Mobility in "socialist" eastern europe

[joanna bujes]

At 06:24 AM 04/15/2002 -0400, Chris Doss wrote:
>I would not say there was less social mobility under Brezhnev compared to
>today. Farmer's son could go to study in the Moscow State University or any
>other prestigious educational institution. Moreover, children of workers and
>peasants enjoyed privileges. For example, they could enroll on teh so-called
>"preparation courses" called "rabfak" - worker's faculty - and in a year
>they got automatically enrolled in the MSU without exams. These days it's
>much harder for a child from a depressed family to rise to the middle class
>level. For example, if I could not afford to pay $1,200 a year for my
>daughter she would not have been able to get a higher education because in
>order to enroll in a free higher educational institution one needs either to
>pay huge bribes or have connections. Children of the riff-ruff become
>riff-ruff automatically these days. In Soviet era the state cared about such
>kids much more. Another matter is that during Brezhnev one, regardless of
>his skills and talens, could not go beyond the so-called "potolok" (salary
>ceiling)

My experience backs up what you're saying. When I was in Romania in the 
sixties, my parents told me that I had to get straight A's (10s) if I 
wanted to go to the university. In other words, my performance would need 
to be nearly perfect in order to overcome the negative marks against 
me:  1) I was privileged by being the daughter of intellectuals who 2) did 
not belong to the party. Had I had "healthy social origins," like being the 
daughter of peasants, the bar would have been lower.

The situation was then reversed when we emigrated to France and then to the 
U.S....where I had to get straight A's because I was the daughter of 
immigrants.

Joanna