Commentary: Social Stratification Research and Soviet Scholarship.

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.