Using data on villages in the Kalmyk ASSR and Saratov Oblast regions of the USSR, the author examines motivations for migration. Factors considered include employment opportunities and transfers; recruitment efforts by employers; family ties; and cultural, living, and environmental conditions. Measures of controlling or influencing migratory movements are discussed
If you follow in publications of the central press the course of the major postwar reforms, you can notice how the initial grand, optimistic statements that now everything would go differently were replaced by individual indignant comments to the effect that, in some sectors of the national economy, the tempo of transition to the new style was still insufficient. Next, the general tone changed to one of alarm, inasmuch as there were more and more such sectors. Several years passed, and the fate of the planned changes turned out to be in jeopardy. Articles then began to appear with such titles as Basic Restructuring Is Required…, and the like. An economic crisis ripened, which led to the necessity for carrying out a new reform, and the symptoms started over again.
The connection between workers' participation in resolving production and social problems at enterprises, and the nature of sociopolitical systems, is far from unambiguous even under regimes that all but absolutely exclude democratic principles at any level. This applies, in particular, to totalitarian regimes that endeavor to establish control over all spheres of human life and to banish any manifestations of independence or self-governing initiatives. But insofar as such regimes—not only left-wing, but often right-wing as well—proclaim themselves to be people's regimes, and even the only truly popular regimes, they are obliged to declare broad popular participation in social, governmental, and economic affairs, and to claim that only in them does true democracy become a reality, and that the people, the working class, and production collectives are the true masters in the political and economic spheres.
The position and functioning of a person in all spheres of life activity depends to a large degree on the structure and hierarchy of his values, on his motivational system. One of the most essential units in this system consists in the values and motives related to work. In large measure they determine the effectiveness of the mode of production. Judging from the results of the economic development of the country, we have not yet created strong motivation in the sphere of work.
Until recently, official science categorically denied any possibility whatsoever of strikes in Soviet society as a mass social action since, in its understanding, a strike could only be a form of protest of workers against economic and political oppression under capitalism and a manifestation of antagonistic contradictions inherent "exclusively" in bourgeois society.
Questions of the subject matter of a science are questions of what and how to study, what and how to teach in its particular domain of knowledge and where the limits of competence of the specialist lie. In our research practice we come up against the necessity of crossing the boundaries of the zone defining our subject matter. But this crossing may be effected in two ways: a legal way and an illicit way, so to speak, i.e., observing specific rules or ignoring them. In the first case, one realizes one has crossed the boundary and that it is necessary to make use of the conceptual and methodological apparatus of the contiguous domain of knowledge, or at least to call on specialists in that domain. An "illicit" crossing involves the danger of dilettantism and incompetence. Such is the logic of the contemporary division of labor in science, where a deepening of professionalization is accompanied by integration in interdisciplinary ties and in composite studies of a common object.
In the January 1989 issue [of Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia], the editors published a roundtable entitled "Strikes in the USSR-A New Social Reality" [translated in the March-April 1990 issue of Soviet Sociology], which opened up a firmly "sealed" topic. Our presentation proved to be timely: the following year was marked by mass strikes in the country's principal coal basins. Over the past eighteen months there have appeared quite a few new and interesting (although very uneven) articles on this issue, which we bring to our readers in the form of a topical selection. In the three articles published below, by Mal'tseva and Puliaeva, V. Britvin, and G. Kubas', we have tried as much as possible to reflect different aspects of the problem and the current level of its analysis by sociologists. The editors reserve the prerogative to return to this topic in the future as we receive responses and new materials about strikes, labor conflicts, and social tension in the sphere of production. This issue comes out exactly one year after the events addressed on its pages. It is not impossible that the summer of 1990 will see a new wave of the workers' struggle. The most diverse, at times unexpected factors can give rise to it, considering how unstable and explosive the situation in our society is today. Nonetheless we hope that the efforts of sociologists will not be in vain, since any addition to our knowledge about social conflicts, their sources and consequences, and ways to resolve them, will move us forward to a national consensus.
Last autumn in Moscow a conference of the International Sociological Association took place—for the first time in our country—with the participation of two of its committees (the sociology of labor committee and the sociology of urban and regional development committee) on the theme "Self-management and social protection of workers in the city and in the enterprise." The Soviet Sociological Association, the S. Ordzhonikidze Institute of Management in Moscow (where the conference was held), the Society of Architects of the USSR and the scientific-and-technical cooperative Perspektiva organized the conference.
Last year our journal began to publish discussion materials on the topic "Social Justice: Idea and Reality" (see Kommunist, 1990, nos. 12, 14, 16, and 18). We now continue the discussion of this problem, and today the attention of the readers is called to one of the articles that the editors received as part of this discussion.
Comparative sociological investigations (including those that are interregional or are conducted at different time intervals within one country, as well as those that are international) pose a number of problems. One of the most important is the comparability of the findings. As has already been pointed out [l-51, comparability is ensured, above all, bythe identity of the samples, the method of collecting data, and the methods used to process them. Thus, in organizing and conducting any kind of comparative study, it is first necessary to ensure the comparability of the results obtained in respect of objective criteria: sex, age, education, social status, income level. Tasks of this sort are dealt with at the stage of preparing and carrying out a sociological investigation (including "adjusting the sample" and if necessary "reweighting" the data).
The multitude of sacrifices made by the people during the course of collectivization and industrialization were justified in terms of a humanistic supreme goal, the formation of the "new person." Economic efficiency, social security, and legal protection were sacrificed to this abstract person. The current endeavor of scholars to bring the economy down to earth and to compel it to serve the needs of concrete human beings is therefore understandable.
In social consciousness in both West and East, an understanding of the priority of general human values over the interests of particular regions of the world, countries, nations, and classes is assuming an increasingly clear form. A new, truly civilized picture of humanity, conscious of its responsibility for the fate of future generations, for the state of the biosphere, and for the future of the planet, is gradually emerging. In both West and East, people have begun to talk of the advent of a new epoch, an epoch of the salvation of civilization, the elimination of wars from the life of humanity, and collective d6tente of the most urgent global problems on the basis of a consensus.
For a long time the view that predominated in Soviet social science was that, with the victory of the socialist revolution and the building of socialism, the working class in the USSR had no goals and tasks that were its own and that differed from those of other strata of society, and that consequently the classic methods of workers' struggle were inapplicable in resolving any social problems that arose.
The implementing of democratization and the mastery of new approaches and methods of regulating our lives in these times dictates the necessity of investigating the nature and functioning of popular rule, political institutions and relations, political culture, and the political system in general. Without such investigations it is impossible to arrive at an optimal solution to strategic and current political tasks. It is in this connection that political sociology moves to the foreground.
Trade unions are playing an important role in the social and economic renewal of our society. As they exercise the function of defending the interests of workers they are contributing to the mobilization of the human resources of production and improving its efficiency.
It would be absurd today to prove to the reader the existence of social conflicts in our society, which has just embarked upon a transition from a monistic to a pluralistic system. But why are these conflicts increasingly frequent, sometimes becoming so aggravated as to pose a danger to society? Was not the monistic system free of such phenomena? Our reflections on this matter should logically be preceded by a definition of conflict as a social phenomenon. A conflict is a mode of interaction of people, social communities, and social institutions in which the actions of one party, encountering the resistance of the other, obstructs the realization of the other's goals (interests).
During the preparations for the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, a Congress Sociological Service was created in the Academy of Social Sciences attached to the CPSU Central Committee and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Soviet State Organization and Legislation. The Service conducted two studies of public opinion of Moscow working people: before the congress (May 1989) and immediately after it (July 1989),1 as well as three quick surveys of people's deputies of the USSR during the congress (May 27, June 2, and July 9).2
The necessity of restructuring Soviet society was dictated by the deformation in the fundamental principles of socialism over the past few decades. For changes that have been initiated to succeed, it is necessary to undertake a comprehensive analysis of what was deformed and what principles of socialism were distorted or left unrealized. Fundamental questions are involved: forms of property, democratization of the political system, the social class structure, and ethnic relations. Labor problems should have a prime place.
In one of the editions of the television program Vzgliad [Glance], the following scenario flashed on the screen. A correspondent standing at the entrance to the Institute of the International Workers' Movement, USSR Academy of Sciences, asks ironically: "So the labor movement is international. But with us, in its own country, aren't we it? Or doesn't it merit our interest?" The correspondent naturally knew the answers to these questions (indeed, who does not know them now!). Of course there is a movement, and it must be studied. But another important point also needs to be noted. For several decades, the term "labor movement" was not used in reference to our society and, in fact, had no currency in political science. Why? After all, the official ideology postulated the "leading role of the working class," so should not the idea of a socially oriented movement of this same advanced class have deserved trust in that context? Evidently it did not. The Stakhanovite movement, to be sure, but a labor movement. … That is problematic, to put it mildly. In the extreme case, the former could be a substitute for the latter.
