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