--- On Wed, 6/17/09, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> True and not true -- well it may be completely true in
> Iran, but not so in the EE countries. Bureaucrats actually
> did not live all that well (unless we are talking about the
> upper echelons). The ire of the Soviet middle class (a term
> that actually refers to the intelligentsia and educated
> professionals) was more directed at the system that 1) kept
> them at a fixed salary ceiling and 2) paid them less than
> miners and factory workers.
>
[WS:] I think this is basically true, but it does not tell the whole story. The relationship between the intelligentsia and "the system" was far more ambiguous and changing over time and geography. For example, the Czech intelligentsia was generally very supportive of the Communist system in its initial phase - mainly because they thought it offered them unprecedented opportunity and power. In Poland, Jewish intelligentsia was also supportive for similar reasons. However, Polish intelligentsia, with its "social origins" in downwardly mobile small landowning class (the szlachta) tended to be more reactionary. Although decimated in WW2, its reactionary ethos lingered after WW2 like a fart in the pants (as they say in the old country.)
The attitudes of new post WW2 intelligentsia varied by occupational group (cf. Michael Kennedy, _Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.) The complaints against the system that you quote were certainly heard, but they do not represent views of all intelligentsia or even the majority. I understand that this changed after the imposition of martial law in 1981 and the hatred of the system was nearly universal - but that was a response to a very unpopular move of a particular government at a particular historical moment.
Generally speaking, opinions of the intellectuals who have contacts with foreigners - especially from the English speaking world - were far more critical of the system than those who did not have such contacts. However, such views were not representative of the whole intelligentsia, and as a result, foreign observers often had a very skewed view of popular opinion.
One of the reasons why the EE intellectuals who had contact with Westerners can be explained by the sociological concepts of reference groups and relative deprivation. For these intellectuals, Westerners (not the local folk) were the reference group against which they viewed their own status, and they felt "relatively deprived" of status which in their view Westerners had.
I believe that this is true of many developing countries and even the US, not just EE.
Wojtek