In the statistics we are using, the category of ‘specialists’ stops there: it does not include scientists, artists or writers. If we add the latter, we can very approximately quantify an additional category used by Soviet statistics (and propaganda): the ‘intelligentsia’. It often overlaps with that of ‘specialists’, but not completely. If we add to the figure for people employed in the cultural sphere, as supplied by other tables or sources for 1 January 1941, the category of specialists, we arrive at a figure of 2,539,314.[3] Some official sources claimed almost 5 million, with the aim of making the ‘cultural revolution’ proclaimed by the leadership in these years more credible. To the same end, official documents used a different category, which was broader and vaguer: that of ‘people primarily employed in intellectual work’. This category was quite illegitimately identified with the ‘intelligentsia’, making it possible to manipulate the image the government wished to present of the country’s cultural development. As early as 1937, Molotov announced a huge figure for the number of such ‘intellectuals’. The same fluid category probably underlay the imprudent claims subsequently made by Soviet researchers, who declared (as they were obliged to) that ‘by the beginning of the 1940s, the problem of a popular intelligentsia was resolved’. But some of these researchers knew perfectly well that those who had acquired a degree from an institute of higher education accounted for only a percentage of those engaged in ‘primarily intellectual work’. Most of the latter were actually praktiki – that is to say, people who had learnt their profession on the job or during intensive training courses, and who had no professional education, even when their jobs demanded specialist knowledge.[4] At the beginning of 1941, inadequate training was particularly widespread among those classified as ‘engineers’ in industry. For every 1,000 workers there were 110 engineers and technicians. But only 19.7 per cent of them had a higher education qualification and 23 per cent a secondary school qualification; 67 per cent were praktiki who had probably never completed the secondary school curriculum. And the picture is similar for other professional groups, all of them swept up into a process of quantitative growth that outstripped the country’s ability to train them properly.
The accelerated pace of industrialization was the inevitable cause of such shortcomings, as well as of the economic and socio-cultural costs that form part of the panorama we are going to describe. If industrial workers around 1929 had on average no more than 3.5 years of primary schooling behind them, rising to 4.2 years by the end of 1939, those engaged in ‘primarily intellectual work’ – simply put, office employees – hardly fared better, especially when the category of ‘specialists’ is deducted from their number. Of ‘employees’, representing 16.6 per cent of the working population, only 3.3 per cent can be counted as ‘specialists’, a majority of whom had only an incomplete secondary education. This did not prevent some writers in the post-Stalin era including them under the rubric of the ‘intelligentsia’.
General data on the educational levels of the active population in the towns and countryside in 1939 help to clarify the problem. For every 1,000 workers, the statistics indicate that 242 had benefited from tertiary or secondary education in the towns and 63 in the countryside. If we separate out higher education, the figure for towns is 32 and for the countryside 3. For secondary education, the figures are 210 and 60 respectively. But this is the crucial point: the statistics for ‘secondary’ education actually include two categories – ‘complete’ and ‘incomplete’ – and it is reasonable to suppose that the majority of individuals concerned did not in fact complete their secondary education.[5]
The emergence of new groups with a good intellectual education, and the rise in the number of those who might legitimately be included in this prestigious category,[6] are undeniable. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the extent to which the regime inflated the figures. This manipulation (which probably also involved self-deception) sought to embellish the much less edifying reality: the generally low educational level of workers, employees, and even many of those who held responsible positions. We must keep this in mind, because the low cultural level of the whole society formed the social backdrop to Stalinism. The top leadership was sufficiently well-informed to seek to conceal and embellish this frustrating situation.
But these inflated figures – an intelligentsia numbering 5 million – also reveal a fundamental characteristic of the Soviet experience and especially the Stalinist period: its ‘extensive’ character, or propensity to prioritize the quantitative. The 1939 census estimated the number of people employed in ‘primarily intellectual work’ at 13,821,452. A breakdown by educational level in each sector of employment does lead to a figure of close on 5 million (4,970,536, to be precise). But it includes anyone with a general education, however minimal. Moreover, most of them occupied posts requiring a specialist – even higher – education, which they did not possess. Accordingly, they were simply praktiki – a huge category in these years, which remained a strong presence after the war. We even encounter it in the period following Stalin’s death, though by then it was beginning to disappear.
What transpires from this is that the mass of ‘blue-collar’ employees who, as we have seen, mushroomed in the years between the two censuses, contained whole layers of poorly educated and trained people (including sales staff, cashiers, telegraphers), who were nevertheless better paid – sometimes substantially so – than workers. In 1940 the average monthly wage of an industrial worker stood at 30.7 roubles, while that of an office employee was 53.5. This average includes engineers and technicians (ITR). But even when they are excluded, an office worker fared better than a worker.[7] We therefore have the following picture: a situation where even limited skills or some basic literacy and numeracy were at a premium, against the backdrop of a much larger labour force with only basic schooling doing manual work and an even larger rural population, which was much less literate than urban workers. But even in the ‘primarily intellectual’ category, education rarely went beyond what could be acquired in seven years of schooling.
The benefits enjoyed by office employees (even though they were sneered at in official propaganda) and the exaggerated figures for members of the ‘intelligentsia’ attest to the obvious: the country’s low starting point. And the generally low level of education was no social equalizer, especially in the bureaucratic agencies. Social differentiation shot up there, and people were acutely aware of it. For when living standards are low, the quantitatively small advantages obtained by some cause a keener sense of injustice among the worst-off and a feeling of solidarity among the beneficiaries, as well as hostility to those who do not enjoy them. And this stands to reason: in conditions of penury, a spare loaf of bread can be a matter of life or death.
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See
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