ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the principal forms of social and economic inequality in the Soviet version of a socialist society. It also focuses on inequalities between social groups in incomes and living standards and accesses schooling, public esteem, opportunities for mobility, and–in a somewhat limited context–participation in decision-making. The chapter examines some of the ways in which social inequality has emerged as an issue in Soviet public discourse. Social tensions associated with inequality, which cannot be expressed more directly, have a way of appearing in discussions even if in muted form. Ossowski characterized the "official Soviet image" of society during Stalinist period as one "in which there are classes without class antagonisms and without class stratification". Soviet expressions of attitudes toward social inequality and attempts to justify its continued existence reveal the same readiness to go beyond simplistic propositions of an earlier period simultaneously with an inability to complete a line of argument or scheme of empirical research.
