On the processes in the social structure of the manufacturing part of the Russian society in transformational transition conditions of the late 20th century

One of the insufficiently studied issues in the social history of Russia in recent decades is the evolution of the social structure of society at the intersection of the Soviet and post-Soviet stages of its development. The reason is that the social structure at each of these stages was considered from opposite theoretical and methodological positions: the pseudo-class approach with the allocation of the so-called “three-member” (classes of workers and collective farmers and a layer represented by the intelligentsia), on the one hand, and the stratification approach, on the other. The aim of the research is to analyze the processes that took place in the social structure of the manufacturing part of the Russian society in the conditions of the transformation transition of the late twentieth century, as well as the main factors and causes that determined them. The source base consists of the data of state statistics (including continuous reporting, special sample surveys on labor and employment problems), materials of sociological research conducted by specialized institutions for the study of public opinion in the 1990s, the results of published scientific research. The novelty of the statement and solution of the problem is due to the fact that these processes are considered in the context of the transition from the state-capitalist system of the Soviet period to the private-capitalist system of the newest period of national history, which was formed at the stage of embedding the Russian economy in the processes of international division of labor. We conclude that the nature and scale of the transformation of the class structure of the manufacturing part of society in the period under consideration were due to changes in property relations, as well as the effects of a sharp transition from a centrally controlled economy to market relations. We show that the main line of class demarcation in the manufacturing part of society in the 1990s was the widening of the gap between the owners of private capital and a narrow layer of the class of managers serving their interests, on the one hand, and the mass classes of workers, on the other.