--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 17 years ago, there was almost no segregation
> according to income levels in Moscow and other
> Russian
> cities (since people earned about the same). There
> was
> also almost no ethnic segregation in Moscow (since
> ethnic Russians were the overwhelming majority of
> the
> population). However it has been rapidly and
---snip
[WS:] Two observations.
First the segregation line in the Soviet times in Eastern Europe was mainly urban vs. exurban/small town/countryside. This was accomplished largely by stringent residency permits required to live in the capital, and to a lesser degree in other major cities.
If you recall the famed bood by Evgeny Yerofeev titled "Moskva - Pyetushki" the latter was the name of the subrban station some 100km from Moscow in which the proles working in Moscow lived. Not that it is any different than, say, London or New York City, but in those cities it merely the function of weqalth and income, and hence appears "natural", whereas in Soviet Moscow that used to be done by administrative means (residence permits) and gence the appearance of "un-naturalness." Ah, that myth of capitalism as a "natural" institution....
Second, there was segregation in Soviet era cities, but more subtle and hidden. Everyone may have had similar level of income, but there were worse and better living areas, and one had to had the right connections, usually political, to live in better ones. Hence the term "red bourgeoisie." My dad, who studied engineering in Leningrad in the 1950s told me that despite the rhetoric of equality there was a pretty visible segregation in living arrangements (food facilities, living quarters) between manual "rabochye" and office employees and party cadres.
In short, there was seggregation but less visible and distributed differently. Of course, the so-called market "reform" rearranged that and added its own inequalities but this is "more of the same" rather than introducing a totally diffrent and previously unknown element.
PS. I am leaving Kampala tomorrow morning, which means no access to internet for a few days.
Wojtek
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ