Vertical Social Mobility in Communist Society

The Russian Revolution is a four-phase process. The phases are distinguished by varying criteria of social prestige and by significant change in the composition and ranking of social groups. The critical years which separate the phases are 1921, 1929, and 1934. As the result of the social process belonging to the fourth phase, Russia, on the eve of the second World War, was once more a stratified society consisting of a ruling elite, the Nonparty Bolsheviks, the "toilers," and the paupers. Membership in these groups displays the tendency to become hereditary.