The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society

515 Pages·1959·7.437 MB·English

by  Alex Inkeles / Raymond Augustine Bauer

Russian Research Center Studies 35
THE SOVIET CITIZEN
Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society
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THE SOVIET CITIZEN
Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society
by
Alex Inkeles and Raymond A. Bauer
with the assistance of
David Gleicher and Iroing Rosow
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
1959
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© 1959, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Distributed in Great Britain by
Oxford University Press, London
This is study number 35 in the Russian Research Center series and a
report of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System.
This volume was prepared under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this
publication and is not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the
statements made or views expressed therein.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-9277
Printed in the United States of America
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TO CLYDE KLUCKHOHN
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Preface
The proper period of gestation for a book has never been established.
Suffice it to say that by any standard this book has been long aborning.
The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System was organized in the
spring of 1950. Our interviews and questionnaires were completed by
Soviet refugees in Europe and America during 1950-51. Processing of
these materials began in 1951, and the analysis of them started in 1952.
The first drafts of the early chapters of this book were written during the
summer of 1953, when we sneaked away from our administrative duties
to work together in New Hampshire. In the meantime, three other books
based on the materials of the Harvard Project have appeared. Two are
specialized studies of a single topic: Doctor and Patient in Soviet Russia,
by Mark G. Field; and Factory and Manager in the USSR, by Joseph
S. Berliner. The third, How the Soviet System Works, by R. Bauer,
A. Inkeles, and C. Kluckhohn, was, however, a rather general study of
Soviet society. A discussion of the relationship of this book to How the
Soviet System Works should illuminate the nature and background of
the present volume.
How the Soviet System Works was an attempt to use the perspective
gained by our experience on the Harvard Project as the basis for a fresh
overall view of the Soviet system. The greater part of that book was
not based directly on our interviews and questionnaires, but on standard
sources of material which we reinterpreted in the light of our data. It
concerned itself with the dynamics or "operating characteristics" of the
Soviet system, with broad socio-political processes. Insofar as we reported
results arising directly from our field work, they were largely summary
comments without citation of detailed evidence. This volume, The Soviet
Citizen, presents the main body of statistical data from the Harvard
Project. In a sense it contains much of the evidence on the basis of which
How the Soviet System Works was written several years earlier. But it
would be misleading to describe it mainly as a delayed publication of
"supporting evidence" for its predecessor. On the contrary, this volume
stands quite independent of the earlier book. It arises from a rather dis-
tinct conception, and is meant to fulfill different functions. Whereas the
earlier book was concerned with Soviet institutions and politics, broadly
conceived, this volume is concerned with the people and with their daily
lives. The earlier study aimed at an assessment of the strengths and
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viii PREFACE
weaknesses of the system, while this seeks to discern continuity and
change in the life experience of individuals and groups. It is basically a
book about the social-psychology of Soviet life. The first study stressed
the distinguishing or distinctive features of Soviet society, whereas here
we call particular attention to striking parallels between the attitudes
and life experiences of Soviet citizens and those in other large-scale in-
dustrial societies. Finally, it is true that How the Soviet System Works
carried a rather large volume of interpretation and assertion relevant to
the amount of evidence it presented, whereas in this book we have based
ourselves very closely on the mass of data collected in our interviews
and questionnaires. Subjects to which we could earlier give only a para-
graph or two of bold assertion have in this book often become the topic
for an entire chapter of fully documented material.
In this book, as in all the work of the Harvard Project, data from
Soviet refugees have been used in conjunction with standard Soviet and
American sources. Both authors spent a month in the Soviet Union after
the thaw opened Russia to foreign travel, one in 1956 and the other in
1957. We have carefully weighed our firsthand impressions as a counter-
balance to the report of the refugees. Some critics of earlier reports of
the Project implied that we have relied exclusively on "tainted" refugee
data, or that we prefer it to other sources of information. This is far
from being the case. Our own position is that we have had the good
fortune of being able to add information from Soviet emigres to our other
sources of information. Each source has its advantages and disadvantages
and should be judged against all the others available. As valuable as is
a visit to the USSR, it too has its limitations — and on this score we
have had the chance to check our impressions with many dozens of other
visitors. Apparently everyone realizes that a Soviet refugee may give
"biased answers" to an American interviewer. But the same is true of
Soviet citizens and American visitors talking to each other — as one of
us realized when he found himself defending some questionable features
of our own foreign policy. Even though any single source of data might
have its own difficulty, the convergent cumulative impact of several
sources may be highly convincing. In going from our findings to an as-
sessment of their social and political significance, therefore, we have
sought to give proper weight not only to our unique refugee data, but to
all the sources of information and interpretation which are relevant.
What has been said of the use of several sources of information con-
verging on a given point also has relevance to work within the framework
of the refugee data itself. As we point out in the early chapters of this
book, we gathered a wide variety of data and utilized a number of different
approaches in analyzing it. Although a surface impression may suggest
that our approach was coldly statistical, we actually spent a great deal
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PREFACE ix
of time in qualitative analysis, which at every point influenced the inter-
pretation of our statistical findings. In many instances an individual
batch of data or an individual mode of analysis had its ambiguities, but
several batches of data or modes of analysis all pointed to the same con-
clusion. To expose the reader to the full range of data which furnished
the background for a particular conclusion would often put an intolerable
burden on both him and the publisher of the book. The past several years
have been devoted not only to writing, but to more intensive analysis and
checking of our statistical findings, and subsequent rewriting in order to
insure that our results would be presented as compactly, clearly, and un-
ambiguously as possible.
Since by professional training and natural bent we regularly read
tables, we drew on our experience and past frustrations to guide us in
developing devices to aid our readers in the assessment of the data. In
our Appendices will be found the full translation of the more important
questionnaire and interview forms we used. They also contain an ex-
planation of how all of the major special measures, such as the "Index
of Anti-Soviet Sentiment," were developed. Furthermore, each statistical
table has a special note, which indicates the question used to gather the
data and methods used in constructing the indices employed, as well as
the conventions used in treating the data for tabular purposes. In the
regular notes to each chapter we have also given question wordings or
other technical information to explain points from the text which could
not appropriately be elaborated within it.
Probably only the most technical readers will be interested in all the
guides we have provided. However, it has been our intention to encourage
all readers as much as possible to attend to the technical aspects of this
study. It is for this reason that we have gone against some earnest advice
and presented our main methodological discussion at the beginning of the
book, rather than relegating it to an appendix. It is true, as we indicated
above, that our conclusions are by no means exclusively based on data
received from Soviet refugees. To the extent that emigre data is involved,
however, methodological considerations are much more central to the
entire study than in many other social science investigations. Further-
more, it has been our experience that a disquieting proportion of readers
come to such a study with fixed conceptions about the social and political
composition of the refugees, the degree of bias they manifest, and the
sophistication (or lack thereof) of the users of such data. While the in-
terested reader could go as well to an appendix as to the first three chap-
ters of the book, we feel that symbolically the methodological discussion
belongs at the beginning. The reader who is convinced that he is not
interested in methodology may begin the book with Chapter IV, the
first topical chapter. However, if he does so the responsibility for mis-
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χ PREFACE
understanding our approach to the data lies with him, and not with us,
since we have done everything we can to alert him to it.
Since living conditions of the Soviet citizen have been in constant
transition, the reader may raise questions about the currency of our find-
ings. Admittedly the main body of statistical data, insofar as it was gotten
from refugees, pertains to the period before World War II. Undoubtedly,
also, some at least of our findings are primarily of historical significance.
While we deal with the general problem of the currency of our findings
in Chapter I, we feel that at the risk of repetition we should ask the
reader to withhold judgment. He will find that this crucial issue is one
of our central concerns, and that we have taken special pains in supple-
menting our interviews with other sources of information and in temper-
ing our conclusions wherever the problem of change is particularly rele-
vant. There has been continuity as well as change in Soviet life; and
even where there has been change the refugee data often aided us in
assessing that change. Almost every one of our chapters, therefore, ends
with a section in which we summarize late developments, evaluate our
findings in the light of those developments, and seek to assess their
relevance for the future.
Giving proper acknowledgment to all who have contributed to the
final report of a large-scale social science project is a bit like assigning
the credits for a movie. The director and the author of the screenplay
obviously deserve credit. But the cameraman, the actors, the composer of
the score, to name but a few, all have made significant contributions.
Our problem is not so acute, since the conception and design of this book
are entirely our own, and with the exception of one chapter no one else
took any part in writing it. But it is nevertheless true that if ever there
was a "group project," ours was it. Literally dozens of persons including
interviewers, coders, research assistants, analysts and specialist consul-
tants were in some way essential to making the Project and this book
possible. In the preface to How the Soviet System Works we tried to make
as complete an acknowledgment of our indebtedness as is possible. Every-
one listed there as contributing to the Project also contributed thereby
to this book, and we wish here to reiterate our appreciation. Here we
have limited ourselves to mentioning those whose contribution bore di-
rectly on this particular work. There are unfortunately many whom we
cannot attempt to mention even though their indirect contribution may
have been appreciable. To these we tender our apologies, and offer our
gratitude for their many services.
To begin we must acknowledge our special debt to David Gleicher and
Irving Rosow. They did not share responsibility for the design of this
book, and took no part in writing it, except for Chapter XIV which is a
condensed version of a memorandum written by Mr. Gleicher. But their
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