositors exceeded the percentage of share owners who did not have savings-the former stood at 15 per cent, the latter at 4.5 per cent. Similarly, in Hungary depositors were more likely to own shares-the proportion of the latter increased from 3.7 per cent to 13.9 per cent. In the moreconcise terms of acoefficient of correlation, the relationship between owning shares and saving money in banks amounted to 0.17 in Poland and Hungary. By comparison, in Russia, where shareholders also tended to be depositors, the correlation was 0.1 1. In the CzechRepublicand Slovakia, it fell toanalmost insignificant value (0.05), close to Bulgaria at 0.01. The latter finding should not surprise us: one could hardly expect anything else in a country wherethe relative quantity of shareholders, broadly defined, did not exceed 1.1 per cent of all adults (see Table 18). In Bulgaria, there was practically no ‘social space’ for the differentiation of financial strategies of thiskind. The percentages of depositors are given in Table 17. They are clearly differentiated across socio-occupational strata. Itseems that savings formed some sort of axis of social division. Also in Table 17 are reported the percentages of persons who owned shares, which sheds some light on whether ownership of financial assets had stratified. We restrict

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our analysis to the distribution of those with savings and shares, although we would beable to draw moretelling conclusions if we knew a lot more about thesize of stockholdings and bank accounts. Needless to say, such data are not available: even if people were prepared to supply some information to a surveyits credibility would be very doubtful. Table 17. Ownershiy of savings (%) Socio-occupational categories

Bulgaria

Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

96.027.3 45.671.896.3 74.3 Higher professionals and managers 60.4 93.220.0 30.655.294.4 Semi-professionals 22.242.490.2 58.8 Routine nonmanual, sales and90.417.7 service workers 88.4 68.1 Owners with employees 42.4 90.1 Owners without employees 65.7 94.0 Lower-grade technicians 48.6 90.0 Skilled workers 45.6 85.5 Unskilled workers 45.5 87.4 Agricultural laborers 54.8 100.0 Farmers 52.5 90.3 Total 0.18 0.12 Correlation ratio (E)

69.1 50.0 55.2 40.2 31.9 37.2 44.1 43.6 0.23

39.8 26.3 18.6 14.0 12.8 7.4 9.2 20.2 0.26

43.7 31.9 23.2 17.7 14.8 23.2 46.2 20.7 0.14

88.1 91.4 90.2 88.0 84.4 88.4 100.0 89.5 0.12

Bank accounts, the more traditional sf the two forms of monetary allocation, differentiated socio-occupational strata slightly more in POland and Hungary. Between-category distances were more sharply exhibited in Poland, although, generally, intercountry differences were not large. This translated into a relatively higher value of the correlation ratio in Poland (0.26). The between-category variation could not be as high in the Czech Republic andSlovakia, simply becausethe percentage of depositors approached 90 per cent, with 100 per cent of farmers holding accounts. Russia once again appears to be a deviant case. As far as the rate of depositors is concerned,Russians are onaparwith Poles (20.2 per cent), but the same percentage in both countries seems to reflect different circumstances. The low ratio in Poland indicates rather a lower interest among Poles in saving as a form of allocation of money than a lack of financial means. The latter fact may well explain the Russian case, however. We have already learned about the low material standard

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of living in Russia, and we need look no further than the remarkably low incomes in thiscountry to find the key to understanding why only one in every five citizens had a bank deposit. The remaining 80 per cent simply do not possess disposable financial resources which could be put in a bank account. We must acknowledge that the correlation between occupational category and savings is less striking than that between incomes and possession of material goods. Savings ‘discriminated’ poorly between the intelligentsia, the working class, owners, and other socio-occupational strata. Classical indices of economic status did better, as evidenced in the lower correlation ratios in Table 17 as compared with those presented in Tables 14-1 6. When we come to examine the variation of savings across categories, we are not, therefore, surprised that it weakly conforms to the hierarchy of socioeconomic status. The ordering of the socio-occupational hierarchy with respect to percentage of owners of bank accounts shows a disparity with the classical stratification ladder. As far as the Czech Republic and Slovakia are concerned, it appears due to the minor differentiation between categories. In the remaining four countries, similarities are fragmentary and, practically speaking, show up only in the position at the top of larger owners, managers, and the intelligentsia; the placement at the bottom of unskilled manual workers; and the marked distances between consecutive social levels. In fact, only in Poland and Hungary does the percentage of depositors stratify the hierarchy of basic socioeconomic segments in a similar way to incomes and possession of household goods. In Polish society, the percentage was highest among managers and the intelligentsia, with 46 per cent of them havingbank accounts. They were followed by owners with employees, of whom 40 per cent kept money in banks. Next came nonmanual categories at the medium and lower levels, small businessmen, manual workers, and, finally, farmers, of whom no more than 10 per centput money in banks. The sequence is much the same in Hungary, although the high percentage of bank depositors among the intelligentsia, managerial cadres, and larger owners is more pronounced relative to the lower strata. It is apparent that in the four remaining countries percentages of depositors in particular categories exceed what one may predict from incomes and possession of material goods. Agricultural workers in Russia serve asa good example.Among them, saving money in banks was more popular than among routine clerks and manual workers outside

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agriculture, although both incomes and possession of household goods in agricultural households were relatively lower. In Russia, farmers also contributed to the decomposition ofhierarchies of savings and incomes. We can see that depositors were overrepresented among Russian farmers relative to mean incomes in this category. In Bulgaria, this was the case for skilled workers. Theseexamples lend support to the thesis that a predilection for keeping money in a bank does not depend only on financial resources but also reflects individual choices, strategies, even tastes. Having a bank account does not necessarily imply a higher economic position. Furthermore, what is at stake is not only individual financial means and preferences to save or not to save, but also institutional constraints. The psychology of wealth aside, the higher propensity to save money in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as compared with Poland or Russia, must result from its profitability. Insofar as government monetary policy is stable and inflation low, citizens can trust the banks, and bank accounts grow as a consequence. Table 18. Ownership of shares (%) Socio-occupational categories

Bulgaria

37.743.5 23.3man14.719.0 0.3 Higher professionals and agers Semi-professionals 1.5 Routine nonmanual, sales and 0.7 service workers Owners with employees 7.3 Owners without employees 2.3 Lower-grade technicians 0.0 Skilled workers 1.2 Unskilled workers 0.6 Agricultural laborers 1.1 Farmers 1.6 1.1 Total Correlation ratio (E) 0.11

Czech Hungary Poland Republic

Russia

Slovakia

11.0 9.1

12.6 5.3

41.2 39.2

31.9 28.8

7.1 21.7 7.8 15.1 16.1 14.0 6.8 1O.G 4.2 7.8 7.3 5.8 4.4 31.8 12.1 7.6 0.13 0.13 0.140.250.12

18.1 8.1 7.9 4.9 . 1.9 0.0 1.4 6.7

72.9 37.7 37.2 42.7 32.2 23.9 37.5 39.2

37.6 35.2 28.8 24.4 21.0 18.7 26.1 26.9

15.4 12.1

A glance at the proportions of shareholders among the various sociooccupational strata leads to similar conclusions (see Table 18). This aspect of differentiation tends to converge with the classical pattern of socioeconomic stratification even less than that of savings (we are still

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relying on the comparison ofpercentages in the respective categories). It is true that private entrepreneurs, the intelligentsia, and managers were represented among shareholders rather than semi-professionals, middleranking administrative staff, clerks, and sales assistants, while manual workers appeared to be least active on the stock market. However, the differences between the categories were not conspicuous overall. There were, instead, marked differences between countries in respect of the total percentage of persons who declared share ownership. However, one qualifLing remark is in order. It may well be that the differences reflect a different understanding of ‘stocks’, ‘bonds’, and ‘shares’. I suspect that, in Russia, where the percentage of share owners wasaccording to our survey data-surprisingly the highest, respondents reported asvaluable assets any ‘papers’ which certified some kind of ownership. Slovakia was the second country marked by a high percentage of share owners: this figure might include property restitution coupons. In Slovakia, government action related to restitution intensified in the 1990s.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSION Having outlined the basic barriers to social mobility and patterns of economic stratification, wemay make some preliminary generalizations. First, social stratification in postcommunist countries still contains traces of the common economic and political past peculiar to East Central Europe. Nevertheless, the peculiarities tend to be counterbalanced by certain generic developmental features characteristic of all postindustrial societies. Secolid, our findings also suggest that the differences in the configuration of social distances between East Central European societies were overpowered by the similarities. What made East Central European patterns especially unique was the high economic position of owners of larger firms. They received the highest incomes compared tothe other basic occupational strata and were better off in respect of the possession of resources which determined material standard of living. This differs from the advanced industrialized countries where the ‘old middle classes’-that is, the representatives of small business who correspond to ‘our’ owners-find themselves in the middle of the stratification ladder and not at the top. Only in Poland and Hungary did the family incomes of larger owners (that is,

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those with employees), fall below the incomes of the intelligentsia and managerialcadres. In Bulgaria, theCzech Republic, Slovakia, andparticularly-Russia, the East Central European old middle classes were still the most economicallyprivileged categories. Does this mean that Hungary and Poland were in the vanguard as far as the adaptation of their economic hierarchies to the stratification typical of developed capitalism is concerned? The cross-national variation in these patterns in East Central Europe appears to constitute evidence of the uneven paceof marketization. I shall now proceed to address the question of whether the conclusions I have reached as regards social mobility and economic stratification might require revision if a more comprehensive view of social stratification in postcommunist societies were taken.

CHAPTER 5

THE ‘OWNERS’ DEBATE: NOMENKLATURA OR SELFRECRUITMENT?

THE RECRUITMENT of owners requires careful investigation. We have already shown that, in the first half of the 1990s, businesspeople were economically the most privileged strata of all basic socio-occupational categories. In Chapters 2 and 3, we traced their inter- and intragenerational trajectories and levels of self-recruitment at the end of the 1980s. We shall now examine the determinants of access to business at the beginning of the 1990s, attempting to gain some insight into the mechanisms of recruitment. We shall also take into account another path leading to engagement in business activities which was hotly debated in publicdiscussionsinthe 1990s. The central concern of my study is straightforward: nomenklatura or inheritance of property? We shall attempt to determine which of these two channels of mobility appeared the more probable entrance path to business in the first years of emerging capitalism in East Central Europe. For their part, the nomenklatura were endowed with specialized qualifications, experience of running state-owned socialist enterprises, and political capital. They made use of these assets by moving into business-this is the claim advanced by proponents of the transfer thesis. We also have a traditional entry-gate-continuity in these positions. In this case, assets consist in ownership of a firm at the beginning of an occupational career, inheritance of the family business, or long traditions of ownership. Undoubtedly, these are considerable assets. But which of these attributes was more important, which less, and in what proportions?

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WHY NOMENKLATURA? The debate is a strictly historical one, strongly embedded in the changes in the political system and informed by political struggles in the region. The political breakwas directly related to the circulation of elites. Above all, however, weare dealing with ownership of firms and so-in the common view-with lucrative positions in statu nascendi. The debate revolvedaroundsuch issues as whether it was fair that former communist cadres were able to reap the financial benefits of their position. They ruled in the name of the Communist Party, and all of them contributed to the maintenanceofcommunist rule. Such discussions created a climate ofdisenchantment,alongwith expectations which were expressed in termsof selective norms: who can and who shouldbe inhibited fromrunninga profitable activity which brings economic benefits and opensthe door to wealth. Arguments of this kind appearedprimarily in the political campaigns in the newlyemergingdemocraciesof East Central Europe.Fervent emotions were stirred up by the mass media and the public pronouncements of political leaders. They alerted public opinion to the fact that the managers of state enterprises from the moribund communist period were taking advantage of their political assets and moving into the private sector. It has to be admitted that such claims were, in large part, true. Some of them were based on real, although fragmentary, observations, not unusual in popular sociology. The representatives of the opposite side countered and appealed for moderation. All in all, the controversy over the nomenklaturabecamea battle betweencontending political factions and also amongst those contesting the overall assessment of therecent past. While the contested terrain of political options may be abandoned in sociological analysis, one cannot ignore the issue of recruitment to the newly emerging class. The sociological significance of this question lies also in the fact that it attracts widespread attention, which itself gives rise to a dynamic in social relationships: contested issues give impetus to potential mass action. The problem was not only political per se. It may also be refined in such a wayas to disentangle what lies behind the alarming thesis about the inflow of former nomenklatura tothe private sector. For our present purposes, we shall refer to former contributions on this issue made by authors of theories on social dynamics in postcommunist Europe-these theoretical debates were always set against the

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backdrop of public discussions. Let us systematically consider the potential sources of the transformation of the socialist nomenklatura into private entrepreneurs. Exponents ofthe first position emphasize what theycall a conversion of political capital into economic capital. This theory holds that the prerogatives of organizational power were exchanged for the property of firms. Members of the nomenklatura have metamorphosed into capitalists due to the fact that their positional power has allowed them to appropriate productive assets and because the social networks in which they were involved have provided them with advantages in emerging markets. These arguments were illustrated by privatization in Hungary and Poland. Accordingtothis argumentation, practically speaking, if during the disintegration of communism somebody took advantage of his leading position in bureaucratic structures, no obstacles prevented himfrom establishing his own business (Hankiss, 1991; Staniszkis, 1991; Szalai, 1994; Szelknyi and Szelknyi, 1995). Political capital lost its importance irrevocably-as the authors cited above claim-but managers appointed by virtue of nomenklatura rules kept their influence over the operation of enterprises. For example, if their firms entered on the path of privatization, they were able to predetermine decisions concerning type of privatization, who was to buy the firm, and at what price. The loopholes in the privatization of state firms allowed cadres to purchase shares at incredibly low prices and to transfer assets of state firms into privately owned companies. Following this scenario, the former manager became an owner.He could also make use of acquired economic capital in another way-for example, he could buy stock in other privatized enterprises. According to other adherents of the thesis about the conversion of political into economic capital, these mechanisms were established as early as the 1970s. Acute observers of political life in Poland assert that it wasduringthis period that state officials and party functionaries started to set up shops and small manufactures not on their own behalf but on that of relatives and friends. The communist party elite resigned from political rule, but took care to substitute its political with economic power (Tarkowski, 1983). The second mechanism involved in the conversion of the nomenklatura involved reliance on the transfer of the capital of knowledge and qualifications. In order to run a firm one needs skills of universal utility as applicable in various sectors of the economy. Technical competence derived from the management of state-owned enterprises might be easily

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transferred totheoperationof private businesses. Young communist technocrats attended educational institutions where they received a solid training in engineering, economics, or administration. Added to experience gained in managing enterprises, all these assets facilitated the deown. Certainly, the capital of knowledge cision to start out on one’s strengthened the power of economic capital and the various strategies for entering businessalready mentioned. There might have been a third mechanism of exchange of ‘capital’ at stake, which I would describe as the circulation of ownership and cultural capital. Those who made up the managerial cadres in socialist enterprises belonged to the intelligentsia. They were endowed not only with management and organizational abilities, but also with general knowledge and social capital which helped them to orientate themselves well in the complicated world of social life. It is well known that the cultural capital of the intelligentsia provides them with a great allocative power as regards the highest and most profitable positions. Empirical data coming from many countries, including Poland, confirm this regularity. Both cultural and social capital derive from a ‘good’ family background, college education, connections with influential people, and, i n relation to one’s occupation, from experience with a worldof symbols which is conducive to openness, elasticity of thinking, and a broad cognitive perspective (Bourdieu, 1986; Di Maggio and Mohr, 1985; De Graaf, 1989). Slomczyliski and Shabad (1997) showed that in Poland contacts with the West prior to 1988 gave people a significant advantage in gaining eritrance to the private entrepreneurial class in 1993, after controlling for several important variables, such as education and gender. Notunexpectedly,the cultural capital of nomenklatura members might come to be an asset in their endeavors to acquire an optimal strategy of conversion. For example, in going into partnership with a foreign company,the‘converted owner’ was able to take advantage-not always but sometimes-of the opportunity to renew or transfer international connections which he had established during his management of thesocialistenterprise. By activating social networks formed in the course of years of administrative activity, former cadres were able to acquire valuable information on emergent markets as well as the credit necessary to run their own businesses. According to Stark, who had already, in the early 1980s,carried out research on informal patronage ties and protective networks in socialist enterprises in Hungary, these networks persisted in the 1990s. They were organized by the former managerial cadres, and nowadays the old, informal ties reside in privatized-

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formally at least-structures. He claimed that a reintegration of the old elite of state managers had occurred, rendering it an elite of private business operators (Stark, 1992). I have referred only to some of the hypothetical explanations concerning the mechanismsof transition from the nomenklatura to business. Proponents of this thesis-that the ‘old middle class’ in East Central Europe has its roots in former communist cadres-used to refer to ‘the mass transitions which exceed the ‘norm’. We shall determine whether this norm has been really exceeded, surveying the relationship between holding high managerial positions in 1988, just before the collapse of the communist regime, and membership in the category of owners in the 1990s. I will try to establish the relative proportion of former nomenklatura members among ownersof firms after someyears of systemic transformation-that is, in 1993, our ‘destination’ point. In order to assess the relative strength of the ‘nomenklatura effect’, one needs some reference points. How much more effective, then, was the ‘nomenklatura route’ as compared, for example, to the effect of education in getting into the category of owners? In the case of education, the most valuable asset is a diploma from an institution of higher education. It would be interesting to know whether the higher educational qualifications proved more critical in access to the ownership of firms, relative to secondary schools, basic vocational schools,or graduation fromthe lowest, elementary level. Bearing in mind that educational channels allocate individuals on the labor market and determine occupational status, we must determine whether educational level opened, orperhaps closed, the entry-gates to business. Self-recruitment will be ournext reference point. We ask, first, whether people running a business in the 1990s had done so previously-in 1988? This allows us to see to what extent owning firms underdifferent sociopolitical and economic circumstances increased the likelihood of ownershipafter systemic upheaval. Certainly, this is only one aspect of the transfer of property over time. We expect that, apart from the transfers going on in the medium term, dated to 1988, continuity of ownership over a longer period of time also reshaped. patterns of structuration in this area of social space. This involves the reproduction of ownership from a remote past and a return to property owned by parents and grandparents after a break of several decades Some telling examples are appropriate. There is a well-known confectionery firm, Blikle, in Warsaw, which was founded in 1851. At the

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beginning of the 1990s, Blikle was taken over fromthe state by a son of the last owner, after a break of several decades. Blikle had been nationalized in the aftermath of the Second World War and reprivatized in 1989. The successor was a physicist who gave up his scientific career for the sake of re-establishing the continuity of the famous family firm. Poland also witnessed the revival of the prestigious publishing firm of Gebethner and Wolff which, in the 1990s, made remarkably swift progress. Similarly, the Orgelbrand publishing house has beenresuscitated as a private firm. Such comebacks have happened always and everywhere, but a return to business after the fall ofthecommunistsystem in East Central Europe seems spectacular. An example of intergenerational succession in politics is J6zsef Antall, the first prime minister of the Hungarian government after the anticommunist opposition came to power. His father had been a deputy minister in the prewar cabinet of Admiral Horthy, and his chief adviser was a nephew of Istvan Bethlen, the prime minister of a conservative government in the 192Os, who died during the war in a Soviet prison. SzelCnyi calls such returns to one’s father’s or grandfather’s position the ‘circulation of elites’. In this context, elites are composed of inheritors of family assets which were lost after the coming to power of the communists.The inheritors becameaneconomic ‘elite’ after having their property returned after the collapse of the communist regime. They are new among owners with respect to their occupational career but deeply rooted in private business by virtue of family background (Szelknyi and SzelCnyi, 1995). Predictions related to the circulation of elites maybe empirically tested since we havethe reports of respondents in each country totell us whether their grandparents owned firms. We rely on grandfather’s occupational status as particularly relevant in assessing the effect of circulation because-according to SzelCnyi-circulation covered newcomers to business in the 1990swho derived their roots from businesses founded in the precommunist period. The occupational activity of the grandparents of our respondents fell within this time frame (the youngest of our respondents were in their twenties in the 1990s). Apart from coming backto business, ownership of firms in the 1990s might owe much to continuity in these positions. This concerns both continuity of fathers’ positions andan uninterrupted career of one’s own. To obtain a more detailed understanding of transmission of property throughout the life cycle, we examined whether operating a firm at

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some point of theoccupational career increased the likelihood of ownership in the 1990s. It seems that long-lasting inclusion in this category tends to strengthen links with business. One may anticipate that everyone who started off his occupational career in business owned one in 1988, and-additionally-had taken it over from his grandfather or father, so giving him a better opportunity to stay on than to move on. We shall now address the problem of how the 'path through business' compared withthe transmission of former nomenklaturaassets.

SELF-RECRUITMENT RATHER THAN NOMENKLATURA MEMBERSHIP OFFERED GREATER OPPORTUNITIES The data presented in Table 19 directly address these questions. The table gives the metric coefficients in logit regression with the dependent variable-membership of the category of owners in 1993-coded 1 for owners and 0 otherwise. The positive values in the first row show the extent to which nomenklatura membershipin 1988 increased the logit of being an owner in 1993 as compared to individuals outside nomenklatura circles. In fact, metric coefficients indicate the relative odds of access to business. The nomenklatura includes: the highest functionaries, state and communist party officials, leaders of trade unions and youth organizations, butpredominantly the highest management of stateowned enterprises and administrative offices, chiefly managers. Table 19. Logistic regression anallaisof being an ownerin 1993. Efsects of membership of nomenklatura in 1988, ownership offinn in 1988, yearsof schooling, andsexa Effects of

Czech Bulgaria Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

Membership in nomenklatura in 0.90** 0.67** 0.62 1988 (1=member) Owner in 1988 (1=owner) 8.44** 9.64 0.12** 0.05* Years of schooling 0.02 0.73"" Sex (1 =men)

0.65* 4.56** 4.93** 0.08** 0.06 0.36 0.77

1.20** 0.59 7.19** 5.08** 0.14** 0.08 1.35** 0.98

** p
Net metric coefficients with age and size of place of residence controlled for.

The odds-ratios for nomenklatura refer to one aspect of the problem. It evidently shows that, in each country, former nomenklatura members

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were more likely to enter business than the rank and file. Let us turn to the effects of self-recruitment. The coefficients in the second row inform us of therelative chances of maintaining ownership of afirm in 1993 for those who had been running a business in 1988. The values in the third row indicate the effects of education on membership of the category of owners in 1993. Strictly speaking, the latter indicate the increasing probability of being an owner with more years of schooling-coded from 0 to 17-1 8 years-although there were some individuals whose educational career exceeded 20 years. Finally, gender. Usually men hold higher positions. One can see from the last row how many times they exceeded women in getting into business. Table 19 presents net effects, while also controlling for the effects of age and size of place of residence (not given in the table). Effects of the latter should not be neglected. Managerial positions are strongly related to age since people tend to move to the top after several years’ experience. At the same time, supervisory positions are built into large organizational structures which are placed in large cities and agglomerations. One has moreopportunities for promotion in larger firms. Undoubtedly, the relative odds of being an owner werehigher among former nomenklatura members than for representatives of other categories. The logged odds for a manager of a state-owned company or for a high party official in 1988 stood at 0.60 at the last. This translated into a net advantage in conversion into an owner, more or less to the same extent, in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, after leveling out education, age, sex, and size of residential area. This net asset was even higher in Russia, where nomenklatura members outnumbered outsiders by 1.2 in terms of loggedodds, and in Bulgaria (0.9). It is apparent that appointments based on the nomenklatura system heavily influenced access to the category of owners in 1993, serving as a kind of transmission belt. Bear in mind the substantial strength of this relationship, which was exhibited in all six countries. This is a path of recruitment which cannot be overlooked, and which supports the hypotheses put forward by Hankiss, Staniszkis, and other theorists, who have elaborated on howthe move from institutional structures in politics and the economy to private business have affected the systemic transformation in East Central Europe. To say that the conversion of communist cadres has strongly patterned the ‘old middle class’ in postcommunist societies sounds provocative, but it is indeed the case. A different answer may be given if we look at this in a wider perspective. We have to take into account also

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other channels of recruitment into business. Thereafter, the role of the transfer from the nomenklatura to the newly created class will be assessed on more solid grounds. One has to recognize who were proprietors in terms of education, place of residence, and so on, and where they came from. We can discover this by comparing the relative weights of coming from the nomenklatura and of self-recruitment, years of schooling, sex, age, and size of,place of residence. In light of our analysis, it is clear that self-recruitment weighed most heavily in all countries. Owning a firm in 1988 increased the logged odds of staying in business until 1993 by a considerable magnitude. The odds for Hungary stood at 1:4.56 for 1988 owners as compared with non-owners. In Poland and Slovakia, this rate was five times as high, in Russia more than seventimes as high, while Czechs andBulgarians who ran a business in 1988 tended to hold on to these positions even more frequently: eight to nine times more than non-owners (in the case of the Czech Republic, we must interpret this with caution since the category of ownerswas underrepresented in size and the parameter for selfrecruitment is statistically insignificant). In Table A2 in the Appendix, I report standardized parameters of regression which compare the relative weights of specific effects. They bear out the decisive role of selfrecruitment, but in the Czech case already mentioned we find a statistically insignificant value for the ownership of a firm in 1988. What therefore clearly emerges is that the path of self-recruitment imprinted on the formation of the emerging business class more strongly than the inflow from nomenklatura positions. Persons running a business five years earlier were overrepresented in the category of proprietors in 1993. Insofar as they numerically predominated,they also helped shape the social composition of owners. The ‘path through business’ afforded greater advantages, proving effective in termsof relative chances. Onceformerownersoutnumberedformercommunist cadres they contributed more with respect to the traditional mentality typical of the ‘old middle classes’. Prima facie, there would seem little reason to expect owners’ orientations to be contaminated by any bureaucratic personality traits derived from party organizations and state-owned enterprises. Neither left-wing political sympathies nornostalgia for the recent past, allegedly inscribed in the hearts of the cadres, constitute a serious threat to the spirit of capitalism. Turning to the effects of education, we may also say that educational channels pushed people more effectively towards business than possession of nomenklatura assets. Educational careers appeared more impor-

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tant in Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, and Slovakia, as shown in Table A2 in the Appendix. If we turn to Table 19 again, we can see that passing from one educational level to another increased the net likelihood of owning a firm in 1993 by 8-14 ‘points’ in the four countries cited. Education is measured in terms of years of schooling. It is advisable to put the logged metric in substantive terms: for example, 5 years-which translates into the distance between graduates of secondary school and university-provided the latter with a net advantage of 60 ‘points’ in relation to self-employment in Bulgaria (5 years times 12 points). The net increment for university graduates ascomparedto ‘graduates’ of elementary schools stood at 120 points (if we assume that the distance between primary school and university translates into 10 years). In the Czech Republic andPoland, the prerogatives of nomenklatura positions weighed more heavily than education. In Poland, former cadres tend to be overrepresented among owners with a logged likelihood amounting to 0.65-in the Czech Republic this stood at 0.67. We may conclude that nomenklatura assets were twice as important as, for example, having a university diploma as compared to a secondary-school diploma-one can see fromTable 19 that in Poland, eachyearof schooling was associated with a 6-point increment, and in the Czech Republic with a 5-point increment in terms of one’s chances of going into business. As far as relative chances are concerned, coming from the upper levels of communist cadres turned out to be more profitable than attending university-provided that one made a priority of running a business. This strong conclusion is justified in the light of our data. By the way, individuals who were promoted toelite positions also tended to receive higher educational degrees. Onecould hardly separate higher education and holdinghigher managerial posts in this respect. Overall, therefore, it might be said that an inflow fromthe nomenklatura did not constitute the predominant route, but was only dneof many. Many channels led people into the category of owners between 1988 and 1993. Self-recruitment fairly outstripped the ‘nomenklatura effect’. Reverting to TableA2 once again, it may also be observed that sex, age, and size of place of residence outstripped the role of the ‘nomenklatura springboard’. In some countries, sex and age more strongly differentiated access to business than education. In the Czech Republic, the latter even outweighed the self-recruitment path. I am referring to, standardized coefficients from Table A2 in the Appendix, and what I say about relative importance, weight, rank, and so on relates to standardized Values.

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As far as genderis concerned, it is certainly the case that men have a greater likelihood of becoming owners than women. Being a man in Russia was astrong asset in getting into business-1.35 times relative to women. In Poland, Russia, and Slovakia sex was downplayed by selfrecruitment but exceeded the effect of nomenklatura membership, education, and place of residence (see Table A2). We must refer to the startling case of Bulgaria where sex did not differentiate access to business. This departure from the general pattern cannot really be explained. Hungary, in turn, was placed somewhere in between-men were overrepresented amongowners,althoughgenderwas less influential than educational level and self-recruitment. Nevertheless, gendermattered more, once again, than belonging to the nomenklatura. Moving on to age, we can see that in the Czech Republic it affected ownership of firms in 1993more strongly thanany other variable, alongside gender. Age was second in Bulgaria (after self-recruitment), in Russia third (after self-recruitment and gender), and in Poland it took fourth place, where it gave way also to size of place of residence. Lastly, in Slovakia, age did not correlate with ownership at all. Note that in each of our six countries, relatively younger persons tend to predominate in business. Persons born later tend to become owners more frequently. Finally, place of residence. Owners tend to concentrate in larger cities, rarely in smaller communities and in the provinces. This effect proved significant in Slovakia and Poland, although in Bulgaria and Hungary itdid not occur at all.

T R A N S M I S S I O N OF PROPERTY OVER TIME The schematic nature of the foregoing presentation' admittedly somewhat exaggerates the role of demographicfactors such as gender and age in respect of going into business, to the detriment of such classical attributes of socioeconomic status as-in our case-social class, supervisory position, and education. Entry to business depends on many factors, nevertheless 'even the relatively stronger effects of gender and age in the Czech Republic donot imply that having started one's career as a business owner was less decisive for having one's own firm in 1993 than ascription based on demographic divisions. We have so far analyzed only one link of property transmission over time-that going back to 1988. Self-recruitment was limited to those ownerswhohadbeen

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such in both 1988 and 1993. Obviously, from the standpoint of the life course, self-recruitment relates far more tothe past. To develop a sound understanding of self-recruitment, we must take into account more ‘class events’ concerningownership.They include having a firm at the beginning of one’s occupational career, as well as having a father or paternal grandfather who also owned a business. In Table A3, I report standardized logit coefficients which compare first job with therelative importance ofsex, age, education, size of place of residence, and social origin. The parameters for social origin are not displayed in the table, but they were controlled for. We are able to confirm the supposition that possessing a firm on entry to the labor market played a crucial role. In each of our six countries, ownership in 1993 derived much less from age, sex, and place of residence. This suggests that social class counted for more than demographic factors. Nonetheless, the port of entry into the labor market still constitutes only one link in the long chain oflife events. The syndrome of social class shows up more decisively if we add the effects of family background. Bear in mind that, in the model presented in Table A3, we took into account both father’s and grandfather’s position, which correlated strongly with first job. The parameters showing the net effect of starting off in business underestimate, in a sense, its overall effect. Before seeking to elaborate hrther on the role of family background, the possibility must be recognized that the magnitude of the transfer of ownership from the first job onwards might change over time. It might well be that the transfer, restricted to 1988-93, was not so intensive as before, because at the end of the 1980s business saw a massive influx of newcomers from different directions. Against the background of such circumstances, the continuity of a career in a business, along with the continuity of family tradition, might get obliterated. Mobility barriers which separate owners in stratification space wouldbecome hzzy and some other determinants of entry come to the fore-in a sense, spuriously. Let us test this possibility. To treat cross-time change in the strength of self-recruitment in business, 1 compared the effect which being an owner at the start of one’s employment career had on owning a firm in 1993, and the same effect for the immediately preceding period, that is, for 1988. It turned out that this relationship holds more strongly for the earlier period of time, just before the systemic breakthrough. In Table A4 in theAppendix, I report standardized coefficients in the same model of logit regression as in Table A3, with the dependent variable coded 1 for owners in 1988 (and 0 otherwise). In each country (except

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Russia), transfer of ownership from the first job to 1988 proved substantively higher than in the longer period of time, including years of political rupture, from 1988 to 1993. Since both models are identical in terms of explanatoryvariables, we found clear indications that work-life stability in business weakened in the 1990s. It is not implausible, then, that the lower 'retentiveness' of the class of owners in the 1990s results from the increasing inflow to this category, paralleled by the growing role of alternative routes of entry. After 1989, all formal restrictions on establishing a firm and running a business were eliminated. At the same time, economic prosperity provided high profits which encouraged entry to this area of economic activity. For persons working in state-owned firms, self-employment became a second job. The latter category, which I would call 'semi-owners', did not make up asizeable portion of the whole population, but it was not so small relative to 'full owners', accounting for 1.5 per cent of the working population in Bulgaria, 1.2 per cent in the Czech Republic, 2.3 per cent in Poland and Russia, 1 per cent in Slovakia, and 3.1 per cent in Hungary. A weaker propensity to stay in business in the 1990s owes much to going bankrupt-capitalism was maturing after the first few years of unleashing a boom. Notsurprisingly, continuity of career in the private sector had to decline. following in It is inevitably easier to set out on one's own while one's father's footsteps. Let us see whether membership in the category of owners in 1993 depended on family background.We may pursue this point with the help of a model in which the effects of having a father and grandfather in the 'owners' category were included. In Table 20, I present coefficients of logit regressions for fathers and grandfathers which show that, in most countries, the intergenerational transmission of property really took place. As we can see, owners who had fathers and grandfathers in business were more likely to be in business in 1993. Table 20. Logistic regression analysis of behg an owner in 1993. Efects qf father's futher's urd father's ownership offirma Effects of: Father's father (1 =owner) Father ( I =owner)

Slovakia Russia Polaild Hungary Bulgaria 0.06 1.36""

Czech Republic 0.26 0.49

0.35 1.04""

0.47 2.00""

0 ,'9*

0.86"" ~~~

~~~~

~

~~

** p
Net metric coefficients with age and size of place of residence controlled for.

~

~

0.47 0.70 ~~~~~~

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In Poland, we find a twofold reinforcement from the remote past. The likelihood of being an owner in 1993 was substantially greater for persons whose grandfather, not only their father, had run a business. As regards taking over from one’s father, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia the roots of family tradition proved relatively weak. Thisis not the first respect in which the mechanisms of social stratification in these countries have tended to resemble oneanother. In Bulgaria, Hungary, and Russia, inheritance of a business was not so rooted in the past as in thePolish case. Ownership of a firm by one’s grandfather did not significantly increase the likelihood of beingan owner in 1993. It has not been a net asset there, that is, over and above the effect of taking overthe firm from one’s father. Instead, the transfer of property from one’s father appeared, in these three countries, significant. It took place with even greater intensity than in Poland, with a marked prominence in Russia, where having a father who had runa firm resulted in a more than twofold increase in the chances of being an owner in 1993 (in terms of logit coefficients) as compared to persons without this kind of ancestry. To put it another way: persons associated with business through their father are represented among proprietors twice as frequently as those devoid offamily business connections. We are now in a position to present a number of conclusions. One implication of these findings to be emphasized concerns Poland. Private ownership in Poland seems to be most strongly rooted in remote family ties. Having a grandfather in a business increased the likelihood of running a firm in 1994, regardless of years of schooling, sex, age, size of place of residence, starting off employment in a business, or taking over a firm from one’s father. Against the background of the five other countries, the Polish case was exceptional. Whatseemsastounding is the long-lasting effect of an origin in business, whether it be the result of transmission of economic capital, inbred ability, or perhaps favorable family tradition. We are left with Szelknyi’s thesis about the circulation of elites. Can we find evidence that the 1990s saw a significant return to the family ownership of firms? This result might be taken as lending some support to the view that intergenerational transfer of property underpinnedamong other factors-the recovery of a private business in postcommunist societies. Szelhyi identified ‘circulation’ in East Central Europe as being the signum temporis of the transformation. It seems that we must answer our question negatively. The owners who entered business only in the 1990s, and had never before owned a

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firm but were rooted in business by virtue of having a grandfather who had been involved in this activity-I defined the ‘effect of circulation’ in this way-did not prove to be overrepresented among proprietors. Nothing indicates that returns to business after atwo-generationgap constituted an important path of entry into the category of owners in the 1990s as compared to other paths, including self-recruitment, allocation by nomenklatura positions, educational career, and a number of others. Nonetheless, a return to a family business in East Central Europe might occur in a narrower sense, as a process restricted to the circulation of the business elite. In fact, Szelknyi based his thesis on this narrower sense. Regrettably, I cannot test this variant of Szelknyi’s position using survey data since elites are underrepresented (by definition) in national random samples.

CONCLUSION: THE PECULIAR RUSSIAN CASE In the first half of the 1990s, former nomenklatura appointments appeared to be the most important assets in Russia. But also in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia the former communist cadres proved successful in going into private business. However, our comparisons show that in this first stage of systemic transformation in East Central Europe, recruitment to business from the former nomenklatura was only one of a number of alternative routes, and turned out to be less effective than self-recruitment. In the conflicting debates on movements from the nomenklatura to the category of owners,the idea of conversionof political into economic assets was frequently raised. In light of our analysis, this idea cannot be dismissed. We attempted to extract the ‘net’ effect ofnomenklatura positions. In particular, we controlled for the education of communist cadres, with the apparent result that one cannot explain their inflow to business in terms of higher educational achievement and its correlates. This relates particularly to cultural capital, which is closely linked to level of education. We also controlled for sex, age, size of place of residence, and social origin, and the influx from the nomenklatura cannotbe attributed to their effects. Certainly, the ‘net’ effect of coming from the nomenklatura did not derive from political capital alone. Themuchweaker,and cautious, position must be that the links between nomenklatura appointments in the 1980s and ownership of firms in the 1990s that are displayed in all

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six countries are a reflection of a wide range of assets which, in unknown proportions, channeledmembership into private business. We could not trace the direct effects of political capital, although our comparisons may lend some support to the thesis that its conversion into property did occur. Let us recall that this did not occur in all countries. It proved mosteffective in Russia, followed by Bulgaria. In both countries, one could benefit greatly from the prerogatives connected with holdingthe highest positions, more so than in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. In conclusion, I will refer to two opinions expressed in interviews given by men directly engaged in economic reformin Russia. Both were made in the context of a discussion of the interests connecting former communist nomenklatura withthe private sector, as well as with the impact of this whole complex on the success of social reforms in Russia. Igor Gajdar was asked: “In the opinion of many economists, including Jawlinski, your reforms, especially those focusing on systemic change, aimed at the privatization of the nomenklatura. Did you do this onpurpose or did it constitute someunplannedby-productof the changes?” He replied: “We had no possibility in Russia to take away firms controlled and managed by our nomenklatura. Theoretically, one might have tried, but only by means of a revolution.. .I am convinced that what in fact occurred, the ‘buying out’ of power with property, was unavoidable.” Finally, a comment concerning Poland: “Later on, after the Round-Table, it seemed that power had been taken over without compensation, but it appeared that the opposite was the case, and not onlyinPoland.Onecannotsimplyremovewhole social strata” (Raczynski, 1995a, 19). The diagnosis of Grigorij Jawilinski-author of the so-called 500days program-which elaborates on the interplay between the mafia, commercial circles and political rulers, supports Gajdar’s position: “It all began from the fact that we implemented our reforms in the wrong way, that we privatized our nomenklatura” (Raczynski, 1995b, 11).

CHAPTER 6

INCOME DISTRIBUTION

HAVINGscrutinized the conversion of members of the nomenklatura into owners, we shall now consider less geographically bounded areas of social stratification. Rules of incomedistribution are more influenced by the generic logic of postindustrialism, and we shall seek crossnational similarities in the determination of incomes by educational attainment, occupational category, and other key determinants of socioeconomic status. Notwithstanding the similarities, empirical studies on socioeconomic attainment also provide ample evidence for believing that mechanisms of income distribution reflect the peculiar characteristics of a given political andeconomicsystem(DomanskiandHeyns, 1995; Neeand Matthews, 1996; Kolankiewicz, 1996; Szelknyi and Kostello, 1996). Despite the pervasiveness of central planning, the communist administration was less rigid as far as income regulation wasconcerned in Hungary and Poland than in Russia. This gives rise to far from negligible problems. In what follows, we shall address the following question: Which of the postcommunist societies most closely approached-in the mid 1990s-the distributive rules of the market economy? Although our concern is rather narrowly focused onthe determinants of income, these can be linked to changes in work organization, national variants in labor-market segmentation, the intensity of industrial conflicts in various countries, and how state policy sets the context for market transitions. Insofar as the bases of thistransition lie in the experience of a shared past, we shall pay particular attention to the remnants of institutional structures originating under communist rule. This heritage persists by virtue of tradition and continuity. The institutional underpinnings of social stratification in a cross-national perspective has only recently been

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subjected to systematic research. All these studies focusedon the mechanisms reshaping the employment structure: the role of the welfare state, education, and industrial relations were especially emphasized. Comparative analyses attempted to uncover both convergent and divergent national trajectories (see Esping-Andersen, 1990, 26). Typical of the communist state was distribution carried out indirectly-from central ministerial bodies through sectoral and industrial divisions down to firms at the lowest level. We ask whether these vestiges of the recent past were still operative in the 1990s. This is the first set of distributive rules which we shall be seeking. The second concerns so-called universals. In Poland, as well as in Russia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, level of income depends on family background, sex, number of years in the labor force, and so on. These associations are inherent in mechanisms of incomedistribution in all contemporary societies andshould not reveal system-specific features. Our concern is thus to see how these sociological constants compare with the institutional context already referred to. One further question is directly suggested. We shall attempt to obtain some understanding of the impact of meritocracy. In anticipation of a common future, we shall try to detect some signs of meritocratic distribution in the strength of the association between incomes and numberof years of schooling, occupational status, and supervisory position. They are built into the functioning of the capitalist labor market and, for this reason, serve as a good reference point.

E F F E C T S OF GENDER AND SOCIAL ORIGIN Some preliminary clarification is in order. Generally speaking, all sociological relationships which have so far been empirically described may be called universal, since we are unable to discern radical differences across countries in correlations between, say, education, occupational position, or labor-force experience. However, some of these relationships are more uniform than others and they may be regarded as indicative of inherently similar mechanisms. Arbitrarily, we shall reserve the term ‘universal’ for the effects of family background, sex, labor force experience, and size of place of residence. But do they really differentiate incomes in a similar way? The analysis of this question will be a good starting point in our search for the more particular features of distributive systems.

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Let us consider each one in turn. As regards family background, most previous findings have shown that a higher socioeconomic status on the part of parents brings about higher incomes for children. Evidently, this is not a directlink. The influence of family social status on earnings is mediated through successive ‘events’ in the intergenerationaltransferofvariousformsofeconomic,cultural,andsocial capital, related to economic resources, parental aspirations for their so on.Family children’seducation,occupationalattainments,and backgroundistransferredtoeducationaloutcomes,thentooccupational status and position in the labor market, and finally to level of income.Thegrosscorrelationbetweenindividualincomesandall characteristics of family background stands at 0.20-0.30 in societies as different from one another as the USA, Poland, Japan, and Germany. These results bespeak the universal importance of family backgroundindifferentiationofeconomicstatus(SewellandHauser, 1975; Jencks et al., 1978;Roos, 1985). Similarly, the gender gapin incomes is shaped in much the same way in different countries. The advantage of men is clear and extraordinarily stable. As in most societies, their incomes are higher than those of 1981; Madden, women by 35-40 per cent (TreimanandHartmann, 1988; Domanski, 1992). Moreover, the cross-country uniform pattern shows up also in a ‘net gender gap’. If we control for differences in education, occupational status, the higher supervisory positions of men, and a number of other characteristics related to gender, men still earn more. Forexample, in Polandthis hypothetical net difference amountedto USD 17 monthly in 1991, with average pay of USD 83 in the whole population (Domanski, 1992). Results showing the net effect of gender onincome differentiation-referred to by many authors as clear evidence of discrimination (Reskin, 1991; Marini, 1989)replicate in all countries where such analyses have been carried out. It seems that the effects of experience in the labor force and size of place of residence donotfollow different patterns in East Central Europe either. Incomes tend to grow with longer experience of work everywhere,because longer experience is believed toconnote higher occupational qualifications, which usually accumulateduring one’s working life. For employers, a longer time in work indicates a higher market value whichdeserves the appropriate reward. As regards place of residence, one may predict that socialism was unable to eliminate the general regularity that it is easier to find a betterpaid job in large rather than small cities.

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Variables were coded according to f a i l i a r conventions. Sex and private sector (versus state) were coded as dummy variables with males, and those in the private sector scoring 1. Experience represents the number of years in the labor force, and hours of work refers to the number of hours worked in full- and part-time jobs (or business) over the previous week. Industrial sectors were measured as dummy variables representing the ten industries listed in Table 21, with 'Administration' being the omitted category. Supervisory position was coded as 0 if no one wassupervised, as 5 if fewer than 10 workers were supervised, and10 if ten or more workers were supervised. Occupational status of respondent was coded according to the detailed codes of the International Occupational Prestige Scale (Treiman, 1977)' as was father's occupational status. Schooling represents years of schooling, while size of place of residence was coded in terms of units of one thousandinhabitants. Table 2 1. Mzrltiyle regression analvsis of income @om main job. Metric coefJicients divided bJ7 grand meanof irlcomes x 100 Independent variables Bulgaria

Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic ~

Occupational status of father Sex ( 1=men) Size of place of residence Experience Sector (1 =private) Indzlstty Mining Other manufacturing Construction Agriculture Transportation Trade Finance Municipal services Social services Years of schooling Occupational status Supervisory position Intercept R' N

** p
0.2" 0.2" 0.04 23.0"" 5.9** 2.7** 1 .o 0.3 42.9** 28.8** 38.4"" 8.3"" 0.8 4.7 1.3 6.3 -2.4 12.9 2.5 -0.1 -8.1 -5 .O -1 8.0 14.1 5.2 -1.5 -1 4.4 -1 1.3 3.4"" 3.3** 0.3* 0.51; 1.o** 1.3** 56.1 94.5 0.16 0.2 1 1 295 2 370

0.4 0.5** 0.1 -0.2 26.1 ** 43.8** 24.3** 16.2** 5.0"" 11.3 4.3** 2.8** 1.1** 0.9* -0.06 0.1 6.9* 34.3** 352.7** 29.9* 35.6 30.2** -9.8 -12.1 -7.4 -9.9 -19.7 -9.6 -0.9 -0.4 -4.8 -20.7 37.7 31.6 -9.2 7.6 -22.0 -22.0 4.1 ** 4.8** 0.7"" 0.3 2.7"" 1.0 152.6 -68.7 0.33 0.32 1 638 1 370

14.0 0.9 -25.6 4.7 -15.2 10.2 -22.3 -12.2 -21.4 -1.9 70.5 -7.2 9.2 12.1 -2.7 -10.9 -5.1 -5.0 1.8 3.2** 0.0 0.4** 0.5* 1.8** -10.3 11.8 0.06 0.16 1 942 1 956

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The dependent variable is monthly income from the main job, standardized in US dollars, on the basis of market exchange rates. For all countries except Poland and Russia, average exchange rates for 1992 were used, since respondents were asked to report 1992 incomes. For these two countries, I use the average exchange rates for the period of the survey, since respondents were askedto report their current incomes. Using the OLS multiple model, I regressed individual incomes from the main job on the ‘universal’ characteristics and the two other sets of variables mentioned above. Table 21 shows the patterns of their effects. For the sake of comparability, I put the metric coefficients of regression in relative terms-that is, values of bs were divided by the grand mean of incomes for the respective country and multiplied by 100. I left out farmers from all the analyses as the incomes which they report are not comparable with reports given by persons who work outside individual farming. It is apparent from Table 21 that universal determinants affect incomes in a relatively similar way.Althoughour analysis concerns 1993-94, that is, the climax ofthe most intense changes, the correlations do not deviate from well-known regularities, notwithstanding the usual exceptions: in Russia, more experience tendedto parallel lower incomes, and in Slovakia incomes seemed to be negatively related to the socioeconomic status of the father. Other substantial deviations from general tendencies cannot be easily identified. Certainly, this does not imply any lack of cross-national differentiation. This does occur, but within the margin of variation, and against a background of prevailing universal patterns. The direct statistically significant effect of family background occurred only‘ in Poland and Bulgaria. Only there did the occupational status of a father when his son, or daughter, was 14-this point of time waschosento identifl its effect-bring about statistically significant income differences. In Poland, the net returns on father’s status stood at 0.5 (half) per cent of average monthly income in 1994. This is not as negligible as one might think if we bear in mind that the 0.5 per cent translates into differences between father’s occupational position in Treiman’s very detailed STOPS prestige scale. The 0.5 per cent reflects, for example, the advantage of having a father whowas a physician rather than an engineer in a factory, the latter occupying a slightly lower position. The 0.5 per cent also indicates the difference between, say, a skilled locksmith and a confectioner in a bakery. If we compare, next, the ‘net’ overpay resulting from one’s father being a physician rather

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than a locksmith, the financial advantage increases by up to 20 per cent of total monthlyincome,and the monetary distance between the incomes of children of physicians and, for example, of unskilled bricklayers, amounts to 35 per cent-due exclusively to ‘preference points’ for origin. All indirect effects of familybackground are transmitted by school, further education, entry to the labor market, and occupational attainment, which we controlled for, at least to some extent. One must recall that these results reveal patterns of distribution concerning incomes from the main job and not total individual incomes from all sources. Analysis of incomes from the main job-that is, from the most time-consuming work-allows one to get a deeper insight into the institutional mechanismsunderlying distribution ofeconomic rewards. Main jobs provided the vast bulk of incomes, both in the command economy and in the 1990s, where-for example, in Poland-they accounted for 75 per cent of the volume of individual incomes. However, it is also advisable to consider the implications of family background for total individual incomes which synthesize the market opportunities for individuals overall. I regressed the total incomes on the same set of variables. It showed that the patterns of their distribution followed what we found for incomes from the main job. Without going into detail-I do not present these findings in any table-one can say that in Poland, the father’s occupational status still mostly (across oursix countries) differentiated market opportunities measured by total incomes. Its net effect represented 0.8 per cent. In Bulgaria and Hungary, these returns were lower but still significant, at 0.3 per cent. In the other countries, they did not exceed 0.1 per cent. Ournext universal determinant is gender, which differentiates incomesaccording to expectations. Nevertheless, some cross-national variation occurs. Perhaps this sounds too weak in the face of the striking lack of a net gender gap in Bulgaria. Bear in mind that the effect for gender, displayed in Table 2 1 captures the mean disparity between men and women, afterelimination of differences in education, segregation of gender within occupational, sectoral, and industrial divisions, hours of work, and whether someone was employed full- or part-time. The Bulgarian case looks astounding in view of the incessant replication of results from various countries which document a net gender gap in incomes. The gap is also revealed in the other five postcommunist countries. In Russia, it reaches 43.8 per cent in favor of men, and while in the four remaining societies it is much smaller, nevertheless, it

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does not fall below 16 per cent (in Hungary). In Bulgaria, however, it stands at zero. Certainly, the net gender gap refers to a hypothetical situation in that we eliminate gender differences onlyin the statistical model.Under ‘normal’ circumstances, even in Bulgaria, men earn much more than women and in this sense similarities predominate between all our six countries. Let us scrutinize this ‘real’ gap in incomes from the main job. Data arepresented in the top panel of Table22.

Table 22. Monthl) incorms of men and women, and gender gap Czech Poland Russia Slovakia Bulgaria Republic Hungary

Men Women

Mean monthly income from main job (in US dollars) 120 179156 21043 184 124 92 165 26 122

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Mean monthly total income (in US dollars) Men Women

130 103

179 159 21144 115 152 26

196 111

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Mean incomes from mainjob ofwomen dividedby means for men (x100) Total rates 76.7 69.3 78.6 66.3 60.5 71.2 83.8 Netrates(withfather’soccu99.6 77.0 73.9 56.2 75.7 pation,education,andoccupational status controlled for) Mean total incomes of women divided by means for men (x100) Total rates 72.2 64.2 72.0 56.7 59.1 Netrates(withfather’soccu99.6 77.0 82.0 77.4 48.8 pation,education,andoccupational status controlled for)

68.6 77.4

As one can see, the total monetary distance between men and women is clearly higher than the net income gap. In the fifth line of Table 22, averages for women were divided by those for men and expressed as percentages of the latter (average incomes for men and womenare given in the first two lines). The smallest gap did not occur in Bulgaria, where women received on average23.3 per cent less than men, but in Hungary, where the total gap reached 21.4 per cent. It is only after we control for effects of other determinants of income that one isleft in Bulgaria with a 0.04 per cent gender gap.

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The reduction of the total gender gap highlights a number of mechanisms underlying unequal income distribution related to gender. Once the gap decreases, if we control for education, occupational status, and other variables, the lower incomes of women may be appropriately seen as chiefly ‘derived’ from their lower job and educational opportunities. The uniqueness of the Bulgarian case lies in the fact that in empirical studies the gap has never been so close. In any case, after we take into account key sociological variables, one has still to explain 23 per cent of the total women/men’s gap in the Czech Republic, 26.1 per cent in Poland, as much as 43.8 percent in Russia, 24.3 per cent in Slovakia, and 16.2 per cent-the least-in Hungary. In contrast to the Bulgarian case, where we did not detect a net effect of gender, Russia saw thebiggest disparity between the incomes of men and women. The total gap amounted to above two-fifths of men’s average incomes. We also see that, in contradistinction to other countries, the total gap did not decrease after partialling out other potential effects. In fact, it increased, from 39.5 per cent to 43.8 per cent. It may be argued that a syndrome comprising educational and occupational differentiation, family background, and position on the labor market, which in the five remaining countries provide men with more advantageous assets, proved indifferent in Russia. What this means is that the lower economic opportunities of womenmust be underpinned by some mechanisms which we havefailed to uncover and whichoperated rather within, andnotbetween, the social divisions we controlled for-the greater net than total gap results from the so-called suppression effect (see Cohen and Cohen, 1983). In addition toearnings from the main job, let us report on the net gap in total incomes. Since women’s opportunities are more limited for getting additional jobs and earning extra money, this factor should enlarge gender inequalities. Indeed, such accumulation occurs in the Czech Republic, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, and-most strongly-in Poland. Net disparity between men and women in total incomes tends to exceed the net gap of earnings from the main job. The total incomes of Polish women were just56.7 per cent of those of men-in Poland, women lost out to the greatest extent in comparison to men. Concluding this section, we can say that in Polish society, the gap in total incomesis significantly reducedwhen education, occupational status, and so on, are partialled out. Taken together, all ‘controls’ account for 21 per cent of the original gap in total incomes, while in incomes from the main job the reduction was 8 per cent. It seems that la-

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bor-marketsegmentationaccording to genderis not onlymost pronounced in Poland, it seems also more overwhelming. Males constitute the advantageous ‘half in terms of total monetary rewards, that is, from all sources. At the same time, in Russia segmentation according to gender is not displayed, at least if we restrict ourselves to the variables considered here. As in the case of incomes from the main job, the disparity of total incomes between men and women increases when wetake other variables into account. Let us briefly comment on the two other associations which we referred to as universal, that is, experience in the labor force and size of place of residence. Rewards for experience are highest in Hungary and Poland where net premiums for each year of work represented, respectively, 1.1 per cent and 0.9 per cent of average monthly incomes. This would amount to a not negligible advantage of 11 per cent and 9 per cent after ten years of constant work. In Western societies, the seniority rule belongs to the standard package of pay demands in negotiations between trade unions and management. As we cansee, the seniority rule did notholdin the CzechRepublicand Slovakia. In Russia, it paid nothing-this is what the negative relationship betweenincomesand work experienceindicates in Table 21. In Russia the emerging capitalist market did produce significant benefits for the inhabitants of large cities. However, the figure of 4.3 per cent in Table 21 is misleading in that it results from dividing the net metric coefficient by the grand mean of incomes which in Russia is the lowest across our six countries (USD 23 monthly as compared to USD 194 in Hungary, which had the highest average). Russia’s 4.3 per cent translates into USD 3.8, whereas in Poland, where incrementof incomes due to living in a bigger city was highest, it was USD 8.7. Such was the net difference between, for example, the mean income of inhabitants of Warsaw and the next category of cities with one hundred thousand inhabitants. In Bulgaria, the net advantageof living in the capital amounted to USD 6.2, in the Czech Republic it was USD 2.7, in Slovakia it was USD 6, and in Hungary it was USD 2.8. Larger urban areas offer better opportunities for finding extra jobs. Thus, one might assume that a discrepancy between larger and smaller cities would be higher for total incomes than for incomes coming from the main job. Contrary to expectations, place of residence did not differentiate total incomes more in any country (once again I refer to regressions of total incomes not presented here). This may suggest that while a larger city provides better financial opportunities, this is displayed

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mostly in terms of better opportunities to take up jobs which absorb most of one’s working time. Differentiation in total incomes tends to follow closely variation of earnings from the main job related to size of place of residence.

T W O V E S T I G E S OF THE COMMAND ECONOMY Comparative analyses carried out in the 1980s shed some light on the different rules of income distribution in postconmunist and market systems(Domanskiand Zagbrski, 1991). Various authors suggested that the crux of the differences resided in the centralized wage regulations inherent in theplannedeconomy. Distribution waschanneledfrom ministries to industries and sectors. We shall nowseektodetermine whether remnants ofthese structures still existed in the 1990s. The division into industries and sectors was not invented by the commumist system. In all countries, the economy is divided into industries and sectors for reasons of natural division of labor. However, in the c o r n u nist economies, industries and sectors were administrative units and not only descriptive categories paralleling natural divisions. Firms were allocated to particular industries by officials, not only on the basis of similar types of activity and objects of work,but also on the basis of political criteria. The classical works on the communist economy saw its constituent feature as management throughdirectives coming fromthe center to firms via industrial structures (see Kaminski, 1989; Komai, 1992). The public firms were separated from the private, including individual farming. The private sector remained to some extent independent of the intrusions of the state as regards regulation of financial rewards. Rewards in private firms did not fall under the strict tariffs enacted for the state sector. Profits were not covered by the regulations, and wages were established by virtue of contracts set between employees and employers. What determined the level of incomes in the private sector was prices of commodities and services dictated by demand. Certainly, the state had the power to restrict operation of market forces-for example, by enforcing arbitrary taxes or cutting off the supply of raw materials. However, the core of the economy was embedded in the state sector which employed the working majority. Cooperative and state enterprises were divided into industries and, next, into branches. All of them were supervised by appropriate ministries and central offices. Instructions

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concerning the scope of tasks were passed down from the authorities through the channels of multiple structures. All units were subordinated and all were provided withfinancial support. This centrally directed flow of financial resources created the peculiar mechanism of distribution via industries. In the capitalist economy, incomesare basically subjected to market rules, although various mechanisms outside this logic can also come into play: nonetheless, market rules remain the ultimate determinant in the sense that they serve as the framework of the economic pursuits of individuals and organizations, withallofthem acting as independent units. Thecommunist economy replaced suchindependence by a network of central commands. The sectoral and industrial segmentation strongly determined wage differences. In Poland, divisions into sectors and industries affected incomes more strongly than any other sociological variable-apart from gender, perhaps(Domanski,1988and1990). Further, the results of cross-national studies carried out since the 1980s show that industrial and sectoral divisions differentiated incomesmore sharply in Poland than in systems driven by a capitalist market. In one of the few comparative studies including two communist societies-Poland and Hungary-alongside Australia and the USA, divisions into private and state sectors, as well as segmentation according toindustries, proved decisive in the structuring of incomes (Zag6rski andDomanski,1990).Both owners and employees of private firms could easily be considered economically privileged as compared with employees of state firms. At the same time, a clear hierarchy of industrial segments emerged, with mining at the top. Coal miners, but also clerical staff, cooks in mine kitchens, watchmen,andmanagerial cadres mademuchmore than their counterparts in other branches. At the opposite pole of the industrial ladder were located social services, comprising science, education, culture, and health care-the least profitable in terms of pay. All in all, segmentation according to sectors and industries crosscut the traditional hierarchy of incomes. Such was the situation in the 1980s. To what extent do the structures originating in the command economy continue to function in the 1990s? Cautious interpretation is needed since the kind of structures in which we are interested can rest not only on the institutional foundations of the planned economy, but also on the new segmentation brought into being by the capitalist economy. In any event, the elimination of central planning did not leave a structural vacuum.

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Let us determine, first, the importance of sectoral divisions in the first half of the 1990s. In Table 21, the net percentage rates of incomes earned in private (as opposed to public) firms are reported. As one can see, in every country employment in private firms was better paid, although less so in Hungary where net incomes of proprietors and personnel, taken together, exceeded the average level of incomes in the public sector by only 6.9 per cent. In the five remaining countries this overpay never went below 29 percent in favor of the private sector, and in Russia it reached the astronomical level of 353per cent. The privileged position of the private sector in Russia is by no meansa coincidence. Once we turn to net distances in total incomes, private firms stood out to a degree unparalleled in the other five countries. 'They provided 3 19 per cent more than public firms. At the same time, this overpay amounted to only 14.8 per cent in Hungary, 19.7 per cent in Poland, and 33-35 per cent in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. I shall conclude this account with some remarks onthe potential role of supply/demand ratios in shaping economic rewards between the private and public sectors. After 1989, the private sector was developed and labor in private firms expanded in size. This had to lead to growing competition and a decrease in the market price of labor, resulting in a fall in incomes. The relationship between supply and demand varied, of course, from one country to another. Employment in the private sector was relatively the lowest in Russia, accounting for 2 per cent of the total actively employed. Next came Bulgaria with 4.9 per cent, followed by 7.9 per cent in Slovakia, 11.7 per cent in the Czech Republic, 12.2 per cent in Hungary, and 2 1.8 per cent in Poland (after excluding farmers, it still stood at 1S .4 per cent). Bearing this in mind, one can argue that simple supply and demand provided the most favorable bargaining position for persons working in the private sector in Russia. To put it simply, in 1993 private firms were still too few in number to meet consumption demand, whichin turn elevated the wages of employees and the incomes of owners. At the same time, the public firms failed to satisfy consumer demand, in terms of both quality and quantity. Bulgaria also saw a relatively low supply of labor in private firms concomitant with high monetary returns. It seems, then, that the factor of supply and demand might indeedmatter. It could be that, in countries in which employment in the private sector had not reached saturation point, the economic position of the proprietors and workers of private firms was relatively strong.

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Let us move on to income differentiation within the state sector. The values of metric coefficients for nine industries report how much (in percentage terms) they wereadvantagedanddisadvantaged (positive and negative values, respectively) relative to the meanincomes in a given country (in creating dummies for industries I referred to contrastcoding, as a result of which the values of parameters are referred to grand means-see Cohen and Cohen [19831). The question arises as to what extent the configurations of between-industry distances reflect the past . One might argue as follows. In 1994, persons working in mining in Poland enjoyed the highest incomes and, as we know, the situation was the same throughout the period of the Polish People’s Republic. Bearing this in mind, the most favorable position of mining in 1994 may appropriately beseenasbeing partly derived from the regulations of the communist system. The priority given to mining began in the period of the 5-year plan in 1950. The mining industry carried the burden of the strategy of extensive industrialization. Mining also supplied the energy resources for the whole economy and, in time, coal became the central pillar of Polish exports. The bargaining position of miners as against the authorities becamevery strong, andwaspromoted by the influential mining lobby in the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The government could not stand up to the pressure for high rewards. The privileged position of other industries in heavy manufacturing was also well secured. If we look now at the pattern of income differentiation across basic industries in 1993, it seems that the structures established under the communist system were mostly preserved. In Poland, mining remains among the best-rewarded industries. In 1994, with mean incomes exceeding the grand mean by 30.2 per cent, it was second after ‘Finance’ (comprising chiefly banks). Mining-industryworkers in Bulgaria received, relatively, the highest earnings (38.4 per cent above the mean). In Hungary, like in Poland, they obtained slightly less than persons employed in ‘Finance’. At the same time, social services lay at the opposite pole. Persons working in health care, culture, and education earned the least in Poland, Hungary,and the Czech Republic; in Bulgaria they also belonged among the worst-paid categories. Once again, one may seek the roots of their underprivileged position in the logic of distribution transferred from the plannedeconomy.Expenditureon social services, andon services overall, were always seen by central planners as a less impor-

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tmt element of the budget. This view had underpinnings in an official ideology which claimed that services, unlike heavy manufacturing, did notproduceanythingandwere therefore socially less useful. Consequently, persons working in the sector deserved less and should sacrifice some of their nominal share of national output for the benefit of future generations (see Kaminski,1989).Ascommunism faded, these ideological claims lost their persuasive power. However, it was already too late for the government to reverse the situation and to reimburse the social-service sector with the financial support it had previously been denied, or to radically redistribute incomes to the detriment of mining and heavymanufacturing.Thiswouldhave required encroachment into well-entrenched patterns of reward which had consolidated over decades, along with the aspirations of the privileged social categories. Last but not least, it would have required overcoming the strong opposition of powerful groups lobbying for the interests of the heavy manufacturing complex. Threats of go-slows or strike action always served as a convincing argument on the part of managerial cadres and workers. The personnel of hospitals, schools, and cultural institutions have never had . such persuasive arguments at their disposal. In the developed capitalist societies, the transition from an ‘industrial’ to a ‘service’ economy began in the 1960s. As regards the postcommunist societies, the institutional barriers to this transition relaxed with the passing ofthe old regime. This was the best time for the newly formed authorities to bring about the restructuring of the economy with a parallel transformation of the labor force. The postcommunist authorities could win popular support for making extensive shifts in the budgetin favor of the service sector, Restructuring of this kind might, for example, be presented as a constituent of the systemic transfslmatisn which was, at the time, being applaudcd. However, with the passing of time, the possibility ofaccomplishingsuchfundamental changes faded for various reasons. In part, from omnipresent inertia, in part due to the binding force of the old cooperative network between firms, which was strengthened by the multiplicity of interests of social categories profiting fromthe stability of the traditional structures. At the beginning of the 1990s, income differentiation across basic industries tended to follow the traditional hierarchy instead of being subjected to a radical reshaping. The traditional pattern seems to occur in all countries, with the exception of Russia and Slovakia. In Russia, trade had the highest incomes in 1993. Themining industry was second, but the monetary distance

12 1

between the two was extreme. While average incomes earned in trade exceeded the grand mean by 70.5 per cent, the net surplus for mining amounted to only 14 per cent. In contrast, other manufacturing industry, transportation, and agriculture constituted the worst-paid industries (and not social services which was ‘only’ 5.1 per cent lower on average). In Slovakia, the ‘profile’ of the industrial segmentation of incomes poorly conformed, as in Russia, to the tr.aditiona1 pattern. One could scarcely find vestiges of centralized structures: finance and construction are at the top of the hierarchy, and agriculture and so-called personal services (comprising catering, tourism, sport, recreation, entertainment, and accommodation) at the bottom. It is doubtful, by the way, whether it makes sense to speak of vestiges of industrial structures peculiar to Slovakia since under communism it was integrated with the Czech economy. The classical forms of the communist economy probably did not develop in Slovakia as astructurally separate phenomenon. In the case of Russia, such doubts cannot be raised. The Russian economy wasthe stronghold of anindustrial segmentation of communist origin and the birthplace of a pattern which diffused throughout East Central Europe. What clearly follows, therefore, is that the collapse of that system must have been on a tremendous scale insofar as it led to radical reshuffles in the inwme hierarchy. In fact, we cannot recognize any vestiges of the recent past in patterns of income distribution across industries after the fall of communism. This interpretation sounds bold but not unlikely in the face of our data. We have to acknowledge,by the way, that the ‘shock’ hypothesis runs counter to observations made by some students of Russian society. For example, Burawoy and Krotov (1992) claimed that managerial staff started to exploit the old cooperative networks for barter exchange, and former industrial ministries were transformed into multidepartmental corporations, whose officials intervene in decisions made by executives of firms. Consequently, old structures could easily be retrieved, based on the old foundations. Let us add to this picture one element which allows for a more unequivocal interpretation. In Hungary, Poland, and, to a slightly lesser degree, the former Czechoslovakia, employeesin ‘Finance’ gained most in terms of financial reward. Their high position strongly departs from the axis running from mining tosocial services. It may well be that this new line of differentiation not only heralds an exit from the traditional hierarchy of incomes, but is also indicative of incipient forms of economic segmentation typical of the ‘service economy’ (according to the patterns outlined by, for example, Fuchs [ 19751 or Wright and Martin[1987]). In ,

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market-oriented societies, banking and financial services pay best across a spectrum of basic industries (Hodson, 1983; Kallebergand Berg, 1988). Stratification of the labor market in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary seems to conform tothe same pattern, but not in Russiaand Bulgaria, which, in light of the foregoing results, cannot come as a surprise.

THE PROMISE OF MERITOCRACY: THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION, OCCUPATION, AND SUPERVISORY POSITION The idea of meritocratic distribution can be empirically tested in terms of the correlation between incomes and merit. The latter is operationalized in terms of skills and occupational positions which represent efforts, ability, and qualifications. The assumption is made that meritocracy increases with the rising effect of education and occupational status on financial rewards. Merit-worthy persons deserve higher rewards (Young, 1958; Bell, 1976; Wesolowski and Krauze, 198 1; Heath et al., 1992; Saunders, 1990). Following this rationale, we shall attempt to determine how far the principles of meritocracy underlay distribution of incomes in postcommunist societies. In centrally administered economies, meritocratic rules operated, but were barely discernible against the backdrop of the distribution of financial means via industrial and sectoral structures. The latter took precedence, as displayed, for example, by the fact that physicians employed in coal mines earned significantly more than those employed in science and education. This kind of disparity was generated at all levels, from directors to window cleaners. Results of cross-national studies confirm that, under the communist system, the role of meritocratic distribution was not emphasized. If, for example, in Poland the Pearsonian correlation between education and individual incomes stood at only 0.12 in 1982 and had increased to 0.21 by 1987, its value in Austria, Denmark, Germany,the USA, and Sweden did not fall below 0.33, while its upper level reached 0.5-0.6 (see Domanski, 1994). Let us turn to the patterns from the first half of the 1990s. In Table 22, I report percentages of net increment of incomes for consecutive levels of education, occupational position (in a hierarchy comprising about five hundred items), and supervisory position. A greater effect

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may be regarded as beingindicative of the greater impact of meritocratic rules on distribution: concomitantly, relatively lower rates of financial returns identifjl mechanisms of stratification less susceptible to the effects of meritocracy. On the basis of these results, we might conclude that the distributive systems inherited from communism would hold up more strongly here. The effects of the triad encompassing years of schooling, occupation, and supervisory position (Table 21) seem unequivocaland fit closely the profile of differences and similarities between oursix countries to which we have now become accustomed. Meritocracy seems to be more advanced in four countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, with Poland and Hungary in the lead. In Poland, the mean monetary distances between levels of education amounted to 4.8 per cent (relative to the grand mean). And in Hungary, authority connected with a job turned out to be relatively the best rewarded with anet increment of 2.7 per cent. This is what one gained financially while moving, for example, from the rank and file to a supervisory position with at least ten workers underone’s supervision. As regards the effect of occupational status, it proved a slightly stronger determinant of incomes in Hungary. Predictably, Bulgaria and Russia deviated from the core pattern in that returns for education, occupational status, and supervisory position were negligible or did not occur. At one time, sociologists referred to the effects of education on incomes as the canon of meritocracy, and so we might pause to inquire into the effects of particular levels of schooling. Specifically: How much doestheachievementofa university degree ‘pay’ and whatwas its value in comparison with a vocational school certificate and with the lowest level of educational attainment? Net profits and losses for educational levels can be read from Table 23. Higher education shows the best reward in all countries except Russia. Higher education yielded the highest increment of incomes, irrespective of occupational status, supervisory position, sector and industry, size of place of residence, work experience, sex, working hours per week, and a number of other characteristics which were controlled for. At the same time, graduates from vocational schools-and secondary schools in Slovakia-suffered the heaviest financial losses. Their earnings fell below the grand mean by virtue of a lower level of educational attainment, although other factors not taken into account here also added to their disadvantaged position. The fact that, in five countries, someone with a degree could demand the highest price on the labor market indi-

124

cates that, in the first half of the 1 9 9 0 the ~ ~ effect of meritocratic rules of distribution was not insignificant. Moreover,monetary returns corresponded to consecutive levels of schooling which was consonant with the idea of meritocratic rules for reward. Table 23. Motletary returns Jot- graduates c$ miversi?v, some high schools, and secondaty, basic vocational, and elenzentary schools. Metric coeficients i n mzrltiple regression analysis divided by grand rnean x I OOa Mean net income above or below grand mean for graduBulgaria ates of(%): University Some high schools Secondary schools Basic vocational Elementary

Czech

Republic

Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia

28.7** 34.8** 40.7"" 57.2** 9.3 24.4 5.8 3.6 10.1 -1.8 -1.7 5.6 10.4 -1.7 3.1 -13.9 -9.0 -18.7** -17.3 -8.9 -1 1.4 -16.5 -20.8** -17.0 -6.9

Net metric coefficients were established in regression models, controlling for effects of occupational status, sex, experience, industry, sector, and size of of place residence. ** p
a

28.3** 9.3 -5.7 -7.0 -2.9 father's

Whatabout obstacles tomeritocracy?Russia is the onlycountry where the highest levels of education were paid worst relative to lower schooling. The rewards for a higher education were rather moderate in Slovakia and Bulgaria. On the other hand, Polish society appeared to fit most closely the ideal of meritocracy, as a degree was clearly best rewarded there. Furthermore, the net difference between the highest and the lowest level of education was also the greatest in Poland, ranging from 57.2 per cent above the grand mean to 20.8 per cent below it. In Hungary, the span of this differentiation was 40 per cent lower, and as much as 70 per cent lower in the Czech Republic. It is thus natural to ask the further question: What fostered meritocracy? In which social categories did a higher education yield the highest earnings and conversion rates closely parallel years of schooling? I replicated the multiple regression model of incomes separately for: men and women; categories of place of residence of different sizes; several age groups; and persons employed in the private and in the public sector. It emerged that divisions related to sex, age, and place of residence did not essentially differentiate the relationship between. incomesandeducational levels. The sectoral divisions, however, did. The net percentage gains and losses for educational levels in the public and private sector are reported in Table 24.

125 Table 24. Monetary setzwns for graduates of university, some high schools, and secondary, basic vocational, and elementaiy schools in the private and public sector. Metric coeficients inmzrltiyle regression analvsis divided by grand mean x 1OOa Mean income above or below grand mean graduates for Private ofPublic Private Public Private Public ("%I):

Bulgaria University Some high schools Secondary schools Basic vocational Elementary

32.0 26.8 11.8 19.7 7.6 -32.1 -2.3

Czech Republic 74.9 "5.9 6.7 -3.0 9.7

-3.0 -8.9 -13.6

Poland University Some high schools Secondary schools Basic vocational Elementary

94.6** 43.8** -6.9 5.0 44.2"" 5.0 - n.a. -12.2 -1 7.9 -1 5.0

Hungary

27.9 60.9 31.6 9.8 4.3 29.7 4.6 -14.7 -7.6 -13.1 -24.9 13.6

Russia 129.3 17.0 20.8 -434.8 523.5 2.4 1 523.3 -1 1.6 -348.8 -16.3

-.1

0.1 -20.0 -21 .5

Slovakia 6.0 48.4 -3.9 3.9 -31.7

29.4 5.2

-0.1 -8.1 -9.1

a Net metric coefficients were established in regression models, controlling for effects of father's occupational status, sex, experience, industry, sector, and size of place of residence.

** p
Parameter was not estimated due to small size of this category.

From inspection ofTable 24, we can see thatthe impact of meritocracy in private firms was much more strongly evident in the Czech Republic and Poland. In both countries, the net 'exchange rate' of a higher education on incomes in the private sector clearly exceeded what state enterprises were able to offer graduates. Furthermore, in the Czech Republic and Poland the conversion rates followed the hierarchy of educational levels moreclosely in theprivate sector than in the other countries. As far as investment in a higher education was concerned, the public sector was a more favorable place in Bulgaria, Russia, Slovakia, and Hungary.InRussia,thehierarchyoffinancialreturnsintheprivate sector tends to reverse the dominant pattern, which is yet another in the series of peculiarities which we must confront when trying to penetrate the stratification processes in this country. Vocational schools brought the highest rewards there. Let us return to Table23. Antimeritocratic rules of distribution in the private sector may explain why, in Russia overall, a university degree proved relatively less profitable than some higherand secondary-school diplomas. The complete reversal of the rules of meritocracy in private

126

firms must bear someresponsibility for the underpayment of the highest educational credentials on the labor market.

WHAT COUNTS ABOVE ALL? We have looked for signs of a transition to new distributive systems in our six East Central European countries. In seeking determinants of income, three syndromeswerecompared: (i) family background, sex, place of residence, and experience in the labor force, affecting incomes in the most universal way; (ii) sectoral and industrial divisions institutionally ingrained in the command economy; and (iii) meritocratic rules of distribution, best representative of market systems. After revealing some of the marked cross-national differences in distributive systems, we are closer to understanding who is more and who less advanced in breaking the manacles of the command economy, and which countries are on the path to a capitalist system. What remains to be done is to establish the relative importance of the three syndromes in respect of income differentiation.

Table 25. Mzrltiple regression anulvsis of inco?nej*ommain job. Coeflcients of semipartid correlation (~100). ~

Independent variables Bulgaria Occupational status of father Sex ( 1 =men) Size of place of residence Experience Years of schooling and occupational status Supervisory position Industry Sector

~

~

~~~~~

Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

0.1

0.0

0.1

0.5**

0.0

0.0

0.0 1.3 0.0 3.8""

2.3** 0.3** 0.1 3.1 **

1.8** 0.4"" 0.6"" 3.4

2.3"" 0.6** 0.4* 3.7**

0.6** 0.2" 0.0 0.0

2.7** 0.6** 0.0 3.0

0.5"" 2.6"" 2.5**

0.9** 0.9** 2.0**

3.1** 3.8** 0.2"

3.8** 3.0**

0.0 0.7 2.2**

0.2* 1.2** 1.7**

2.4**

** p<.Ol; * p<.os

In Table 25 I refer to the values of semipartial correlations which indicate the relative weight ofthese three syndromes. Infive countriesthe exception being Russia-the most decisive determinant of incomes

127

turns out to be merit: education, occupational status, and supervisory position. In the first half of the 199Os, the education-occupational syndrome did not operate in Russia. Instead, the distinction between private and public firms differentiated incomes here most strongly. Nevertheless, one has to emphasize once again that the rules of meritocratic distribution prevailed in our six East Central European countries. I would incline to treat education, occupational status, and supervisory position as attributes of merit since they are, to a great extent, derivative of individual achievement. Certainly, one can scarcely give precise estimates of the weight of meritocracy, relying only on the three commonly exploited variables. We have at best merely touched onthis issue. Another unresolved question concerns the dynamics of the dichotomy: ‘vestiges of command economy vs. meritocracy’. Longitudinal data would help us to obtain a deeper insight into the direction and pace of change in the distributive systems of postcommunist societies. The most obscure question concerns the unique determinants of incomes in Russia. There, monetary returns weakly correlated with educational credentials, occupational status, and supervisory position. This was deviant, not only against the background of the remaining five countries, but also radically diverged from the inherent logic of distribution in market-oriented economies.At the time, the roots of this anomaly appeared toreside in the duality between the public and private sectors in Russia. Private firms were operating according to rules which were inconsistent with a meritocratic distribution of incomes. One may assume that these mechanisms emerged onlyafter the collapse of central planning, along with a wave of profound changes, but they may well have been operative before 1989. We have relied here on analyses of cross-sectional data which couldtell us little about the recent past.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

CHAPTER 7

CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE

WHETHERone thinks that classical poetry is superior to crime novels is basically a matter of individual taste. One cannot easily rank them-at least, not in such an unequivocal way aswe can order incomes. Despite this ambiguity, literary tastes are also subject to social ranking. All elements of cultureandlifestyleareevaluatedagainstacommonsense yardstick which refers to ‘better’ and ‘worse’ attributes of social status. There are some areas of culture which are particularly prone to social stratification,namely,thosewhichareesteemed by themajorityof people: for example, a style may commonly be regarded as ‘better’ because it provides its wearers with prestige and a labelof membership in elite circles. The appearance and manners of these ‘betters’ are admired by almost everyone. The lifestyle of one’s ‘betters’ deserves deference or is at least commonly envied. People assign more prestige to literary and sophisticated language than to the parochial linguistic code. One is ranked higher when one displays the ability to discuss great political issues in contrast to mundane gossip about day-to-day affairs. Superior eating habits also connote elite membership, along with the distinction of wearing fashionable clothes. Finally, attending museums and art exhibitions is more prestigious than goingto soccer matches. These are the visible aspectsof a lifestyle, andso one can easily recognize them as the etiquette accompanying socioeconomic status. At the same time, they serve as sociocultural capital which facilitates achievement or, if we do not have them, which block can achievement. Therationaleforcomplementingourcomparativestudywith an analysis of cultural stratification boils down to the following: people who are first in the economy are not necessarily so powerhl in culture. The power of the capital of good manners and refinement is based on

130

their relatively low supply. One cannot really buy them, and if they are somehow purchased after all, it takes a long time to absorb them because the process of ‘acquiring culture’ is, indeed, elongated. It requires intellectual investment, persistence, and-inaddition-its effects must be accepted by others if one is to obtain the cachet of social approval. It is not always the economic elite who are invited along to cocktail parties. Bearing this in mind, and to avoid the illusion that private entrepreneurs rule in all social dimensions in East Central European countries, we must go beyond economic stratification into the area of culture and lifestyle. This theme is a fixed item in sociological readers concerning macrostructural issues (see CuberandKenkel, 1954; Barber, 1957; Kahl, 1957; Reissman, 1963; Gordon, 1963; Bendixand Lipset, 1966). The differentiation of culture and lifestyle constitutes a commonplaceof theoretical reflection on the mechanismsshaping social stratification. This was already so when the ‘key concepts’ of classical sociology were under construction, including the opposition between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Analyses of culture and lifestyle also appeared in early interpretations of changes in civilization associated with the passage from societies where ties between people were based on social status to those where the economic contract wasdominant (Tonnies, 1887; Maine, 1917; Veblen, 1959; Weber, 1968). It was a frequent topic of the classical monographs by the prominent representatives of the ‘Chicago school’, such as Park and Burgess (1 92S), and, over recent decades, the effect of culture on social stratification has been the subject of a number of studies (see Hoggart, 1957; Littlejohn, 1963; Willis, 1977; Di Maggio, 1982; Sobel, 1983; Alwin, 1984; De Graaf, 1989; Di Maggio and Mohr, 1985; Gabal, 1990). Littlejohn, Hoggart, and Willis researched communities by means of qualitative methods of data collection, while the other works cited above werebasedon quantitative analyses which yielded precise statistical estimates. It must be emphasized, however, that problems of culture and lifestyle are usually analyzed mainly in ‘qualitative’ terms. The famous study by Thompson (1991) on the formation of the working class in Eng1an.d can serve as an example. Most recently, the continuation of these interests is illustrated in a description of the common life of the Swedish bourgeois from the late nineteenth century by Frykman and Lofgren (1987), and in analyses of the morals, manners, and economic prosperity (Money, Morals and Manners is the title of a book by Lamont [ 19921) of the English and French middleclasses in contempo-

13 1

rary Canada. What is common to all these endeavors is an analysis of the meanings hidden behindvisible relationships. Bourdieu is the most representative of those authors who regard lifestyle as the mainstayof social distances and inequality. Cultural life constitutes, in his view, a battlefield between individuals and various groups. They create symbols of superiority, that is, ‘distinctions’, in order to promote or at least to maintain their social status. In Bourdieu’s view, the cultural market constitutes the main area of social structuration, whose role in contemporary societies increases, paralleling an inflation of competitive distinctions and tastes. Since seeking differences and symbols becomes the only rational strategy to secure social status, those who attempt to preserve their high social position create more and more dividing lines on the basis of gestures assigned to things and behaviors. A similar view of the role of culture is widely accepted by adherents of postmodernism in sociology: Featherstone (1 99l), Harvey (1990)’ and many other authors who elaborate on societies in the late twentieth century (Lash and Urry, 1987; Savage et al., 1992). Some of them go back in their argumentation to what Mills (195 1) wrote forty years ago on the American middleclasses, when he referred to the ‘panic for prestige’, revealing the relentless pursuit ofsymbols of social status by white-collar workers. Nowadays, these debates are held in the context of a major displacement of subjects in class relations: the axis of production and the labor market has been replaced by the pivotal role of consumption. The material standard of life is so high nowadays-the exponents of this theoretical stance argue-that material differentiation has lost its importance for people. Such a favorable assessment of the conditions of life is opposed by some sociologists who are critical of the capitalist status quo. Consequently, authors who emphasize the growing role of cultural divisions in contemporary societies are accused of conservatism. Critics of the ‘conservative’ option include, amongst others, Dunleavy (1980), Hamnett (1989), and Saunders (1990). The perpetuation of social hierarchies by means of culture and lifestyle appears, in fact, commonplace. One does not need to spend too much time persuading the reader that, in East Central Europe, cultural factors are no less important. The bulk of the problem resides rather in the persistence of cultural barriers and in showing the extent to which they make up an independent dimension of stratification systems. We shall focus on this question in order to show that those who have money do not necessarily find themselves in the ‘cultural’ elite of good taste,

132

proper manners, and ‘real class’, which are tantamount to undisputed superiority.

WHAT IS DISTINCTIVE ABOUT CULTURAL STRATIFICATION? In seeking to illustrate how strongly cultural differentiation features in the social ordering of persons and class categories, we shall estimate its associationwithkeyaxesofthesocialhierarchy.Studentsofsocial stratification share the view that the core of social divisions is embodied indifferentiationofsocio-occupationalcategories.Sincetheyare regarded as generic to the structure of industrial societies, they will serve as a ‘criterion of validity’. Given the pervasive role of occupational positions, their strong association with cultural factors may indicate that culture shapes our life in nontrivial ways. Higher cultural capital endows persons with social attributesandassets m7hich provide appropriately higher socioeconomic status. The latter, in turn, tends to reinforce greater ‘consumption’ of cultural goods. Both the form and the extent of thisconsumption become, by virtue of feedback, a strong determinant of theallocation of persons in the web of social distancesand divisions. All in all, onthe one hand, cultural activity determines social status, and on the other hand, location in social hierarchy imprints on how people look and behave, what norms they observe, withwhom they associate, and how they relate to each other. This reciprocal feedback was observed in all our six countries. Data in Table 26 confirm, first of all, the uneven participation of class categories in the analyzed areas of culture. The map of cultural inequalities was retrieved from declarations made by respondents. When asked how often they went to libraries, ballet, art exhibitions, theaters, and how often they listened to classical music and read ‘serious’ books, respondents answered ‘less than once a year’, ‘once a year’, ‘around once a month’, or even ‘more than once a week’, on a scale ranging from 0 to 6 (the phrasing of these questions is given in detail in the Appendix). Cultural activity was represented by five variables pertainingto the five questions. 1 factored them to yield a summary measure of cultural participation for each respondent. It gave factor scores composed of these five variables. Next, I took the means of this synthetic measure for each occupational stratum, which were then divided by the grand mean of cultural participation (for the whole sample).

133 Table 26. Going to libraries, museums, opera, theater, listening to classical music, reading serious books. Means of synthetic index of cultural participation Czech Republic

Socio-occupational categories Bulgaria Hungary 163 professionals 143 188 and 195 165 Higher managers Semi-professionals Routine nonmanual, salesand service workers Owners with employees Owners without employees Lower-grade technicians Skilled workers Unskilled workers Agricultural laborers Farmers Mean Correlation ratio (E)

Poland

Russia Slovakia

192 155 131

158 125

185 124

174 127

145 96

160 119

163 117 146 95 70 28 26 100 0.48

97 102 98 69 61 36 88 100 0.42

161 111 123 76 60 28 57 100 0.53

143 117 105 74 61 35 40 100 0.50

153 92 90 74 58 37 53 100 0.39

119 123 100 76 63 42 57 100 0.41

FromTable 26 it may be seenthatourclass segments arequite strongly discriminated in the syntheticmeasure of cultural participation. The magnitude of the lowest correlation ratio out of thosepresented in the bottom row of Table26 amounts to 0.39 (for Russia) and the others range from 0.4 to 0.5. All of them farexceed the strengthof associations between the EGP class segments and the incomes or index of material possession we analyzed in previous chapters. One might even be impressed by the magnitude of these values, bearing in mind the rather low,zero-ordercorrelationsobtained in the majority ofsociological analyses. It seems that lifestyle, rather than economic position, identifies the location of individuals within occupational divisions. Surely, such an interpretation would gain hrther support if we had estimates of the net effects of culture and economic position. To this end, I regressed socio-occupational status on both synthetic constructs and social origin, education, individual incomes, and supervisory position on the organizational ladder.I made the assumption that the magnitude of these effects serves as a yardstickin respect of their relativeimportance in thedeterminationofsocioeconomicstatus.However,we willnowlookatoccupationalstratification in anotherperspective, namely, in terms of hierarchy of occupational prestige.Long-term empirical studies on social stratification have documented that the prestige accorded to the holders of occupational roles is a valid, summary meas-

134

ure of their global position (see Treiman, 1977). In making prestige ratings,individualstakeintoaccountvariousattributesofoccupational roles which are supposed to be ‘filtered’ through prevailing norms and values.Bothobjectiveandsubjectiveelementsarecombinedinsuch social ordering so that, according to some analyses,it represents the differentiation of social status even better than division into sets of socioEGP, where occupational occupational strata. It is otherwise with the prestige constitutes a continuum of detailed levels and not a set of discrete class categories.

Table 27. Multiple regression analysis of respondent’s occupational status on cultural participation and selected variables. Partial correlation coefficients and zero-order correlations Independent variables

Bulgaria

0.40 Cultural participation (zero-order correlations) 0.16 Cultural participation (net correlations) 0.36 Years of schooling 0.02ns Earnings 0.10 Supervisory position 0.1 1 Occupational status of father R20.37 0.36 0.46 0.31

Czech Hungary Republic

Poland

Russia

Slovakia

0.32

0.48

0.43

0.34

0.37

0.12

0.15

0.17

0.1 1

0.17

0.46 0.05 0.08 0.11

0.45 0.08 0.12 0.07

0.37 0.05* 0.10 0.1 1

0.45 -O.0lns

0.47 0.05

0.13 0.09

0.12 0.09

0.39

0.41

* p0.05; all other values are statistically significant with p
In Table 27, I report partial correlation coefficients in the model of OLS regression of occupational prestige. Before looking at these data, it may be helpful to glance at the zero-order correlations between occupational prestige and cultural participation which are shown in the first row of Table 27. They reveal that the logic of stratification does not fail. Higher occupational prestige parallels higher rates of attendance at libraries, museums, and so on. The correlations are substantial-ranging from 0.32 in the Czech Republic, through 0.43 in Poland, up to 0.48 in Hungary. Turning now to net correlations, one can see that the association between occupational position and lifestyle decreased after controlling for

135

other variables. It must have been so because lifestyle was related to social origin, years of schooling, and supervisory position, as well as incomes.However,evenifwe remove their effects-in astatistical sense-lifestyle still strongly corresponds with one’s rank in the hierarchy of social status, identified here with occupational prestige. It turns out that contacts with ‘higher’ culture tend to derive from who we are and to what class, stratum, or occupational categorywe belong. This relationship is displayed in all of our six countries. We may compare its relative strength with the association of sociooccupational status with other variables. The effect of education seems the most critical. Its net correlation with occupationalprestige is at least twice as strong as that between occupational prestige and synthetically measured cultural participation. Nevertheless, visiting museums, going to the opera, or listening to classical music leave their own mark on social position.Inparticular, cultural participation is morestrongly involved in socio-occupational status than intergenerational transmission of family background, size of income,and supervisory position. Only in Russia was the latter more highly correlated-by a narrow marginwith occupational prestige than with lifestyle. To learn more about this relationship we return to representation of socialhierarchy in terms ofclasssegments. The common patternof cultural distances revealed in Table 27 is even more clear than that of economic differentiation, with the exception of Russia. The most rigid is the cultural barrier between the intelligentsia and the agricultural categories. One can readily understand what reasons lie behind this distinction. Evidently, looking after thefarm or cutting wood in the forest does not encourage regular visits to theaters and the opera. The life rhythms of both peasantsand agricultural workers aremarkedly different to those of urban dwellers. Given completely different preferences and orientations, they are doomed to spend their leisure time according to patterns completely different to those of medical doctors, university professors, architects, or managers. Culturalbarriers tend to be obliterated with narrowing distances between class segments in the hierarchy of socioeconomic status. The uniqueness of thecultural order in Russia is even more spectacular than in the other areas of social stratification.While in the other five countries the upper reaches of culture arereserved for the intelligentsia, in Russian society they are occupied by higher proprietors (those with employees).InPoland,forexample,suchaconfigurationofcultural divisions would surprise us-imagine owners of firms repairing vehi-

136

cles, or retail grocers or building contractors who are lovers of Proust or Dostoyevsky, and visit concert halls more often than representatives of so-called society who deal with cultural symbols professionally, bearing in mind the fact that the ‘higher culture’ of the intelligentsia is almost ‘inbred’. Some doubts may be raised as to whether the lower position of the intelligentsia in Russia is not distorted by errors in the fieldwork. However, other results tend to uphold the higher cultural capital of owners. I refer to the size of private libraries which is the most popular index of participation in cultural activity in sociological analyses-the number of books may be called cultural capital in a material form. Also in this area, owners with employees wereat the top of the hierarchy in Russia. If we take the declarations of an averagerepresentative of these circles at face value, he owned about 500 volumes in 1993, whereas the private library of a typical intelligentsia member wasone-tenth smaller (see Table 28).

Table 28.Nzmlber of books Socio-occupational categories

Czech Bulgaria Hungary

337 Higher professionals and577 man-424 agers Semi-professionals Routine nonrnan~lal,sales and service workers Owners with employees Owners without employees Lower-grade technicians Skilled workers Unskilled workers Agricultural laborers Farmers Total Correlation ratio (E)

Poland

Republic

499

Russia Slovakia 459

340

362 265

350 280

471 318

289 179

412 286

262 172

407 264 41 1 181 117 40 SO 212 0.44

323 298 232 172 158 118 278 246 0.33

448 341 317 204 146 80 142 266 0.44

191 161 143 93 78 38 43 145 0.39

50 1 3 02 26 1 200 190 98 292 301 0.36

239 213 155

117 96 72 146 86 0.21

Although the configuration of cultural distances is especially impervious to modifications by national context, note the relatively high position of farm owners in Czech society. Their cultural activity was more intensive than that of manual workers. This is puzzling, bearing in mind that we are dealing with visits to theaters and museums locatedin cities and hardly accessible to the typical farmer. It may be that the Czech countryside was

137

subjected to more urbanization than in Poland, Hungary, and so on. According to our data, 71 per cent of farm owners lived in the country, and the rest in towns with above ten thousand inhabitants. It was not so much the country that was urbanized as the Czech farmers. Although their farms were in the country, a sizeable proportion of them lived in a nearby town. In such circumstances, cultural distances between workers and peasants might be obliterated. Their access to the cultural infrastructure was easier and they could devote themselves more to this activity. Peasants (as distinct from farmers) have more books than workingclass families in Russia. However, this is more susceptible to speculation than the Czech case. One can rather rule out the ‘urbanization effect’ in Russian society, especially given that the number of books reported by peasants exceeds not only the size of the private library of a typical working-class family, but also the collection of volumes held by the average clerical worker. Even if we limit ‘high culture’ to reading ‘serious’ books, we are still disturbed by the picture of peasants coming home after field work to devote themselves to ‘higher culture’. It hardly confoms to the stereotypical view. As to the general trends reflected in these results, we may say that the intelligentsia is the chief consumer of sophisticated culture. The cultural status of representatives of private business is lower. Both facts highlight the essential source of disparity between cultural barriers and economic stratification in the contemporary world. According to Bourdieu, the basic dividing line within a dominant class runs between the bourgeoisie-which stands out with its surplus of economic capital but poverty of cultural participation-and the intelligentsia, among whom the situation is exactly the reverse. This internal division still persists even if the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie exhibit the same level of cultural activity-in such a case it runs horizontally. The intelligentsia may, for example, prefer aesthetic modernism, while the typical bourgeois tends to be more appreciative of the Baroque. This generic ‘hierarchy of lifestyles’, with the intelligentsia on top, is evidentinBulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. What may be true of Russia is that the replacement of the intelligentsia by bigger business in the role of carrier of a superior style indicates a closerlink between economic status and culture. This might lead, in turn, to greater consolidation of the global hierarchy and social distances in Russia. Such an interpretation would be convincing provided the larger owners in Russia were firmly on the top of the economic ladder, as generally

138

occurred in the other five countries. But the Russian case was exceptional in that inequalities of incomes also diverged from the dominant shape. One should recall that everywhere else owners with employees were better rewarded than lower-level, self-employed owners. In Russia, large owners received lower incomes than the self-employed although they were financially better off than the intelligentsia. If one combines hierarchy of incomes with hierarchy of cultural barriers, the resulting configuration of economic-cultural distances appears to be more confused than consolidated. Socialdifferentiationin Russia may be epitomized with the word ‘orthogonal’. The axes of differentiation are ‘orthogonal’ insofar as they are independent in a statistical sense. In Russia, the low correlations indeed look impressive: how can one interpret, for example, the following case of decomposition of cultural and economic dimensions? In five countries, the individuals who engaged in greater cultural activity enjoyed higher incomes, whilst in Russia, on the contrary, they obtained relatively lower incomes.Partial correlation between these two variables was not so high, but was positive and statistically significant in Bulgaria (O.OS), the Czech Republic (0.01), Hungary (0.07), Poland (0.02), and Slovakia (0.03). In Russia, on the otherhand, we found a negative value of -0.01. Although in Russia the cultural distances sustained their distinctiveness in comparison to theeconomic hierarchy-as everywherethey differed from the dominant pattern.

INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSFER OF CULTURAL CAPITAL VERSUS EFFECT OF EDUCATION AND OCCUPATIONAL STATUS Finally, we shall attempt to investigate the mechanisms underlying cultural participation. Lifestyle derives from persistent habits. Something that resides in our personality must have its roots in socialization going back to childhood. Parents who themselves attended theaters and listened to classical music must have influenced their children to pursue those customs in adulthood. Spending one’s childhood in a ‘cultured’ household must also be expected to foster a preference for reading classics rather than restricting one’scultural activity to watching TV serials. Higher education also tends to stimulate ‘higher’ cultural needs, as do jobs which require intellectual flexibility and a wide cognitive perspective.

139

We must therefore consider the effects of, on the one hand, customs and habits inbred by family background, and on the other, the educational status and occupational experiences of adulthood. We shall address two questions. First, whichof these two determinants more strongly affected cultural participation? Second, did their effects vary across our sixcountries?

Table 29. Mzdtiple mgression analysisof cdtural participation. Partial correlation coeflcients (x 100) Independent variables

Bulgaria

0.0 Occupational status of father Cultural participation of parents 10.1** (synthetic index) Years of schooling andoccupa- 7.5"" tional status scale 0.2** Family incomes and index of material position 0.0 Sex 0.4** Religious denomination 0.5"" Size of place of residence 0.0 Age R2 0.48

Czech Hungary Republic 0.1** 15.9**

0.0 7.4""

10.4** 4.9**

Poland

Russia Slovakia

0.0 6.0""

0.1 1 1.8**

10.4**

7.3* *

5.4**

0.1

09"

0.2**

1.8** 0.0 0.0 0.3** 0.38

1.1**

0.4**

0.7*

3.0** 0.4"" 0.5** 0.8" 0.43

1.3** -

0.6** 0.2* 0.7** 0.0 0.49

0.3** 0.0 0.50

0.1 15.8""

-

0.4** 0.0 0.39

** p
The data presented in Table 29 report partial correlation coefficients in the OLS regression modelwhichallow us to assess the relative weight of determinants of superior lifestyle in a broader context. One can see that in each society, both effects-cultural inheritance and the educational-occupational syndrome-predominated. Of the two, the intergenerational transfer of culture shows up more significantly in Bulgaria, Russia, and-especially-the CzechRepublic and Slovakia. In Poland and Hungary the net effect of family background comes second in terms of relative weight. One's educational career and occupational status seem more important. Are we to accept that the Poles and Hungarians are immersed in sophisticated forms of culture because of their present experiences rather than those derived from the past? And is it really the case that habits ingrained in childhood are less critical?

140

It may be true insofar as we are concerned with net effects. However, turning to the total effect which, in case of fanlily background, also includes transmission of the cultural capital of parents through educational tracks, occupation, and later events in life histories, itturns out that in Hungary and Poland the familybackground affects presentlifestyle no less strongly than in Bulgaria, Russia, Slovakia, 'and the Czech Republic. Total correlation between cultural participation of parents and their offspring in Poland stood at 0.53, and in Hungary at 0.60. This was similar to Bulgaria (0.59), the Czech Republic (0.57),Russia (0.52), andSlovakia (0.53). In fact, the cultural capital of parents is an important reference point for Hungarians and Poles, but more indirectly than elsewhere. Its effect is partly taken over by education and occupational status. That is, cultural background translates mostly into unequal educational and occupational opportunities and into further circumstances of life which characterize one's lifestyle. As regards other effects, we have already learned that cultural activity in its sophisticated forms depends on higher incomes-except in Russia. We may extend this generalization to the effect of overall material status. Higher cultural activity parallels not only higher family incomes, but is displayed also in families better equipped with a refrigerator, video recorder, computer, car, and other material goods. In Table 29 onecansee immediately that material status-which is composed of both effect of family incomes and synthetic index of material positionrelates to cultural participation in a statistically significant way. Nevertheless, it is several times lower than the net effects of the cultural capital of parents and the educational-occupational syndrome. There are four other features ofthese results which are worth noting. Thefirstconcerns substantial gender differences. Women are more strongly engaged in cultural activity than men. This difference is most discernible in the Czech Republic and weakest in Russia. Bulgarian society persists in its-let us say-'indifference' with respect to gender. There was no significant disparity in cultural participation which might be attributed to sex roles-assuming that the net effect can approximate the notion of 'sex roles'. We should recall that we did not find a 'gender gap' in incomes in Bulgaria, a fact which appeared astounding against the background of findings from other countries, We also established in Chapter 5 that in Bulgaria access to lucrative positions in business was as open to women as to men. In the caseof the remaining countries, women in the Czech Republic were clearly ahead of men in their preferences for visiting theaters and

141

the opera, and reading books. Generally, our analyses support what might be intuitively expected-that culture is segmented according to gender.Women tend tocolonize the area closer to symbolic culture (reading, visiting), spiritual questions, and emotional expression, while men are, on average, more ‘practical’ in their predilections. Did cultural tastes depend also on age? Only in the Czech Republic and Slovakia did date of birth independently affect the style of cultural participation. Slovaks tend to engage in cultural activity more and more as they grow older. Inthe Czech Republic, this relationship turned out to be curvilinear. The pattern of male cultural involvement seemed to be mostly fostered (taking declarations at their face value) among the youngest-until their 30s-but also by older respondents (above 60 years of age). The middle-aged did not stand out in terms of magnitude of cultural preferences. There is reason to suppose that they were preoccupied with work and coping withmaterial hardships. It can also be seen that access to superior culture depends on residential area-with theexceptionof Slovakia. Inthe five remaining countries, living in big cities opened up wider opportunities to plunge into a much broader cultural reservoir. Importantly, neither university diploma, higher occupational status, nor sociocultural capital, deriving from a better family background, eliminated the cultural disparity between urban agglomerations, small towns, and the countryside. Our results document the fact that shortcomings in respect of cultural infrastructure in smaller places posed a common problem everywhere, serving as a concrete obstacle to those who aspired to spend their leisure time in a more sophisticated way. But there was also another category: the inhabitants of small towns who had no such expectations, taking the form of a lack of exposure to the magnetic power of big cities and the challenging climate of their culture. True, they could have been forced to demonstrate a ‘cultured’ lifestyle, as the majority of people are. But, in the provinces, one does notneed to prove one’s superiority by means of prestige symbols acquired from the top. Here, the cultural barrier between ‘better’ and ‘worse’ runs at a lower level. It is enough to be considered ‘better’ in the local context because it provides membership of an elite in any event. It is not unusual that something which satisfies the upper class in a small community does not necessarily satisfjr the demands of lower orders living in the metropolis. It depends on the existence of a sharp disparity between the center and provincial cultural life. Finally, we come to the effect of religiosity. We may assume that a comparison of Protestants, Jews, and Catholics in terms of intensity of

142

reading habits--or at least in respect of nunlber of volumes in the household-would place the Catholics at the bottom of the scale. This is what we can predict on thebasis of Weber (1920) and many other studies on the sociology of religion-namely, that cultural preferences and customs are not neutral with respect to religious beliefs. As far as the Jewish religion is concerned, studies ofthe Torah and esteem for education belong to its canonical truths. In Protestantism, in turn, a commitment to education is regarded as a form of self-improvement and constitutes an ethical tenet(Turner, 1991). Since our six national samples failed to cover Jews in sufficient numbers, we could not test these predictions. As regards Protestantism, Evangelicals made up a significant fiaction only in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic (9.3 per cent and 2 per cent anlong adults). We were able to compare only the dominant denominations: Catholics and nonbelievers in Poland; nonbelievers, Orthodox, Muslims, and Catholics in Bulgaria; nonbelievers, Lutherans, Hussites, Czech Brethren, and Catholics in the Czech Republic; and nonbelievers, Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, and Greek Catholics in Slovakia. The correlations which 1 report in Table 30 are a summaly measure of cultural differences between these denominations, indicating the relative weight of these differences net of social origin, education, and the other variables which I controlled for. Since questions on religiosity were not asked in surveys carried out in Hungary and Russia, these countries were omitted from this analysis. As is evident from Table 29, cultural activity was related to religion in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. 1 will briefly explain what relationships stood behind the net effects, something which is not shown in the table. Atheists in Poland adhered to superior culture much more than Catholics, net of education, occupational status, gender, and other social characteristics. They owned also more books-3 15 on average, as compared with 140 in Catholic households. In the Czech Republic, the sophisticated forms of lifestyle attracted nonbelievers most strongly, and Catholics least strongly. As regards size of private library, we found some support for the thesis concerning the reading habits of Protestants. Czech Lutherans reported an average of 3 18 books, whichappeared to constitute the most sizeable private libraries of allthedenominations: a typical Catholic family possessed no more than 2 13 volumes. A relatively higher position on the ladder of denominations-near to the middle--was held by Catholics in Bulgaria whoownedaround138 books. Clearly at the bottom were Muslims, with 2 1 books. In Bulgaria, nonbelievers were least likely to participate

143

in superiorculture.Themostprominent position there was taken by Orthodox Catholics, in terms of both number of books and sophistication of lifestyle.

***

Whatinterpretationcan we puton the empirical findings so far presented? We are led to a concise statement: There is uniformity in patterns of cultural stratification with a narrow margin of intercountrydistinctiveness. This is what one would expect given the well-known similarities inherent in the cultural stratification of the postindustrial world. We are led toconclusionsalongthefollowinglines.InsofarasEastCentral European countries possess features which set them apart from the advanced industrialized countries, they do not give a distinctive shape to cultural stratification. The challenge of addressing the questionof temporal continuity cannot be avoided. Our findings do not address this question at all, which must be taken up by future inquiries into comparative social stratification. It seems that the extent of the intercountry similarities in respect of cultural hierarchies is paralleled by their stability over time. There is coincidence of this kind in a number of areas. It is appropriate here to point to the results of social mobility studies showing invariant openness, in both time and space. Why were cultural patterns found to be less invariant than mobility barriers? If we really believe this tobe the case, we can bring our remarks to a conclusion. In this work, I am seeking obstacles to social transformation in East Central Europe. Unless the nature of cultural stratification has changed considerably over the last few years, we can say that it is having little influence over developmentsin postcommunist societies. Their modest contribution to the theory of systemic transformation notwithstanding, our results have some implications for the theorysoof called universals. The findings presented in this chapter confirm that patterns of cultureandlifestylefunction independently of theother mechanisms of socialstratification.Privateentrepreneurs who were privileged economically held a relatively lower positionin the hierarchy of lifestyles-this speaks directly for the autonomy of culture in relation to other areas of social stratification. Although it has little to do with systemic transformations in EastCentral Europe, it reveals the operation of universal mechanisms shaping social distances and social consciousness.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

CHAPTER 8

RELIGION: A STAGE ON THE ROAD TO MODERNIZATION?

THE QUESTION of religiosity will add to our review of structural levers andblockages in the social transformation of oursix countries. The problem is as old as sociology, resounding as it does in the voices of its ‘founding fathers’. The issue was posed as follows: Beliefs in transcendent forces tend to engender passivity and to reinforce traditional views rather than acceptance of the challenges inherent in new rules of conduct. These sociological ‘truths’ were declared by Saint-Simonand Comte andrecur in systematic studies of contemporaryreligiosity. Obviously, religiosity is not unequivocally linked to impediments to modernizing change. A deep belief in God does not necessarily entail an aversion to risk or to taking responsibility for one’s life pursuits. American society, which is the fatherland of possessive individualism and stands as a symbol of dynamism and boldentrepreneurial attitudes, was noted for its religiosity during the pioneering times of the great settlements and the building of capitalism. Even now, 90 per cent of its citizens-according to the data of General SocialSurveys-declare a belief in God (Davis and Smith, 1982, 96). It seems that, insofar as religion releases more or less positive attitudes to social change, this does not depend on commitment to faith but rather on the nature of the religious faith. The creative role of religion depends also on economic context. Under dynamic development, religious confession may prompt competition and activity not only among Protestants but among Catholics as well. Under stagnation and recession, in turn, it will foster resignation among representatives of various denominations.The mystical and ceremonial Catholicism found in Poland must be quite different to the openCatholicism ‘without God’ as confessed by the Americans, the British, or the Germans.

146

The question of religiosity will complete our study on the differences and similarities of East Central European societies. I will diagnose the degree of durability of religious beliefs on the basis of self-reports of religiosity in relation to two points in time: (i) the date of the interview and (ii) the respondents’ childhood. We cannot put the relationship between religiosity and transformation to a rigorous test on this basis. 1 recognize the lack of appropriate data for such an undertaking, but I shall try at all events to provide speculations and suggestions to help identify the problem of the links between belief in transcendent spiritual forces and systemic change. My inquiry will include only four countries-Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland-because, as already mentioned, in the surveys carried out in Hungary and Russia no questions on religiosity were asked. Before we move on to long-term tendencies in respect of religious faith, it is worth establishing what denominations are present in these four countries and howthey locate in social stratification,

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF RELIGIONS Since the nineteenth century, when questions about the social consequences of religion were addressed in sociology for the first time, religiosity was frequently regarded as an obstacle to rationality. At the same time, various theories contended that religion renders social ties impervious to disintegration. Europe had faced the threat of disintegration at the time of the French Revolution, and the industrial revolution amplified this threat-at least, this has beenthe claim of a number of critics of modernization (see Nisbet, 1957; Bendix, 1960; Bellah, 1970). Each religion instills social ties with its own prescriptions. Religious linkages create social conlmunities, being amalgams of doctrines, sermons, conventions, personal. dispositions, and psychological inclinations. The austerity of a simple arch in a whitewashed Protestant church contrasts with the baroque profusion of Catholic cathedrals; in the latter case, the architectural forms aim to release emotions among bothpriests and worshippers. At the same time, each religion creates its own ethical system which is supposed to regulate life in accordance with given prescriptions. This thesis was advanced by Weber (1920) in his classic studies on Protestantism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It emphasizes that different religions determine secular ethics in different ways.

147

First, religion bears on economic activity. Weber contrasted the contemplative mysticism of Buddhism and Hinduism with the active asceticism of Judaism and Catholicism. According to him, this was the basic dividing line between the religiosity of the West and the East. The conclusions ofThe Protestalzt Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1 992[ 19301) and Gesammelte Aafiatze zaw Religionssociologie do not apply directly to East Central European societies. Nevertheless, they provide a key to the interpretation of the differing impact of religious faiths on modernization. The variety of denominations in East Central Europe makes it easier to disclose relationships between religion and systemic changes. In Tables 30 through 33, I present the distribution of denominations among Bulgarians, Czechs, Poles, and Slovaks. The percentages are reported in the first column. The clearest picture emerges in Poland where, in 1994, 98.2 per cent of the representatives of the adult population declared their membership of the Roman Catholic Church, 1.3 per cent assigned themselves to other denominations (chiefly to the Orthodox and Lutheran), and only 0.5 per cent of women and men declared atheism.

Table 30. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultusal participation, and political involvement anzong atheists and religious denon1ination.r. Bulgaria Atheists and religious denominaPercentage tions

Atheists

Orthodox Catholics Muslims Roman

Family

Individual Years of per ' capita (USD income (USD schooling per month) per month)

Occupational Number of Cultural prestige books participation political

party (X)

26.7 60.2

104 105

107 101

1I .I. 10.8

38.3 38.7

237 253

102 118

22.3 18.6

11.8 0.8

84 97

81 88

7.8 9.7

32.8 33.9

21 138

39 66

6.6 23.1

n.a.

n.a.

1 1.4

40.0

142

1 12

25.0

0.15

0.10

0.28

0.15

0.24

0.24

12.0

Catholics denomiOther 0.5 nations Total/cor100.0 relation ratio

Two points may be of particular interest here. The first concerns the uneven secularization of East Central European countries, as measured in percentages of nonbelievers. The second refers to the variety of denominations. Both underlie an axis of differentiation ranging from intense religiosity (this extreme is occupied by Poland) to pronounced seculariza-

148

tion (the Czech Republic). The latter was the only country where nonbelievers predominated, accounting for 52.5 per cent of adults in 1993. At the same time, Czech society displayed the highest variation of religious options of all six countries. The mostheavilyrepresented-Roman Catholics-accounted for 40.9 per cent, less than in Slovakia (where they amounted to almost 70 per cent) and in Bulgaria, where the most popular confession-Catholic Orthodox-accounted for 60.2 per cent.

Table 3 1. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, participation in ctdture, andpolitical involvement among atheists and religious clenominatio~~s. Czech Republic Atheists and religious denomina-Percentage tions

Family Individual Years of income per ' capita (USD Income (USD schooling per month) per 'Ionth)

Occupational Number of Cultural prestige participation books

Members'1ip Of

p a w (%)

~~~~~

104 52.5 Atheist 94 Roman 40.9 Catholic 107 12.2 2.0 Evangelical 9912.2 2.2 Hussites 98 Czech 1.0 Brethren 5.6Other 150denomi324 36.611.9 1.3 88 89 nations Totalkor100.0 0.07 relation ratio

110 90 99 80 76

0.10

12.8 11.5

41.7 38.6

267 213

104 95

22.1 13.5

12.0

40.9 43.8 39.0

3 18 286 291

108 140 120

12.6 20.3 17.9

0.1 1

0.12

0.21 0.11 0.13

With respect to religiosity, Slovakia was secondafter Poland, clearly far removed from Czech society. In Poland and in the former Czechoslovakia, Catholicism formed a distinct majority, while in Bulgaria it was the Orthodox Church. There was a fraction of Lutheran confessors in Czech society and of the Orthodox denomination in Slovakia. Lutherans were quite numerous (above 9 per cent) in Slovak.society. Greek Catholicism was unique in the latter, as was Islam in Bulgaria. In turn, there were relatively substantial portions of Hussites and Czech Brethren in the Czech Republic-both these churches were founded in the 1920s. The Czech National Church, also referred to as the Czech Hussite Church, was established after separation from Catholicism with a significant portion of the clergy committing themselves to Hussite doctrine. At about the same time, the evangelical Church of Unitas Fratrum (Unity of Brethren) was created, unifying CzechLutheransand reformed Evangelicals (Cywinski, 1982, 155).

149 Table 32. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultural Participation and political involvement amongatheists and religious denominations. Poland and

Atheists religious denomina-Percentage tions

Atheists Catholics Other denomi'

Family Individual Years of income per ' capita (USD Income (USD schooling permonth) per

175 98

0.5 98.2 1.3

90

170 98 84

13.2 10.9 11.4

Occupational Number of Cultural prestige participation books

45.3 39.2 37.4

315 140 168

Of

party (%)

181 97 106

25.0 12.7 4.8

nations

TotaVcor100.00.11 0.15 relation ratio

0.07

0.16 0.120.14 0.09

Table 33. Means of income, education, occupational prestige, cultzrral participation, and political involvement amongatheists and religious denominations. Slovakia Atheists and religious denominaPercentage tions

Atheists Roman Catholics Evangelical Greek Catholics Orthodox

Family

Individual per ' capita (USD Income per month) per month)

Years of schooling

Occupational Number of Cultural prestige books participation

political party (%)

Of

15.4 69.6

108 98

116 98

13.4 11.6

44.1 39.7

226 148

136 92

44.1 39.7

9.3 3.0

105 9711.8

96 93

12.0

41.8 40.9

17441.8 111

97 54

40.9

0.8107

97

38.9 58 1 1.3 176 38.8

Catholics

denomiOther 2.0 nations Total/cor- 0.06 100.0 relation ratio

103 20938.9 11.789

38.91 17

0.140.14 0.11 0.120.140.21

The spiritual development of the Hussite movement, which in the sixteenth century merged with the strongest tendencies within the Reformation-Lutheranism and Calvinism-represents the reformist thread of the church. The epithet 'nation of heretics' applied to the Czechs dates from that time. One of the most influential theses in sociological reflection on religiosity involves the role of Protestantism in the development of capitalism. The Reformation-after initiating a rupture with the traditional mentality and attitudes of the late medieval world-helped to stimulate modernization. The Weberian thesis implies that one long-term consequence of Calvinist discipline and rationality was a retreat from a pas-

150

sive mysticism. Religious norms started to lose their unifying force for the masses who had hitherto inertly subjected themselves to divine will. The Reformation was accompanied by a social pluralization which reshaped social relationships according to the rules of market exchange. The rise of Protestantism, which prompted development of individualism and capitalist rationality, was counterbalanced by Catholicism which came to obstruct the rational challenge of the Protestant faith, at 1 least according to the adherents of this view (see Turner, 199 ). Insofar as this position is accepted, our findings are of significance for the debate on economic rationality and the development of democracy inEast Central Europe. Theyshowthat in the postcommunist countries, facing a host of long-drawn-out reforms, Catholicism and the Orthodox Church are predominant, and Protestant denominations exist in negligible proportions. Nevertheless, even at the outset, essential intercountry differences were apparent. The worldviews of Czechs have been shaped, over recent decades, more by urban identity than by the peasant mentality. We mentioned in Chapter 1 that urban dwellers constituted more than half the Czechpopulation by the 1850s. A number of other historical circumstances can also explain the high secularization in the Czech lands. First,they became an ‘educated nation’ fairly early on. Registers from as early as 1791 report that half of all children attended primary schools, exceptional in Europe as a whole (Wereszycki, 1975, 34). Secondly, a rather negative opinion prevailed in the common mind as regards the role of the Catholic Church in national emancipation. Unlike Slovakia and-especially-Poland, where Catholicism and the incessant fight for independence were inextricably linked, in the Czech lands it was nottheCatholic religion but atheism which released an antiGerman response. The Catholic Church became engraved i n the Czech national memory as a symbol of Habsburg absolutism and the relentless threat o f German political and cultural domination. The liberal intelligentsia accused the Catholic clergy of indifference towards the preservation of national identity (Cywinski, 1982). Thirdly, apart from anticlericalism, the mentality of the Czechs was strongly pervaded, in the nineteenthcentury, by processes of secularization, which paralleled trends taking place at the time in Western Europe. The long-lasting inefficacy of the church in the domains of culture and enlightenment led ultimately to its rejection. The need to seek consolation in the Catholic Church and spirituality in general must have weakened. These needs were satisfied instead in secular circles. Lay attitudes were evident as

15 1

early as the 1920s when the teaching of religion in schools began to be treated as voluntary and was restricted to the youngest age groups (see Alix, 1962). Summary characteristics of their location in social space are given for each denomination in Tables 30-33. They include: mean income, years of schooling, and occupational status (Treiman’s prestige scale), as well as whether they ever belonged to a political party, and, lastly, cultural participation. This spectrum allows one to determine the position of religions in the social hierarchy for Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. First, we ask to what extent religion, or attitude to religion as declared during the interview, stratified persons in social space. Secondly, we ask what this hierarchy looked like and who belonged to specific denominations in terms of educational, economic, and occupational position. Our inquiries show that religion does tend to stratify these societies. Membership of denominations was associated with holding higher or lower positions in the stratification ladder. The hierarchy of denominations appeared rather consistent throughout various dimensions, particularly in Slovakia and Poland. In both countries, the denominations-and nonbelievers-which were better off with respect to economic position consisted also of graduates of higher educational levels, incumbents of occupational roles of relatively higher prestige, and the cultural elite. Obviously, in the latter case one has to assume that membership of such an elite is identified in a valid way by the number of books in a household library and by declared participation in relatively arcane and highly appreciated forms of leisure activity-such as going to the theater or listeningto classical music (we elaborated on their significance ina previous chapter). Asfar as the small minority of nonbelievers in Poland is concerned, it is clear that they held the highest positions as compared to Catholics and representatives of all the remaining churches. What can be further discerned from the Polish data is that divisions based on religion had a discriminatory value. This is revealed in the statistically significant, although relatively low zero-order correlations with incomes, education, and so on, shown in the bottom row of Table 26. They show the ‘discriminatory power’ of attitudes to religion with respect to the social attributes which we employed. In Polish society, the triad ‘Catholicism-atheism-other denominations’ discriminated mostly in respectof cultural participation and family incomes. Equally, in Slovakia atheists were on top in all hierarchies. The second place, on average, was taken by Lutherans. Still, we have very

152

moderate zero-order correlations between religious divisions and our criterion variables. Though far from negligible, their magnitudes should not be exaggerated.Inanyevent, atheism, alongside Lutheranism, looked to be more rewarding in terms of material, social, political, and cultural advancement. Roman Catholics, in turn, and even more Greek Catholics and Orthodox Catholics, tend to be embedded in the lower strata of Slovak society. We shallnotseekto demonstrate the distributions of various denominationsacross socio-occupational categories. However, one must note that they display associations which one could reasonably predict. The percentage of atheists among the Polish intelligentsia was as high as 7.1 per cent, although they accounted for no more than 0.5 per cent in the total sample. They made up 4.8 per cent of semi-professionals and medium-level administrative cadres, whereas among unskilled workers the figure was only 1.5 per cent. As for peasants and agricultural workers,they did notadmittoatheismat all. In Slovakia, atheism found more adherents among the intelligentsia and nonmanual workers than in the lower strata, although the most overrepresented category in this respect was owners with employees-atheists accounted for 25.5 per cent of them relative to15.4 per cent in Slovak society overall. Contrary to Poland and Slovakia, social stratification of religious denominations in Bulgarianand Czech society took place less consistently. Basically, seculars took prominent positions but not in all hierarchies. In the Czech case, such decomposition was evident in the Hussites who, although they had relatively the highest socio-occupational status and cultural capital-with such capital being epitomized by attendance at concerts, ballet performances, or listening to classical nlusic-were, at the same time, relatively underpaid; further, their family incomes fell below the grand mean. The highest family incomes were received by the Evangelicals. Atheists possessed the highest number of books, putting aside the highest figure which was obtained by the residual, and very heterogeneous, category of ‘other’ denominations. What I term decomposition was not displayed in Bulgaria-in the sense of disparity between mean incomes and, say, education, of OrthodoxCatholics, Muslims, and so on. The decomposition resided elsewhere-namely, in that atheists and Orthodox Catholics held much the same, indeed the highest positions in the social hierarchy. In the three othercountries,such a bimodal pattern did not emerge. In Bulgaria, Orthodox Catholicism was the dominant confession, although not to the extent of Catholicism in Slovakia or Poland. In terms of occupational

153

composition, representatives of the Orthodox Church were overrepresented in the service class, and, generally, in nonmanual categories. Among declared atheists, however, we found relatively moreowners and also manual supervisors (technicians and foremen). Interestingly, the higher socio-occupational levels in Bulgaria were overpopulated by the believing intelligentsia-in contrast with Czech, Polish, and Slovak societies, where the highest positions were occupied by the secular intelligentsia. Bulgarian society also saw sharp social contrasts between denominations holding opposite poles in the stratification ladder. Nowhere could one find a counterpart of Muslims who had extremely low earnings and family incomes, and rated especially badly in terms of cultural capital. It appears that a typical Muslim family owned no more than 21 books as compared to an average of 2 12 volumes for the country as a whole. It was only Greek Catholics in Slovakia who, with 54 books, approached Muslims in terms of cultural deprivation.

‘KEEPING FAITH’ Secular attitudes prompt secularization of public life, rationalization of thinking, and liberalization of habits. This contrasts with a commitment to religious faith which rather prevents approval of orientations promoted by the rules of the capitalist market. Drawing on such assumptions, let us examine empirical facts which bespeak the durability of both religious faith and atheism. Certainly, no immediate conclusions may be drawn onthese grounds concerning the role of religion in social transformations. In order to depict the continuing power of religious beliefs, I shall use a simple comparison of two aggregate rates for each country: percentages of believers and nonbelievers at two biographical points, in 1993 and in childhood. These data are included in the first row ofTable 34. In three countries-the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakiareligiosity has been on the decline. One can see this in the decreasing proportions of respondents who declared their membership of a church in childhood as compared to 1993. The biggest switch to secularization took place in Czech society, where the percentage of believers dropped by 15 per cent. The most persistent in their faith were the Poles, who displayed a decline of only 2.5 per cent-this is exactly the difference between the marginal proportions of self-identification with any religion

154

in 1994 and in childhood (the latter obtained by means of retrospective questioning). A quiteopposite tendency-indicating reconversion, in fact-occurred at the same time in Bulgaria, where the percentage of believers increased by 6.9 per cent: nine out of ten newcomers had reconverted to the Orthodox faith.

Table 34. Changes in religiosity. Bztlgariu, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia (%) Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Slovakia Poland

~~~~

Believers in God in childhood minus believers in God i n 1993 Believers in 1993 who believed alsoin 46.2 childhood (% of total) Believers who became atheists (% of total) Atheists in 1993 who were atheistsin35.9 childhood (% of total) 1.2 Individuals changing denomination (% of total) Atheists in childhood who believedin God in 1993 (YOof total)

6.9 65.2

1.2

-

15.2 77.4

7.7 16.5

-2.5

- 6.6

96.6 2.6

25.5

0.9

7.6

1.3

1.1

1.8

0.1

7.2

8.2

1.3

The sociology of religion can provide us with an interpretation of these tendencies. We should see them as pointing to a long-term dynamic in East Central European mentalities. The process has its roots in the widespread transformation of Western civilization over recent decades. Intensive urbanization and industrialization, paralleled by an increase in educational levels and growth of mass culture, has brought about a disintegration of the traditional structures of agrarian society. Theadventurewith communist ideology, perhaps unavoidable inour region, added to this secularization. The secular model of schooling and popular culture ‘fosteredatheism and weakened ties with churches. East Central European countries followed in Western footsteps, if not at the same pace. In any event, Czech society followed more quickly, Poland more hesitantly, whilstBulgaria was a case apart. Notwithstandingsuch secularization, even inthe Czech Republic people becoming nonbelievers were a minority as compared to those who ‘kept faith’,althoughnot necessarily in the same denomination. The data presented in Table 34 reveal that persistent believers-from childhood until 1993”outnumbered those who underwent seculariza-

155

tion, particularly in Poland. There, the former accounted for 96.6 per cent and the latter 2.6 per cent of the adult population. In Bulgaria, the proportion of those becoming nonbelievers was relatively the loweststanding at 1.2 per cent; while in Slovakia it was 7.7 per cent, and in Czech society, where theoutflow was the highest, the percentage of those abandoning religion amounted to 16.5 per cent. Polish society also displayed the lowest representation of zealous nonbelievers-that is, those who had never believed in God, with 0.9 per cent. This group was ‘overrepresented’ in the Czech Republic (35.9 per cent). Our four countries may be placed on a scale determined by rates of religiosity. Dividing 96.6 per cent by 0.9 for Poland we get 107 which reports how far the proportion of persistent believers in Polish society exceededthe percentage of persistent atheists. In Slovakia this ratio stood at 10.2, in Bulgaria at 2.5, and in Czech society it amounted to 1.3.Undoubtedly, Polish society has proved the least susceptible to secularization over recent decades. And the Bulgarian case makes clear that secularization is not necessarily an irreversible phenomenon. It is also interesting to consider patterns of ‘mobility’ throughout the map of denominations (conjoined by the category of atheists). From Table 34, one can see that only a minority changed-in the sense of moving from one denomination to another. If someone moved at all, it was chiefly asanoutflow from religion or reconversion. Therefore, moves on the religious map were radical-either transitions to atheism or reconversions. In Bulgaria, only 1.3 per cent moved from one denomination to another relative to the whole population. In Czech society they stood at 1.2 per cent, in Poland 1.1 per cent, and in Slovakia 1.8 per cent. In order to sum up patterns of religious mobility and inheritance, 1 compiled them in conventional two-way mobility tables (Tables A5 to A8 in the Appendix). It is apparent that the percentage rates on the main diagonal are overwhelming, which upholds the thesis that, in East Central European societies at least, the propensity to persist in a religious faith prevailed. If we wish to obtain a better understanding of such mobility, the logic of ourposition indicates clearly enough the direction that we should take. We should turn to examine in what respects the category of persistent nonbelievers-from childhood onwards-differed from persons who were brought up in a religious faith and retained it. In looking for differences in the social composition of these categories, I employed logistic regression models. The dependent variables were zero-one

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coded dichotomies of categories stable in a religious faith (contrasted with those who did otherwise), and dichotomies o f various configurations of movers. Independent variables included years of schooling, social origin, sex, and other social characteristics which might have been taken into account. As far as net effectsof gender, social origin, Communist Party membership, cultural participation, and a number of other social characteristics are concerned, one can scarcely detect systematic or substantial differences between persistent believers, various categories of movers, and nonbelievers. To put it in more technical terms, the occupational status ofthefather in Poland,forexample, did not differentiate between Catholics and nonbelievers. The educational level of the mother mattered more, althoughit proved statistically insignificant. Indeed, all these findings lend support to what we know about the social map of religiosity. Since no clear patterns were revealed, we shall not dwell on these data.

***

Religiosity has notbeen at the core of my study, hence I did not attempt to address questions considered most important in studies of religion, concerning, for example, the comprehension of self, the limits of rationality, or the role of the believing community in social integration. However, insofar as we are examining social macrostructure in its national contexts, it seemed advisable to incorporate religiosity, onthe assumption that it affects the prospects of social transformation in postcommunist countries. In sum, we may say that in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia, the hierarchy of denominations came to parallel stratification patterns. What recurred across all countries was that nonbelievers held the highest socioeconomic positions, and lower positions were occupied by Catholics, Greek Catholics, and Muslims. So far, we know little about the links between religion and social stratification in East Central Europe, especially in a cross-national perspective. Our findings might, to some degree, be both revealing and productive of further discussion. We have established that holders of the highest positions-atheistswho supported modernization and were more inclined to favor liberalization of the economy were a negligible group in Poland. This would suggest a widespread traditionalism amongst Poles, but the same might have been true of Bulgarians, the only society where a revival of religiosity occurred. Conversely, atheism was most triumphant in the Czech

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Republic, where nonbelievers accounted for more than half of all adults in 1993. The patterns which have shown up in our four countries reflect different historical roots, related to the spiritual influence of the churches in East Central Europe. Cywinski (1982, 38) maintains that, starting from the second half of the nineteenth century, a definite expansion of the bourgeois, urbanized, and secular mentality took place, involving rejection of the Christian tradition. National cultures split into two components: the peasant-Christian and the secular (originating in the intelligentsia). However, East Central Europe remained, on the whole, under the influence of traditional agrarian structures. An exceptional case was Czech society, where urban culture came earlier and more completely suffused the social mind.

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CONCLUSIONS

MODERN AND TRADITIONAL SOCIAL STRUCTURES

OUR CONCERN has been social stratification in six East Central European countries. Cross-national variations and similarities became the focus of a multifaceted discussion which extended beyond the issues of social hierarchies, mobility barriers, and the openness of social structures. Finally, we examined postcommunist societies at the beginning of the 1990s. Bythen, it had become routine, in relation to the economy, to provide prescriptions for a smoothtransition from command etatism to a modernsystem ruled by the capitalist market. In the case of social stratification, one can scarcely prescribe a valid scenario of this kind. The dynamics of social macrostructure require cautious interpretation, bearing in mind that processes ‘snapped’ at a single point in time necessarily provide only a glimpse of long-term nonlinear trends, underpinned by mechanisms subject to a different logic. They may converge with systemic transformation by pure coincidence. Finally, we cannot escape the basic question of the links between systemic transformation and the dynamics of social stratification in the six countries. Some attempts must also be made to locate postcommunist societies on their way to capitalism and modernization-the ‘retreat from communism’ is what is generally referred to in such contexts, both in theoretical debatesand empirical studies. As far as the movement along the path to the market system is concerned, wecan conclude that, by the beginning of the 199Os, three countries-Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland-appeared to be the most advanced. Hungary appears to be in the lead: Hungarians had the highest incomes, enjoying the highest earnings and family incomes per capitaincomparison to the other five countries. This indicates highereconomic development. Hungary was ahead of all other East

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Central European countries in respect of the efficiency of its production, quality of services, and effectiveness of work. GNP per capita in 1992 stood at USD 3,6 17 in Hungary, followed by the Czech Republic and Poland with, respectively, USD 2,903 and USD 2,197 (EBRD, 1996). They could afford to allocate more to incomes in 1993-to emphasize this date-at the time when, after winning a majority of votes in the parliamentary elections, the center-left alliance of Gyula Horn took over. Afterwards, the new government was faced with having to make deep budgetary cuts in social welfare. At the time of writing-1999I can report that the Hungarian economy has slowed down andits material standard of living has declined, although it does not seem that the economic recession has halted or reversed the processes of stratification which we describe as having occurred in 1993. Apart from having the highest incomes, Hungary was also closer to having a meritocratic system of distribution. Meritocracy is built into the structures of the capitalist market of Western societies, and we can see that in Hungary and Poland incomes were morestrongly determined by individual attainments than in the other four countries. For Hungary and Poland, I obtained significant results for the effects on earnings of education, supervisory position, and occupational status, whichmay indicate the nontrivial weight of merit. Meritocracy wasalso reflected in the ordering of basic socio-occupational strata. Only in Hungary and Poland did the intelligentsia and managerial cadres find themselves at the top of thehierarchy of incomes. They were doingbetter than owners who, under the communist system, had held the highest positions in the hierarchy of economic benefits. In the 1990s, professional and managerial skills were more highly priced on the labor market in comparison to-small and medium-sized-ownership. Poland was in the lead with respect to the rules of reward: it followed the rules of meritocracy even more closely than Hungary. Education in Poland weighed most in the differentiation of incomes. Equally, the effect of supervisory position appeared strongest in Poland. Managerial cadres and supervisors were better rewarded in relation to their position on theorganizational ladder. What lowered Poland’s rank on the international ladder was its underdeveloped occupational structure. It conformed to traditional structures in one respect-namely, in the significant presence of apeasantry, which accounted for as much as 13-14 per cent of all economically active persons, although ‘traditional’ should not be taken to imply the existence of a feudal estate! The situation of Polish agriculture owed more

161

to the indulgent policies of the socialist state than to the feudal past. I amreferringto a specific variant of political-noteconomicliberalism fostered by the communist authorities. They were able to secure-against the original intentions of government and ideological principles-a quiet existence for all (even economically inefficient) farms. Thispolicyproduced a unique-for East Central Europe-combination of precapitalist activity and enforced etatism. The strength of the traditional heritage in Poland was also expressed by the population’s religiosity. In the first half of the 199Os, Polish society recorded the lowest percentage of atheists-it did not exceed 1 per cent. All the rest, excludingthe 1 per cent minority ofother denominations, declared membership of the Catholic Church. In some important respects, Polish society stands in significant contrast to Czech society. The percentage of farm owners in the Czech occupational structure has been low. Given the low proportion of farmers inthe generation of fathers and grandfathers, Czech society was the least peasantified of all countries in the region. Only in the Czech lands did manual workers already prevail in the generation of grandfathers of persons surveyed in 1993, unlike the other five countries where farm owners predominated. The second attribute of their modernization may be their low levels of religiosity. The Czechs represent the most secularized society, with membership of all churches encompassing less than SO per cent of adults. The withdrawal of Czechs from religion has proceeded most rapidly in recent decades. The level of believers was 15 per cent lower in 1993 incomparison to the period of childhood-according to the declarations given by representatives of the adult population in 1993. Aside from modern occupational structures and secularization, the Czechs also received quite substantial incomes-slightly higher, on average, than in Poland, and far exceeding the level of incomes in Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Russia. In sum, two patterns emerge: one, of a leading triad (Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland), closely fitting the ‘core model’ of social hierarchies and underlying mechanisms of stratification typical of modern capitalist economies; and a second, comprising Russia and Bulgaria, which diverged fromthecoremodel. Slovakia seemed to locate between the richer northwestand the twopoorer countries of southeast Europe. Russia appeared farthest from the West. Their citizens received the lowest earnings and family incomes per capita. With a monthly USD 23 per capita, Russia was ranked rather among developing countries, at

162

least as regards standard of living. The Russian economy lagged well behind, although low incomesdepended on many other determinants. Ontheone hand, state-owned enterprises could not afford to pay well, but those working in private firms did disproportionately well, resulting in extreme disparity of incomes. The division into private and state sectors determined economic stratification in Russia much more than in thefive other societies. Ontheotherhand,with the extremely low level of average incomes-approaching subsistence levels comparable to the developing world-Russian society featured the greatest dispersion of incomes around the mean. It may be relevant to note that a low material standard of living was the norm for the majority in Russia-which contrasted with the extremely privileged position of the financial elite. Many studies have consistently revealed that sharp economic inequalities are typical of stagnant socioeconomic systems and are amplified even more in societieswhichhave entered the path of accelerated growth. Young postcolonial societies saw polarized economic inequalities in the 1950s and 1960s. The same pattern was repeated in Russia at the beginning of the 1990s. The privileged position of small and medium-sized owners and, generally, the private sector, is linked to two other phenomena which make socialstratification in Russia divergent from that of contemporary Western countries. In the West, the ‘old middle classes’-that is, small business-are located rather in the middle of the stratification ladder. Over the course of the twentieth century they have withered away, a process which many sociologists regard as consonant with the modernization of social structures. In East Central Europe, similar trends were displayed in Hungary and Poland, where small owners also moved ‘off stage’. Russian society still diverged from this pattern. The monetary gap between owners and other basic strata, including the intelligentsia and managers, was so great that private business in Russia had no counterpart-as a financial elite-in the other five countries. In Russia, the ‘old middle classes’ were at the top, reminiscent of their splendid days in VictorianEngland. Of course, there was nothing else in common between Russian owners and the old British middle class, aside from holding nominally the same occupationalpositions, being ‘owners’, and performing similar rolesinthedivision of labor. One may reasonably assume that the emerging ‘old middle class’ in Russia is completely unique in social origin, occupational career, lifestyle, and mentality. Small and medium-

163

sized business in this country had a peculiar flavor, ensuing from the type of privatization implemented in Russia in the 1990s. Owners recruited themselves in statistically significant proportions from the former communist nomenklatura-much more so than in other postcommunist societies. Businessmen came from the top of the party and the managerial elite of socialist enterprises, and, insofar as the transition from nomenklatura membership was paralleled by a large influx of the intelligentsia, owners became the dominant class in Russia not only in an economic but also in a cultural sense. According to our findings, ownerswere most committed to sophisticated forms of lifestyle and their libraries were more sizeable than those of the intelligentsia. One can say that, in terms oflife-career patterns, it was rather a ‘new’ middle class in the guise of the ‘old’. In Russia, the rules of reward also appeared completely at odds with the logic of postindustrialism. Our analyses revealed that meritocracy in Russia did not function. Levels of income were associated to some extent with education and with occupational status, and responsibility was associated with supervisory positions, but these relationships were weaker thanin Poland, Hungary, or Slovakia. In state-owned firms, educational-occupational indices of meritocracy did not differentiate incomes at all; in fact, we found that level of education and income seemed inversely related. In Bulgarian society, economic contrasts were less extreme, but income levels were still exceedingly low. Bulgarians had not moved away from the political culture of ‘egalitarian authoritarianism’, the pattern cultivated by, and inherited from, the old regime. Our results allow us to make another point in relation to modernization in East Central European societies. What appeared to be a Bulgarian peculiarity was the increase in religiosity. Only in Bulgaria did the percentage of persons admitting to a belief in God in 1993 exceed (by 6 per cent) the rate established by means of retrospective questions in respect of religiosity in childhood. In Czech, Polish, and Slovak societies, the dominant trend turned out to be secularization, which was reflected in the decline of the relative numbers of the faithful.

*** Some of these relationships deserve to be called regularities, and I would see them as pointing to systemic changes in the economy, institutional structures, and public life. When analyzed from this point of

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view, standard mobility tables and orderings of class segments yielded results which allow one to makea number of comments ofa theoretical nature concerning the transformations going on in East Central Europe. A dramatic notion at the heart of many interpretations is the so-called institutional void, a theory which emphasizes the generally chaotic nature of the period of transition. Exponents of this metaphor accompany it with the view that the collapse of communism has resulted in the disorganization of the state (Blanchard et al., 1991; Jowitt, 1991; Bunce and Csandi, 1992). The prognoses based onthe existence of this ‘void’ are not optimistic, especially not for such values as social order, public security, stability of norms, andintegration. This rhetorical formula is not indisputable. The institutional aspect of the ‘void’ may be left to political scientists who transferred this concept fi-om analyses of political systems for the purpose of depicting the transitional stages of East Central Europe, particularly the dynamics of the administrative structures of the postcommunist state. As regards social structures, the concept of the ‘void’ seems inapplicable, however. Recall that, according to our data, social mobility in the 1990s persisted at the same level as before the collapse of the communist regimes and that patterns of intergenerational movements did not change either. This means that a number of impedimentsto movement in social space were much the same as before. Furthermore, nothing changed, practically speaking, in the area of cultural divisions, where the intelligentsia everywhere (except Russia) remained the ‘dominant class’. Its representatives, without interruption, determined whatwas right andwrong in cultural matters. True, social stratification in the 1990s did appear to change in the economic dimension. In particular, it approached the hierarchy of incomes in capitalist countries. In Hungary and Poland, skilled workers and owners moved downto take the position assigned them by the logic of distribution generic to postindustrial economies. Stability prevailing overchangeemphasizes the phenomenonof continuity as inherent in the social macrostructure. This conclusion follows from our cross-national comparisons and I would subscribe to the idea of the powerful logic of industrialism forcing all economically advanced societies ontoconvergent paths ofdevelopment. Despite the fundamental transformations in political system and economy, the configuration of social distances, barriers, and hierarchies remained basically intact. They are much the same as before the change of the political-economic formation. Relationships between social origin, education, individual attainments, and rewards havealso remained unaltered.

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The thesis concerning ‘continuity’ looks more impressive than those which assert the existence of a ‘void’. Certainly, some of the newly emerging aspects may be attributed to the transformation of the stratification system. However, the dynamics of social stratification are inherently processual. Deep systemic changes tend to shape social distances and divisions after some delay, and one should not expect radical ruptures. The effects of institutional transformation in politics and the economy accumulate slowly but may, finally, take ona qualitatively distinct shape. We have demonstrated that stratification systems differed in East Central European countries. No unitary model of structural change in East Central Europe exists, although that does not mean that there are no evolutionary regularities atall. Three East Central European ‘minidragons’ had different experiences getting to where they are today, while revealing similar trajectories of transition. On the one hand, we had Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland; on the other, Russia and Bulgaria. Slovakia stood somewhat to one side. On the basis of a number of variables pertaining to social stratification, this simple typology provides a surprisingly stable form of classification. Moreover, the pattern with the CzechRepublic, Hungary, and Poland, the ‘postcommunist successstories’, followed by Slovakia, and then Bulgaria and Russia lagging well behind, resembles other classificatory schema of this sort, designed to provide an economic, political, cultural, and ethnic portrayal of the important sociopolitical variables behind the change of regime and the history leading to it (see Offe, 1996, 14; Snyder and Vachludova, 1997, 10-1 1). Certainly, Poland and Hungary, two countries with a high level of national integration and a strong record of internal anticommunist opposition, differ in other respects, such as geostrategic location between West and East, religious structure, and intensity of ethnic tensions. Still, the similarities are pronounced. Given the prospects of a far-reaching uniformity enforced by the market economy, we should be careful about proclaiming hrther divergence in coming years. Such separation as exists may still increase but be paralleled by convergence in crucial areas. It may well be that, several years hence, the concept of East Central Europe will preserve only its geographical connotations. Then the label ‘postcommunist’ will have become an item of historical philology, a vestige of a rapidly vanishing past and devoid of any meaningful reference to distinct patterns of stratification.

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APPENDIX'

Project, samples, and data. The present volume forms part of an international project-'Social Stratification in East Central Europe after 1989'"investigating transformations to postcommunist regimes in East Central Europe. The project was initiated in the USA by Ivan Szelhyi and Donald J. Treiman, both from the University of California, Los Angeles, who became the principal investigators. This was a collaborative project which included six countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia. Collaborators from each of the countries met approximately twice a year, first to design the research and develop the questionnaire, then to coordinate fieldwork procedures and post-fieldwork data processing, and finally to analyze the data. The project was funded with grants from the US National Science Foundation (SES 91 11722 and SBR 9310395), the US National Council for Soviet and East Central European Research (806-29), and the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO). In addition, various grants supported the research inindividual countries. The research questions were based on identification of the processes which elucidate the consequences of political and institutional change. The principal research themes focused on changes occurring in political, economic, and cultural elites, as well as on changes going on in the general population. The project addressed theoretical issues concerning reproduction and circulation of elites under the emerging systems, conversion of one type of asset into another, cross-national differences and similarities in mobility patterns and status attainment processes, political involvement, migration, spatial mobility, housing, national identities, and religiosity. To test a number of hypotheses specified in these areas, research done within the project was split into two parts: (i) an assessment of changes in social stratification in the general population, and (ii) an analysis of the changing bases of recruitment into the 'elites'. My study was based on the data from general population surveys.

168

Using a questionnaire common to all countries, national probability samples were surveyed in five of the six countries in 1993; in Poland, due to the lack of local funds, data collection was delayed until 1994. The samples were designed to achieve random selection of men and women aged between 20 and 69. In Bulgaria and Poland, the sampling unit was the individual; in the four remaining countries ‘housing units’ were selected (this is practically identical with the definition of ‘household’). In Bulgaria, 4,921 interviews were held, 5,621 in the Czech Republic, 4,285 in Hungary, 4,734 in Russia, and 4,285 in Slovakia. In Poland, due to a lack of local funding, the sample was reduced-here we ended up with3,521 interviews. The design of the survey called for a strictly comparable wording of questions, and variation in response categories onlywhere variation in national circumstances-for example, differentnationaldistributionswarranted it. Country teams were free to add local questions at the end of the questionnaire. To ensure comparability, the questionnaire was translated into each local language and then retranslated into English; the retranslated versions were compared as a group by a multilingual team and discrepancies in wording corrected. The questionnaire was divided into twenty-two parts including, among other things: education history roster, activity history roster, incomes, business history roster, political difficulties (political persecution), incomes, social origin history roster (questions on education and occupational activity of father,mother,grandfather, spouses), respondent’s property, residential history roster, housing situation, lifestyle, political party history roster,ancestry, and religion. Probability samples of members of the old elite and the new elite in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Slovakia were also surveyed, using a similar but not identical questionnaire (see Szelinyi and Szelinyi, 1995). Thedatawerecoded by the UCLA team. A computer edit then checked the data for both range and logic errors. Next, the country files were created. In the last step they were merged into the main file from the general population surveys. Variables. In order to make the data easier to work with, a number of variables were construed. All occupations were coded initially into an expanded version of the 1988 edition of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). All ISCO codes were then recoded into the Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero occupational class categories (EGP) (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992, 35-47), the Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale (Treiman, 1977), and a num-

169

ber of other scales. In allanalyses presented in this book, where I report statistics for class segments and socio-occupational categories or strata, the EGP is employed in a more or less expanded version. In Chapters 6 and 7, I refer to ‘occupational status’ of respondent or father which is indexed by Treiman’s prestige scores. As regards incomes, I used both family incomes and individual incomes per month. They were standardized to US dollars on the basis of market exchange rates. For all countries except Poland and Russia, the average exchange rates for 1992 were used since respondents were asked to report 1992 incomes. For these two countries, we used the average exchange rates when the survey was in the field, since respondents were for the most part asked to report their current incomes. In Chapters 4, 7, and 8, I used summary indices of material position and cultural participation. An index of material position (as introduced for the first time in Chapter 4) was created as a sum of zero-one codes assigned to six variables indicating whether respondent owned (l=own, O=otherwise): a microwave oven, a motor vehicle, a personal computer, a satellite receiver, a separate deep freeze, and/or a telephone. Respondents owning all six items were assigned 100, that is, 100 per cent ownership; those who owned five items received 83.3, that is, lower by onesixth, and so on. In Chapters 7 and 8, I refer to the index of cultural participation of respondents and their parents. I created this index on the basis of five questions spelled out as follows: ‘Now we would like to know some of the things your mother and father did when you were growing upwhen you were around 14 years old. How often did your parents do any of the following things: (i) go to art museums or art exhibitions; (ii) go to a ballet, opera, theater, or concert; (iii) listen to classical music at home; (iv) read serious books, on topics such as history, geography, science, or literature; (v) go to the library? 0-never; 1-less than once a year; 2-once or twice a year; 3-a few times a year; 4-around once a month; 5-several times monthly or once a week.’ I checked whether these items measured distinct dimensions of cultural participation. A factor analysis of the questions used in the scales indicated that there was indeed one main factor. In the next step I obtained factor scores for each respondent using the standard procedure of regression. The resulting scale is interpretable as asynthetic index of the cultural participation of parents. In an identical way, respondents were asked about their own cultural activities. Also in this case, factor analysis revealed one main factor un-

170

derlying the five questions. Respectively, factor scores for each respondent were produced which I referred to the index of cultural participation. In Table 26 (Chapter 7) I report the mean values of this index related to the grand meanin the sample. In regression models I refelred to the original factor scores. As concerns other frequently used variables, I refer to 'urban'-this was created from information on size of place of residence. Inhabitants of cities were coded 1, with all others assigned 0. Table A1 . Percentage of car owners Socio-occupational categories Bulgaria

Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

63.3 Higher professionals and man- 35.4 61.368.367.8 agers 48.7 Semi-professionals 57.8 Routine nonmanual, sales and 50.3 53.2 service workers Owners with employees 82.7 72.9 Owners without employees 45.5 70.1 Lower-grade technicians 66.0 59.0 Skilled workers 41.7 50.3 Unskilled workers 31.0 41.6 Agricultural workers 19.1 40.7 Farmers 21.3 73.9 Total 40.3 52.4 Correlation ratio 0.20 0.28

65.3 57.9 46.5

53.2 46.0

26.8 20.6

52.9 47.9

79.1 66.0 48.0 38.7 28.1 15.8 48.5 42.0 0.32

83.0 68.6 55.1 40.2 33.0 25.0 43.2 45.9 0.25

49.3 31.2 26.2 20.8 20.5 28.3 25.0 25.3 0.15

72.5 56.4 55.1 43.9 36.7 30.1 60.0 46.5 0.20

Table A2. Standardized eflects of nomenklatura membershipin 1988, ownership offirnz in 1988, education, sex, age, and sizeofplace of residence in logistic regressionof being anowner in 1993-94 Effects of: Owner in 1988 (l=owner) Membership of nomenklatura in 1988 (1=member) Years of schooling Sex Age Size of place ofresidence

** p
Czech Bulgaria Republic Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia 0.23"" 0.05"

0.02 0.06""

0.41** 0.03

0.34"" 0.04"

0.38"" 0.10""

0.21"" 0.04*

0.08** 0.00 0.12"" 0.00

0.04* 0.1 1** 0.11** 0.05

0.07** 0.04* 0.05* 0.00

0.03** 0.1 I * 0.11"" 0.14** 0.08** 0.1 1"" 0.09'" 0.06** 0.05

0.08"" 0.13** 0.00

171 Table A3. Stnndurdized effects i n logistic regr-essionof being an owner in 1993-94 Czech Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Republic

Effects of:

Bulgaria

Owner in first job (1 =owner) Years of schooling Sex Age

0.35**

O.IS**

0.22**

0.18""

0.27**

0.26**

0.04 0.00 0.00

0.04" 0.12** 0.06""

0.07""

0.10**

0.05* 0.00

0.14**

0.09* 0.17** 0.00

0.07** 0.15"" 0.00

.

0.00

** p
Effects of:

Bulgaria

Owner i n first job ( 1=owner) Years of schooling Sex Age

0.59**

0.56**

0.29""

0.33**

0.00

O.S7**

0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.06

0.00 0.00 0.00

0.08" 0.06** 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.07

0.00

** p
Table AS. Religion in childiwod bv religion in 1994 (% of total). Polcmd Religion in 1994 what Inreligion were

No religion Catholic Other Total

you brought up?

No religion Catholic Other Total

0.4 2.5 1.9 0.3

0.0 96.3 0.3 95.3

0.0 0.7 I .O 1.7

0.5 98.2 1.3 100.0

172 Table A6. Religion in clzildhood by religion in 1993 (% of total). Bulgaria Religion in 1993 religion

In what religion were you brought No up?

Orthodox Muslim Catholic Other Total

~~~

21.5 1.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 26.6

No religion Orthodox Catholic Muslim Catholic Other Total

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 0.8

0.7 0.0 1 1.O 0.0 0.0 11.7

7.3 52.8 0.1 0.0 0.0 6.3

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.5

33.6 54.0 11.3 0.8 0.3 100.0

Table A7. Religion in childhood by religionin 1993 (% of total). Czech Republic Religion in 1993 EvangeCzech In what religion were No Catholic up? Brethren lical religion brought you ~~

Total Hussite Other

~

No religion Roman Catholic Evangelical Czech Brethren Hussite Other Total

35.9 12.9 0.9 0.9

0.9 39.8

1.5

0.1 0.3

0.6 52.4

0.0 0.0

41.0

0.1 0.1 1.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.1

0.0 0.10.3 0.0 0.8 0.0 0.0 1.0

0.1 0.2

0.2

0.0 0.0 2.0 0.0 2.2

0.0 0.0 0.1 0.6 1.3

37.2 53.4 2.9 1.8 3.7 1.0 100.0

Table AS. Religion in childhood by religion i n I993 (% of total). Slovakia Religion in 1993 In what religion were Catholiclical religion up? brought you

No religion Roman Catholic Evangelical Orthodox Catholic Greek Catholic Other Total

No

7.6 5.9 1.3 0.0 0.3 0.0 15.3

EvangeCatholic Orthodox 0.6 68.9 0.1 0.0 0.4 0.0 69.6 0.6

0.1 0.3 8.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 9.3

0.0 0.00.3 0.0 0.6 0.0 0.0 1.9

Greek

Total Other

0.0 0.2 0.0

0.1

0.0 2.8 0.0 3.2

0.1 0.0 0.0 1.4

8.6 75.1 10.3 0.8 3.6 1.6 100.0

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I N D E X OF AUTHORS

Alix, Ch., 151 Alwin, D. F., 130 Andorka, R., 20,27-28, Aron, R., 2 Atkinson, A. B., 77 Balcerowicz, L., 4 Barber, B., 130 Bechhoffer, F. 74 Beck, U. 11 Bell, D., 2, 1 1, 122 Bellah, R. N., 147 Bendix, R., 2, 130, 147 Berg, I., 122 Blackbum, R., 73 Blanchard, O., I61 Boguszak, M., 27 Bourdieu, P., 93 Breen, R., 46 Browning, L., 12 Bunce, V., 164 Burawoy, M., 121 Burgess, E., 130 Burrows, R., I 1, 14 Clark, C., 11 Cohen, J., 114, 119 Cohen, P., 1 14, 1 19 Critchiey, F. 47 Crompton, R., 11 Cuber, J. P., 130 Curran, J., 14, 73 Cywinski, B., 148, 1SO, 157

Csandi, M. 164 Dahrendorf, R., 2 Davis J. A., 145 7 Diewald, M., De Graaf, P., 27,94, 130 Di Maggio, 93, I30 Domanski, H., 45,47-48,50-5 1, 73, 107, 109, 116-1 17, 122 Dunleavy, P., 130 Elliot, By73 Erikson, R., 14,26,46-47, 166 Esping-Andersen, G., 12,29,45,69, 108 Esser, J., 11 Featherman, D. L., 26,27-28,77 Featherstone, M., 1 1, 130 Fisher, A. G. B., 1 1 Frykman, J., 130 Fuchs, V. E., 121 Gabal, I., 130 Gajdar, I. 106 Galbraith, J. K., 2 Ganzeboom, H., 27,47 Gershuny, J., 12 Giddens, A., 46 Gilbert, N.,1 1 Glass, D., 28 Goffe, M.74, Goldthorpe, J. H., 14,26,42,46-47, 168 Goodman, L., 35,38

184 Gordon, M. 130 Grusky, D. 2,26, Gustafsson, B., 11 Haller, M.,27,47 Hamnett, C., 130 Hankiss, E., 93,98 Hardiman, N.,11 Harvey, D., 131 Hauser, R, 2,26-28,34-3577, 109 Headey, B., 48 Heath, A. C., 122 Heyns, B. 107 Hodge, R. W., 32 Hodson, R., 122 Hoggart, R., 130 Hollinger, M., 47 Hout, M., 3 5 4 7

Littlejohn, J., 130 Lofgren, O., 1930 Mach, B. W., 7,27 Machonin, P., 48 Maine, H. J. S., 130 Marini, M. M., 109 Marshall, G., 3,27 Martin, B., 12, 121 Mateju, P., 48 Mathews, S., 7 Micklewright, J., 77 Mills, C. W. 130 Miles, I., 12 Mitchell, J., 47 Mohr, J., 94, 130 Nee, V., 7, 107 Nisbet, R.A,, 147

Tshii-Kuntz, M., 35 Jawlinski, G., 106 Jencks, C., 109 Jones, F. L., 27 Jowitt, K., 164

O'Donnel, G., 3 Offe, C., 3, 1 1, 165 Park, R., 130 McGibbon & Kee. Parkin, F., 46 Parrot, B., 7 Payne, C.,47 Payne, G., 27 Portocarero, L., 14, 166 Psacharopoulos, G., 77

Kahl, J., 130 Kalleberg,A. L., 122 Kaminski, B., 1 16, 120 Kenkel, W. F., 130 Klecka, W. R., 52 Kolankiewicz,G., 107 Kolosi, T., 48 Kornai, J., 1 16 Kostello, E., 107 Kovacs. J., 3 Krauze, T., 127 Krotov, P., 121 Kuznets, S., 77

Raczynski, Z., 106 Raftery, A. E., 44 Rehakova, B. 48 Reissmann, L., 130 Reskin, B., 109 R6na-Tras, A. 48 Roos, P., 109

Lamont, M. 130 Lane, D. 3,80 Lash, S., 11, 130 Laumann, E., 47 Limy N. 48 Linz, J. 3 Lipset, S. M., 2, 130

Saunders, P., 82, 122, 130 Savage, M., 73,82,130 Sawinski, Z., 47,SO-5 1, 73 Scase, R., 74 Sewell, W. H., 109 Shabad, G. 94. Singelman, J. 12

185 Slomczynski,K. M., 94 Smith, T.W., 145 Snyder, T., 165 Sobel, R., 130 Sorokin, P., 46 Staniszkis, J., 93,98 Stark, D., 96 Steinmetz,G., 13 Stepan, A. 3 Stephens,J. D., 46 Svalastoga, K., 28 Szafran, R. F., 12 Szalai, E., 93 SzelCnyi, I. 3,7,93, 104, 167 SzelCnyi, S., 93 Tarkowski, J., 93 Thompson, E. P. 130 Tonnies, F., 130 Treiman, D. J., 2,47, 1 10, 134, 150, 167168 Tucek, M., 48

Turner, B. S., 1 1,70, 150 Tyree, A. 26

Uny, J., 11, 130 Vachludova, M.165 Veblen, T., 130 Vecernik, J., 48 Weber, M., 46,130,146-147 Wereszycki, H., 16, 150 Wesolowski, W., 122 Whelan, C.T., 47 Willis, P. E., 130 Wright, E. O., 12, 13, 121 Yamaguchi, K. 27 Young, M., 122 Zagorski, K., 12,20,28, 116-1 17 Zagrodzka, D. Zetterberg, H. 2