Major social transformations and social mobility: the case of the transition to and from communism in Eastern Europe

Abstract

This analysis compares the effects on social mobility of the political transformations in Eastern Europe which took place in the 1950s and the 1990s. The author examines absolute and relative mobility rates in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Slovakia based on data from national random samples taken in 1993 and 1994. Log-linear models are applied to mobility tables for four periods, 1948-52, 1952-63, 1983-88 and 1988-93, to determine change in the strength of association between occupational categories. Searching for the effect of the transition to communism the author compares occupational mobility between 1948 and 1952 with occupational mobility between 1952 and 1963. In order to assess the effect of the transition from communism, mobility between 1983 and 1988 is compared to mobility between 1988 and 1993. It was definitely the transition to communism in the late 1940s that released the more intensive flows between basic segments of the social structure compared to what occurred during the exit from communism in the 1990s. Using both the diagonals and the constant social fluidity models, the author finds no evidence of increasing openness in post-communist countries. Contrariwise, in the 1948-63 period some significant change occurred in relative mobility chances. The conclusion is that the “first transformation” gave rise to a turn in social fluidity on the “genotypical” level.