Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet Russia: Vocational Youth in Transition

244 Pages·2010·2.814 MB·English

by  Charles Walker

Learning to Labour in
Post-Soviet Russia
‘Charles Walker’s sensitive, nuanced and theoretically-informed analysis is
essential reading for researchers and students interested in the adaptation of
young workers to Russia’s transformed economy.’ Sarah Ashwin, London
School of Economics, UK.
‘This book applies sophisticated theoretical analysis to fi eldwork among
young working-class Russians making their way through a vocational educa-
tion system designed for a radically different world ... essential reading for
anyone interested in understanding what really happens to many ordinary
young people in Russia’s vast regions, although the insights can also be
applied to other CIS countries … a tour-de-force by a rising young scholar.’
Claire Wallace, University of Aberdeen, UK.
This book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-
Soviet Russia, a country dislocated by the experience of neo-liberal economic
reform. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a provincial Russian region,
it follows the experiences of vocational education graduates whose colleges con-
tinue to channel them into the ailing industrial and agricultural sectors. Rather
than settling for transitions into ‘poor work’, the book shows how these young
men and women develop a range of strategies aimed at overcoming the poverty of
opportunity available to them in traditional enterprises, pursuing instead emerg-
ing opportunities in higher education, jobs in the new service sector and the
prospect of migration. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Charles
Walker analyses these strategies and their signifi cance for wider processes of
social change and social stratifi cation in post-Soviet Russia.
Charles Walker is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Southampton, and
Honorary Research Associate at the School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, University College London.
BASEES/Routledge series on Russian
and East European studies
Series editor Richard Sakwa
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent
Editorial Committee:
Julian Cooper, Centre for Russian and East European Studies,
University of Birmingham
Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies,
University of Glasgow
Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages,
University of Bath
David Moon, Department of History, University of Durham
Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
Graham Timmins, Department of Politics, University of Stirling
Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow
Founding Editorial Committee Member:
George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University
of Paisley
This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for
Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality,
research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of
Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social
science subjects.
1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security 4. Repression and Resistance in
Policy, 1991–2000 Communist Europe
Roman Wolczuk J.C. Sharman
2. Political Parties in the Russian 5. Political Elites and the
Regions New Russia
Derek S. Hutcheson Anton Steen
3. Local Communities and 6. Dostoevsky and the Idea
Post-Communist Transformation of Russianness
Edited by Simon Smith Sarah Hudspith
7. Performing Russia 18. Russian and Soviet Film
Folk revival and Russian identity Adaptations of Literature,
Laura J. Olson 1900–2001
Screening the word
8. Russian Transformations
Edited by Stephen Hutchings
Edited by Leo McCann
and Anat Vernitski
9. Soviet Music and Society under
19. Russia as a Great Power
Lenin and Stalin
Dimensions of security under Putin
The baton and sickle
Edited by Jakob Hedenskog,
Edited by Neil Edmunds
Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren,
10. State Building in Ukraine Ingmar Oldberg and
The Ukranian parliament, Christer Pursiainen
1990–2003
20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre
Sarah Whitmore
of 1940
11. Defending Human Rights in Russia Truth, justice and memory
Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and George Sanford
Human Rights Commissioner,
1969–2003 21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform
Emma Gilligan in Soviet Russia
Philip Boobbyer
12. Small-Town Russia
Post-communist livelihoods and 22. The Limits of Russian
identities: A portrait of the Democratisation
intelligentsia in Achit, Emergency powers and states of
Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, emergency
1999–2000 Alexander N. Domrin
Anne White
23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation
13. Russian Society and the Orthodox A social and cultural history
Church of reform in the Khrushchev era
Religion in Russia after Communism Edited by Polly Jones
Zoe Knox
24. News Media and Power in Russia
14. Russian Literary Culture in the Olessia Koltsova
Camera Age
The word as image 25. Post-Soviet Civil Society
Stephen Hutchings Democratization in Russia
and the Baltic states
15. Between Stalin and Hitler
Anders Uhlin
Class war and race war on the Dvina,
1940–46 26. The Collapse of Communist
Geoffrey Swain Power in Poland
Jacqueline Hayden
16. Literature in Post-Communist
Russia and Eastern Europe
27. Television, Democracy and
The Russian, Czech and Slovak fi ction
Elections in Russia
of the changes 1988–98
Sarah Oates
Rajendra A. Chitnis
28. Russian Constitutionalism
17. The Legacy of Soviet Dissent
Historical and contemporary
Dissidents, democratisation and
development
radical nationalism in Russia
Andrey N. Medushevsky
Robert Horvath
29. Late Stalinist Russia 40. Political and Social Thought in
Society between reconstruction Post-Communist Russia
and reinvention Axel Kaehne
Edited by Juliane Fürst
41. The Demise of the Soviet
30. The Transformation of Urban Communist Party
Space in Post-Soviet Russia Atsushi Ogushi
Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade
42. Russian Policy towards
and Evgenij Bondarchuk
China and Japan
31. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet The El’tsin and Putin periods
Union, 1920–40 Natasha Kuhrt
From Red Square to the Left Bank
43. Soviet Karelia
Ludmila Stern
Politics, planning and terror in Stalin’s
32. The Germans of the Soviet Union Russia, 1920–1939
Irina Mukhina Nick Baron
33. Re-constructing the Post-Soviet 44. Reinventing Poland
Industrial Region Economic and political
The Donbas in transition transformation and evolving
Edited by Adam Swain national identity
Edited by Martin Myant
34. Chechnya–Russia’s “War on and Terry Cox
Terror”
John Russell 45. The Russian Revolution in
Retreat, 1920–24
35. The New Right in the New Europe Soviet workers and the new
Czech transformation and right-wing Communist elite
politics, 1989–2006 Simon Pirani
Seán Hanley
46. Democratisation and Gender in
36. Democracy and Myth in Russia and Contemporary Russia
Eastern Europe Suvi Salmenniemi
Edited by Alexander Wöll and
Harald Wydra 47. Narrating Post/Communism
Colonial discourse and Europe’s
37. Energy Dependency, Politics and
borderline civilization
Corruption in the Former
Nataša Kovacˇevic´
Soviet Union
Russia’s power, oligarchs’ profi ts 48. Globalization and the State
and Ukraine’s missing energy policy, in Central and Eastern
1995–2006 Europe
Margarita M. Balmaceda The politics of foreign direct
investment
38. Peopling the Russian Periphery
Jan Drahokoupil
Borderland colonization in
Eurasian history 49. Local Politics and Democratisation
Edited by Nicholas B Breyfogle, Abby in Russia
Schrader and Willard Sunderland Cameron Ross
39. Russian Legal Culture Before and 50. The Emancipation of
After Communism the Serfs in Russia
Criminal justice, politics and the Peace arbitrators and the
public sphere development of civil society
Frances Nethercott Roxanne Easley
51. Federalism and Local Politics 62. The Myth of the Russian
in Russia Intelligentsia
Edited by Cameron Ross and Old intellectuals in the new Russia
Adrian Campbell Inna Kochetkova
52. Transitional Justice in Eastern 63. Russia’s Federal Relations
Europe and the former Putin’s reforms and management
Soviet Union of the regions
Reckoning with the Communist past Elena A. Chebankova
Edited by Lavinia Stan
64. Constitutional Bargaining in
53. The Post-Soviet Russian Media Russia 1990–93
Confl icting signals Information and uncertainty
Edited by Birgit Beumers, Stephen Edward Morgan-Jones
Hutchings and Natalia Rulyova
65. Building Big Business in Russia
54. Minority Rights in Central and The impact of informal corporate
Eastern Europe governance practices
Edited by Bernd Rechel Yuko Adachi
55. Television and Culture in Putin’s 66. Russia and Islam
Russia: Remote Control State, society and radicalism
Stephen Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther and
Natalia Rulyova Luke March
56. The Making of Modern Lithuania 67. Celebrity and Glamour in
Tomas Balkelis Contemporary Russia
Shocking chic
57. Soviet State and Society under Edited by Helena Goscilo and
Nikita Khrushchev Vlad Strukov
Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith
68. The Socialist Alternative to
58. Communism, Nationalism and Bolshevik Russia
Ethnicity in Poland, 1944–1950 The Socialist Revolutionary Party,
Michael Fleming 1917–1939
Elizabeth White
59. Democratic Elections in Poland,
1991–2007 69. Learning to Labour in
Frances Millard Post-Soviet Russia
Vocational youth in transition
60. Critical Theory in Russia and
Charles Walker
the West
Alastair Renfrew and Galin Tihanov
61. Promoting Democracy and Human
Rights in Russia
European organization and
Russia’s socialization
Sinikukka Saari

Learning to Labour in
Post-Soviet Russia
Vocational youth in transition
Charles Walker
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
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© 2011 Charles Walker
The right of Charles Walker to be identifi ed as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Walker, John Charles.
Learning to labour in post-Soviet Russia: vocational youth in transition /
Charles Walker.
p. cm. — (BASEES/Routledge series on Russian and East European
studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Youth—Employment—Russia (Federation) 2. School-to-work
transition—Russia (Federation) 3. Youth—Social conditions—Russia
(Federation) 4. Post-communism—Social aspects—Russia (Federation)
I. Title.
HD6276.R92W35 2011
331.3'470947--dc22 2010021547
ISBN 0-203-83787-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-47985-1 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-83787-0 (ebk)
To the memory of my grandparents

Alice and John Walker

Mary and Leonard Tweed