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The article focuses on transformations of class structure and social stratification in Poland. The structure of classes and strata has undergone major transformations in People's Poland. The individual classes and social strata are internally diversified and divided into various social groups, each with different socially significant traits. Although both workers and peasants are formally co-owners of the nation's property, the former, unlike the latter, work predominantly in the socialized sector of the economy, where they hold a dual position as both hired labor and collective owners at the same time. An intermediate position in the working class is occupied by so-called peasant workers, a category of people who live on private farms and work chiefly or exclusively outside agriculture either in town or country. The intelligentsia in Poland does not basically differ from the workers as regards its relation to the means of production, although certain segments of the intelligentsia (managerial groups) have a larger direct influence on the administration of means of production.

The revival of Soviet sociology in the post-Stalin era is indicative of the changes in that society made possible by de-Stalinization. In a real sense, academic sociology is not possible in a totalitarian society since the need to shed light on the distribution of privileges is inherent in the very nature of the discipline. The Soviet sociologists differ, publicly at least, from their American and other Western counterparts in assuming that their society and governmental regime are in a transitional stage which will lead increasingly and inevitably to the achievable goal of real equality, i.e., communism, a system without differentiated strata or variations in reward. Unlike most Western students of stratification, they do not link the existence of inequality in their country to the desire of the privileged to maintain their superior position for themselves and their kin. Their data are rarely presented in the context of an explicit critique of some major aspect of the society. And although quantitative comparisons with the results of comparable research in non-Soviet society are rarely made, there are frequent comments in Soviet academic journals that the research findings demonstrate that the Soviet Union is more egalitarian, offers more opportunity, than the United States or the West, or that the situation is steadily improving, i.e., becoming more egalitarian.