Theodore P. Gerber

Structural Change and Post-Socialist Stratification: Labor Market Transitions in Contemporary Russia

In Russia, market transition has led to sweeping structural changes: a long recession, growth of the private sector, expansion of certain branches of the economy and contraction of others, a decrease in average firm size, and regional differentiation in economic performance. These structural changes had important consequences for stratification through their effects on individual labor market outcomes. Analyses of nine types of individual labor market transitions in Russia using 1991-1997 work-history data show that structural location has strong effects. Human capital and membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union also influence labor market prospects, but not in ways consistent with general theories about how market transition affects stratification processes. Structural change plays a key role in determining the impact of market reforms on stratification. But market transition produces variable patterns of structural change in different countries and in different regions within a single country. The structural perspective demonstrates why market transition has variable consequences for stratification: Different prior conditions and reform policies produce different patterns of structural change

Tightening Up: Declining Class Mobility during Russia's Market Transition

This study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia using data from six surveys. Belying claims that class differences did not matter in the Soviet Union, the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during Russias Soviet period. But the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations. Men and women were equally constrained by their social origin, even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods. As the economic transformation took hold, fewer Russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile. Political and economic transition, not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones, strengthened the association between origins and destinations. Career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins, as workers who had the most upward mobility during the Soviet era lost the most in the transition to markets, abetting the reproduction of the class structure across generations as they fell.

Educational Stratification in Contemporary Russia: Stability and Change in the Face of Economic and Institutional Crisis.

Using data collected in 1998, the author expanded an earlier study of educational stratification in Russia, analyzing cohorts who completed their education during the tumultuous late-Soviet and post-Soviet years, when enrollments contracted. The political chaos and economic crisis that have harmed the Russian educational system increased the magnitude of origin-based inequalities in access to academic secondary schools, while their impact on stratification at the tertiary level was ambiguous. Parental Party affiliation (which was omitted from the earlier study), education, and occupation all independently influenced educational attainments for all post-World War II Russian cohorts. Male enrollments in tertiary institutions have declined sharply in recent cohorts, whereas female enrollments have remained stable. This pattern probably reflects the differential impact of economic changes on different groups in post-Soviet Russia. Language: en

Nonmarital childbearing in Russia: second demographic transition or pattern of disadvantage?

Using retrospective union, birth, and education histories that span 1980–2003, this study investigates nonmarital childbearing in contemporary Russia. We employ a combination of methods to decompose fertility rates by union status and analyze the processes that lead to a nonmarital birth. We find that the increase in the percentage of nonmarital births was driven mainly by the growing proportion of women who cohabit before conception, not changing fertility behavior of cohabitors or changes in union behavior after conception. The relationship between education and nonmarital childbearing has remained stable: the least-educated women have the highest birth rates within cohabitation and as single mothers, primarily because of their lower probability of legitimating a nonmarital conception. These findings suggest that nonmarital childbearing Russia has more in common with the pattern of disadvantage in the United States than with the second demographic transition. We also find several aspects of nonmarital childbearing that neither of these perspectives anticipates.

Horizontal Stratification of Higher Education in Russia: Trends, Gender Differences, and Labor Market Outcomes.

Using survey data collected in fall 2000, the authors analyzed four aspects of “horizontal” variation among Russian university students: field of specialization, cost (paid versus free), intensity (full- versus part-time study), and timing of study (Soviet versus post-Soviet era). For each type of variation, they examined trends over time, gender differences, and effects on earnings and employment opportunities. In Russia, as elsewhere, horizontal differentiation of higher education has stratifying consequences. Unlike in many countries, gender differences along horizontal dimensions have not narrowed in Russia; in fact, the gender gap in part-time study has widened. But the introduction of market forces in higher education and the economy has shaped both male and female distributions across specialty, cost, and intensity. The labor market advantages accruing to a university degree differ across these horizontal dimensions and by the timing of the degree. Some of the patterns observed in Russia resemble those in the United States, while others are distinctive.

Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization

Original survey research conducted by the authors, revealing that 16–29‐year‐old Russians are uneducated about democracy, ambivalent about Stalin, and confused about Russias place in the world, suggests that Western democracy assistance should be reoriented from promoting institutions to the ideas that underpin them.

Getting Personal: Networks and Stratification in the Russian Labor Market, 1985-2001

The authors use employment histories from survey data to examine personal network use and stratification in the Russian labor market from 1985 to 2001. Institutional changes associated with the Soviet collapse increased the use of networks and shaped their prevalence and benefits in theoretically coherent ways. In Russia, networks positively affect job quality, whether measured by occupation, current earnings, or wage arrears. These findings relate to recent debates over whether job contacts provide advantages and how social capital relates to postsocialist inequalities involving gender, Communist Party membership, and education. Russia also exhibits a previously overlooked relationship between network use and locality type.

Dynamic Gender Differences in a Post-Socialist Labor Market: Russia, 1991–1997

We examine how the shift from state socialism affects gender inequality in the labor market using multivariate models of employment exit, employment entry, job mobility and new job quality for 3,580 Russian adults from 1991 through 1997. Gender differences changed in a complex fashion. Relative to men, women gained greater access to employment, but female disadvantage in the quality of new jobs widened. Although these two trends appear to be opposite, they are closely related. Both are connected to the introduction of market institutions, not gender differences in human capital or structural location in the labor market.

Failing the Stalin Test: Russians and Their Dictator

that most Germans under 30 today viewed Hitler with ambivalence and that a majority thought he had done more good than bad. Imagine that about 20 percent said they would vote for him if he ran for president tomorrow. Now try to envision the horrified international response that would follow. Of course, most contemporary Germans revile Hitler. But ask young Russians about Stalin, and you get answers very similar to those above. Since 2003, we have conducted three surveys in Russia, and according to these polls, there is no stigma associated with Stalin in the country today. In fact, many Russians hold ambivalent or even positive views of him. For example, onequarter or more of Russian adults say they would definitely or probably vote for Stalin were he alive and running for president, and less than 40 percent say they definitely would not. A majority of young Russians, moreover, do not view Stalin—a man responsible for millions of deaths and enormous suaering—with the revulsion he deserves. Although Stalinism per se is not rampant in Russia today, misperceptions about the Stalin era are. Few of the respondents to our surveys could be classified as hard-core Stalinists, but fewer still are hard-core anti-Stalinists. Most Russians, in other words, flunk the Stalin test. And yet, whereas similar findings about Hitler in Germany would no doubt provoke international alarm, American and European political leaders have failed to respond to this trend in Russia—and it is doubtful that they will anytime soon. Western policymakers prefer to ignore unpleasant news about the weakness of democracy in Russia, and this preference is unlikely to change before the next meeting of the g-8, the group of the world’s leading industrialized nations, which is to be held in St. Petersburg in July. With U.S. troops bogged down

Getting Paid: Wage Arrears and Stratification in Russia1

Wage arrears have played an important, yet unappreciated role in the stratification of contemporary Russian society. Delays in wage payments became rampant and persistent during the 1990s because of the particular structural, institutional, and policy context that accompanied Russia’s market reforms. Recent improvements in Russia’s economy have reduced but not eliminated wage arrears, an innovative practice that has become institutionalized in some, but not all, postsocialist societies. Analyses of survey data collected in early 1998 confirm the independent stratifying role of arrears. Inequality in getting paid is socially structured in a different manner than inequality in contracted wages, and the former proves equally or more decisive in shaping inequality in actual wages. Arrears occur with some regularity in other national and historical contexts. This study of Russia shows that, where arrears are rampant, researchers should incorporate them into conceptual and empirical models of earnings inequality, and it offers an example of how that might be done.