Abstract
The substantial extension of schooling in the Soviet Union is undoubtedly an impressive achievement of the regime and an important factor contributing to the country’s comparatively impressive long-run economic growth performance. But like ‘progress’ in other areas of Soviet life, the increased educational attainment of the population has generated its own social tensions and problems. In particular, the advance towards ‘universal’ secondary education has made it necessary to moderate the traditionally ambitious occupational plans of secondary school graduates, and to confront such issues as social inequality in access to higher education and the problem of work discontent among ‘overeducated’ workers in routine jobs. A brief examination of the structure of the Soviet educational system and of recent changes in the relative importance of its components will set the stage for our discussion of these problem areas.
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Notes
Akademiia nauk SSSR, Institut filosofii, Kolichestvennye metody v sotsiologii, (Moscow, 1966) pp. 308–13; N. A. Aitov, ‘The Influence of the General Educational Level of Workers on Their Productive Activity’, Voprosy filosofii, No. 11, (1966) 23–31.
Akademiia nauk SSSR, Institut mezhdunarodnogo rabochego dvizheniia, Sotsial’noe razvitie rabochego klassa SSSR (Moscow, 1977) p. 256; Murray Yanowitch, Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1977) p. 80.
F. R. Filippov, V seobshchee srednee obrazovanie v SSSR (Moscow, 1976) p. 63 (referred to henceforth as Filippov, 1). This source reports that the number of graduates in per cent of the number beginning first grade 10–11 years earlier was as follows: 1965, 45; 1970, 69; 1972, 73; 1974, 80–1; 1975, 88.
A listing of these studies and their main findings appears in M. Kh. Titma, Vybor professii kak sotsial’naia problema (Moscow, 1975) pp. 112–13.
M. N. Rutkevich (ed.), Zhiznennye plany molodezhi (Sverdlovsk, 1966) p. 35.
F. R. Filippov, ‘The Role of the Higher School in Changing the Social Structure of Soviet Society’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 2 (1977) 48 (cited henceforth as Filippov, 2).
G. A. Slesarev, Demograficheskie protsessy i sotsial’naia struktura sotsialis-ticheskogo obshchestva (Moscow, 1978) pp. 148–9.
V. Shubkin, ‘The First Steps (Thoughts on Problems of Choice of Occupation)’, Novyi mir, No. 2 (1976) 194–5.
V. D. Kobetskii (ed.), obshchestvo imolodezh, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1973) p. 15.
V. N. Turchenko, Nauchno-tekhnicheskaia revoliutsiia i revoliutsiia v obra-zovanii (Moscow, 1973) p. 109.
This section draws mainly on the following: Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 3 (1976) 75; N. M. Katuntseva, Opyt SSSR po podgotovke intelligentsii iz rabochikh i krest’ian (Moscow, 1977) ch. iv; M. Yanowitch, pp. 91–6; Vestnik vysshei shkoly, No. 9 (1979) 3.
This section draws on the following: A. G. Zdravomyslov, V. P. Rozhin and V. A. Iadov, Chelovek i ego rabota (Moscow, 1967) pp. 304–5
V. A. Iadov, ‘Orientation: Creative Work’, in G. M. Gusev et al. (eds), Obshchestvo i molodezh’ (Moscow, 1968) p. 134.
Some of this material has appeared in translation in M. Yanowitch (ed.), Soviet Work Attitudes, (White Plains, NY; M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1979).
N. A. Aitov, Tekhnicheskii progress i dvizhenie rabochikh kadrov (Moscow, 1972) pp. 66–7.
V. N. Shubkin and G. A. Cherednichenko, ‘Social Problems of Choice of Occupations’, Rabochii klass i sovremennyi mir, No. 2 (1978) 123–4; Institut, p. 11.
G. Bliakhman, ‘A Social Portrait of the Modern Young Worker’, Sotsialis-ticheskii trud, No. 10 (1979) 64.
The material in this paragraph is drawn from the following: O. I. Shkaratan, Promyshlennoe predpriiatie (Moscow, 1978) p. 254; M. Yanowitch, (ed.), Soviet Work Attitudes, p. 108; V. N. Shubkin and G. A. Cherednichenko, p. 124.
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© 1984 Leonard Schapiro and Joseph Godson
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Yanowitch, M. (1984). Schooling and Inequalities. In: Schapiro, L., Godson, J. (eds) The Soviet Worker. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17577-2_6
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