The Productive Society of Russia of the 1950s-1980s: facets and boundaries (on the question of determining the object of research)

Abstract

In the article, from a historiographical perspective, the authors analyze the multidirectional trends of the transformation of Soviet society. The authors propose a new historical definition for the analyzed part – the production society. In this area of the economy in the 1950s - 1980s, more than 2/3 of the working population of the RSFSR were employed. This category included classes employed in the country's material production sectors in the 1950s - 1980s. The text summarizes the approaches of Soviet and post-Soviet historiography and social sciences to the understanding of layers and groups of industrial society, the author's interpretation of socio-class gradation is proposed. In particular, with regard to the Soviet period, attention is drawn to the approaches proposed by the statistical authorities, which took into account workers as «engaged mainly in physical labor» and «engaged mainly in mental labor». In Soviet science since the mid-twentieth century, a fairly significant number of publications have appeared devoted to the analysis of individual professional groups of engineering, industrial workers, agricultural and other specialties. The main approach when considering these professional groups was a combination of production-qualification and social characteristics. In general, the structuring of industrial society undertaken in the Soviet period within the framework of the generally accepted class gradation at that time revealed serious difficulties in identifying social groups. The authors of the article propose to rank the Soviet industrial society not by two main classes, but to divide it into five main social classes, determined by place in property relations, volume-legal characteristics, socio-psychological characteristics.