Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens

Front Cover
James R. Millar
Cambridge University Press, 1987 - Business & Economics - 423 pages
Based on the first comprehensive study of life in the USSR since the Harvard Project some 33 years ago, Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR is designed to illustrate how the Soviet social system really works and how the Soviet people cope with it. Taken as a whole, the book describes the sources of support and alienation in the Soviet urban population during the late 1970s, discussing such issues as Soviet political beliefs, ethnic relations, economic inequality, quality of life, and perceptions of social status. The essays contained analyze the variations in attitudes and behavior reflected in the findings of the Soviet Interview Project, a 5-year, 7.5 million investigation of contemporary daily life in the USSR. Among these findings, generational differences and differential education attainment are found to be the most significant underlying determinants of the opinions on, and approaches to, the different issues; the young, the educated and the well-paid, that is, the "best and the brightest" of Soviet society, prove to be the most critical and least satisfied with life in the Soviet Union. This comprehensive investigation involved interviewing thousands of recent emigrants from the USSR to the United States as a means of learning about their former day-to-day living. These individuals provided for a large volume of first-hand reports. Some aspects of this survey dealt with areas the Soviets themselves had never investigated, so the data were not, and still are not, available even in unpublished Soviet sources.

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Contents

History method and the problem of bias
3
Quality of life subjective measures of relative satisfaction
31
POLITICS SOURCES OF REGIME SUPPORT
59
Politics generations and change in the USSR
61
Political beliefs of the Soviet citizen sources of support for regime norms
100
The attentive public for Soviet science and technology
142
WORK ECONOMICDEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
169
Inequality of earnings household income and wealth in the Soviet Union in the 1970s
171
LIFE SOCIAL STATUS ETHNIC RELATIONS AND MOBILIZED PARTICIPATION
277
Perceptions of social status in the USSR
279
Nationality policy and ethnic relations in the USSR
301
Mobilized participation and the nature of the Soviet dictatorship
332
The SIP General Survey sample
354
Response effects in SIPs General Survey of Soviet emigrants
372
Glossary
406
General bibliography of Soviet Interview Project publications
409

The life course of Soviet women born 19051960
203
Productivity slack and time theft in the Soviet economy
241

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