This kind of modern reproduction rationalized the whole life-cycle of families and individuals – especially women. The procreative functions that had demanded such enormous effort from them in the past, from the onset of nubility to the menopause, were henceforth confined to a narrower span of their life, allowing them to work and help increase the family income. Women in fact became an important component of the workforce in all key branches. By 1970 they were broadly well educated, were well represented in the technical professions, and had a strong presence in scientific research. Mironov is right to insist that ‘no other country in the world has experienced such a high level of female participation in the world of work and culture’.
We might halt here for a moment to point out that, while basically accurate, this strikes an unduly triumphant note. Numerous Soviet sociological studies have demonstrated that the very real emancipation of women was marred by two limits: their purely symbolic presence in the power structure and a tenacious patriarchal system, including in urban families. The latter was aggravated by an inadequate supply of household appliances. Women still returned home after a hard working day to a good three hours of household chores, contributing to widespread chronic fatigue. In the 1960s the state made ‘heroic’ efforts to increase the production and supply of household appliances and obtained satisfactory results. But this was not enough to eradicate a sizeable obstacle to women’s equality.
Despite these qualifications, the indicators of female emancipation are undeniable and we are indebted to Mironov for a better appreciation of the changes that occurred in the country’s social structure and the formation of what I call a ‘new society’ – and this in record time and despite past cataclysms. The demographic data will detain us further in the next chapter, for whilst they indicate a genuine emancipation, they also reflect some darker realities.
For now, we shall make do with mentioning in passing a phenomenon described by Mironov, which is specific to Soviet society and well known, but never really studied in depth, and whose importance has also been underlined by the prestigious sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya of the Academy of Sciences. Mironov argues that the ‘equalization of incomes for the broad mass of the population around a certain average represented a further internal reserve that Soviet society could mobilize’. He makes an even stronger claim to the effect that reduced income inequality between social groups contributed to the improvement in the population’s ‘biological status’: the poorer a society, the more prone its ‘biological status’ to inequalities. We do not possess any reliable assessment of this inequality in the USSR, but the state worked hard to reduce material inequalities and it unquestionably succeeded. Significant population mobility and mixed marriages between people from different regions and cultures also impacted positively on such indices as the height of conscripts, as did the phenomenal rate of urbanization (from 15 per cent in 1921 to 50 per cent in 1961). Even if the system offered its citizens a much lower standard of living than that of Western countries, it remains the case that the height of men went on increasing in Russia, until the 1980s at least, at about the same tempo as in developed countries.
From Mironov’s work we shall above all single out the idea that the improvement in ‘biological status’ (and the set of factors that produced it) was the system’s ‘secret’ – a secret it might not have been aware of itself. And given that the population’s ‘biological status’ is no doubt on the decline in the post-Soviet period, this probably accounts for the nostalgia felt by many Russian citizens for the defunct Soviet system.
23
URBANIZATION: SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
Our constant attention to the changing social landscape – bureaucracy, politics, economics and law enforcement all belong to this landscape – offers an analytical framework enabling us to distinguish between what was urbanized and modernized, on the one hand, and what urbanized without really modernizing itself, on the other. The important issue of income equality merits further research. But relative equality, and the concomitant reduction of class differences and barriers among broad swathes of the population, were incontestable facts, fondly remembered even among many Russian emigres to, say, the USA, where economic inequality forms part of the system’s ethos.
Mironov’s positive assessment of this phenomenon contradicts his own conception of modernity, defined in terms of conformity to the Western model. Moreover, it leads him to regard the fading of the old Russian ‘community spirit’ (obshchinnost’), inherited from the rural past, as a sign of the country’s ‘maturity’. But what was the sense of equality and neighbourliness that had such a positive impact on the health, physical growth and moral well-being of Russian citizens, if not the ‘non-modern’ spirit of community? Is it really a good thing for modern societies to be rid of it? The common phenomenon of solitude amid milling urban masses is an unhealthy product of social atomization that can only be remedied by a ‘community spirit’.
If we have thus far dwelt mainly on ‘mechanical changes’ – i.e. continuous waves of migration, which are a complex phenomenon in their own right – it is important to appreciate that urbanization imparts a novel content to the term ‘mobility’. It does not merely involve changing address or workplace, or moving across space. In what was now an urban environment, we are dealing with social, cultural, economic and psychological mobility, which is best understood when juxtaposed to the traditional spatial sense of the term.
The complexity of urbanization and its transforming power consisted in generating masses of ideas that circulated via new channels of communication, exposed the population to a flood of information, put a premium on inventiveness, education and intellectual creativity, and, finally, engendered new conceptions of existence and new needs in people’s personal lives. All this was light years away from the rural rhythms of traditional Russia, where change was slow and the social world often just a village – hence easily mastered (everyone knew the details of their neighbours’ lives), offering a profound sense of familiarity with social reality and inducing fatalism about the vagaries of nature. Clinging to tradition, limited mobility and narrow horizons (frequently in the literal geographical sense) – these were the rule. Without proper schooling and transitional stages, this rural civilization was not equipped to face the large towns and urban settlements, where it was indispensable to have an education, to improve one’s professional skills, or to switch professions. The newcomer was exposed to a bewildering variety of creeds, personalities, fashions, information and values, which constantly disrupted traditional familiar social arrangements of all kinds. Atomizing influences, as well as incentives to enter into all sorts of networks of new and different relations – social, political, economic and cultural – challenged the traditional socio-cultural universe, wearing down its sometimes stubborn resistance.
But it was not just the rural world that came under challenge. Urban society also exercised enormous pressure on the state – to begin with, simply because it presented a new, utterly different entity to be governed. Moreover, this society was still rather young, inexperienced in the ways of self-regulation, and carrying quite a freight of older traditions. It is therefore appropriate – and maybe by now rather obvious – to regard the urbanization process as tantamount to the formation of a new society. For as long as the transition period made it possible to speak of a halfway stage, old rural and new urban worlds coexisted, earlier traditions and mentalities mixing with the commotion of capitals and the complexity of ‘scientific towns’. The state and its principal institutions were governing ‘different centuries’ simultaneously and under ideological and political pressure from utterly heterogeneous groups. The complex interplay of culture and mentalities, which at this stage was reflected in the sphere of politics and the state, yielded a mix of religious and secular elements that could be detected in the state’s symbolism and the way it exercised power, but also in the population’s reaction to state power. The cult of Stalin, the explosion of popular grief at his death, the acceptance deep down of an authoritarian government, the phenomenon represented by Nikita Khrushchev – not only the manner of his leadership, but also the widespread protests it elicited from the populace and the intelligentsia: all this indicated a social and cultural landscape undergoing massive changes. Urbanization was progressing and urban society was becoming the dominant way of life.