Fuller 2000

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June 3, 2000 14:5 Annual Reviews AR105-25
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2000. 26:585–609

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c 2000 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
SOCIALISM AND THE TRANSITION IN EAST AND

CENTRAL EUROPE: The Homogeneity Paradigm,
Class, and Economic Inefficiency
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Linda Fuller
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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2000.26:585-609. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1291;

e-mail: lofuller@oregon.uoregon.edu
Key Words working class, intelligentsia, transition politics, epistemology,

work
■ Abstract The homogeneity (mass-elite) paradigm exerts inordinate influence
over social research on East and Central European socialism and its transition. I explore
the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of this paradigm and argue that
it has masked the importance of class relations for grasping the dynamics of these
societies. I help retrieve class in general, and the working class in particular, from
the analytic obscurity to which the homogeneity paradigm has relegated them by
juxtaposing workers’ and intellectuals’ perceptions of economic inefficiency. Finally,
I suggest ways that inattention to class under socialism has retarded understanding of
the political struggles that have accompanied its demise.
INTRODUCTION
Much of the scholarship on East and Central Europe begins, whether explicitly or
implicitly, from an assumption of social homogeneity. In saying this I mean to draw
attention to the fact that, aside from a minuscule political elite who thoroughly
monopolize all forms of power, these societies are understood to be composed of an
amorphous and largely undifferentiated mass, a sociologically lifeless abstraction.
Originally associated with totalitarian analyses of socialism (Ekiert 1999:300;
Lane 1996:136, 139), this oversimplified view has survived periodic theoretical
and empirical challenges and indeed seems to have been revived in their wake (Lane
1996:136–37; Crowley 1997:209, n. 14). The homogeneous paradigm continues to
exert, if sometimes more subtly, a perceptible influence on the burgeoning number
of studies of the wrenching post-socialist transitions in which countries of the
region now find themselves. While the hegemony of the paradigm has never been
total, its imprints on our social understanding of the area are deeper and more
plentiful than is often acknowledged.
0360-0572/00/0815-0585$14.00 585
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586 FULLER
Although the perception of uniformity has always obscured many significant

social fissures and complexities within East and Central Europe, I limit my focus
to class. In the general spirit of Konrád & Szelényi’s (1979) argument, I understand
the fundamental class division plaguing socialism in these countries, which has
not disappeared in successor formations, to run between workers and intellectuals.
I define the intelligentsia as all those with college or university degrees and all
those with top and mid-level decision-making and management posts in govern-
ment, administrative, economic, educational, political, and mass organizations and
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units. For some years before socialism disintegrated, the overlap between these
two groups was considerable throughout East and Central Europe. In the follow-
ing section I examine how the homogeneous habit of thought is associated with a
research approach that begins and ends with the epistemological and methodolog-
ical standpoint of the region’s intellectual class. A principal intent of this section
is to suggest that the cause of sound social knowledge about East and Central
Europe would be better served were researchers more modest in their use of the
homogeneous paradigm and more cognizant of its influence on their scholarship.
The second and third sections draw on disparate strands in the literature on
socialism and its transition to help retrieve class in general, and the working-class
in particular, from the analytic obscurity to which the homogeneous paradigm has
relegated them. These discussions center around economic inefficiency, a topic at
the center of many debates about East and Central European socialism and its tran-
sition in the countries on which I concentrate: Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as
well as the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and Czechoslovakia,
and their successors. These sections underscore how different from, and at times
diametrically opposed to one another, the views of workers and intellectuals were
on this subject. My larger purpose in highlighting this contrast is neither to adjudi-
cate whose perceptions are closer to reality nor to minimize the many differences
within each class, but rather to offer one clear illustration of the significance and
persistence of the socialist class divide.
The final two sections suggest that the damage done by the reigning paradigm
goes beyond mere inattention to and ignorance of class in East and Central
European socialist societies. These deficiencies in our understanding of social-
ism have, in turn, hobbled analyses of one question sure to occupy scholars for
some time: How and why did these social systems disintegrate? In concluding, I
address working-class political involvement in the simultaneous processes of so-
cial, economic, and political collapse and reconfiguration in the region, one facet
of this complex and multidimensional question.
HOMOGENEITY AND CLASS, EPISTEMOLOGY

AND METHODOLOGY
That the homogeneous paradigm has been produced largely from the epistemo-
logical standpoint of intellectuals does not, in and of itself, distinguish it from
most other knowledge about social life. Yet in light of the substantive content
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SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 587
of this paradigm, it is inadvisable to dismiss the relationship between know-

ledge producers and knowledge produced as unextraordinary and thus befitting
no further comment. According to the homogeneous paradigm, East and Central
European societies are best regarded as places where virtually everyone, save a tiny
political elite, belongs to the same sociologically faceless and nondescript assem-
blage. Considered another way—and this is the basis of my major epistemological
worry—many East and Central European intellectuals who have created know-
ledge about the area have generated a particular understanding that encourages
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us to think of knowledge producers themselves as largely indistinguishable from
nearly everyone else. Many scholars from outside the area have joined the same
paradigmatic chorus—indeed some must be counted among its founders—thereby

reinforcing the flattened view of the region’s social landscape.

The hegemony of the undifferentiated depiction of East and Central Europe is
accomplished and reproduced in a variety of covert and overt, simple and more
complicated ways. Often the notion of homogeneity is advanced through the juxta-
position of undefined and unexamined descriptors, which serve as semantic stand-
ins for this unvariegated vision of society, and even scholars whose work otherwise
casts some doubt on the utility of the homogeneous paradigm, sometimes revert
to the use of labels that reinforce it (Lane 1996:124; Curry 1988:495; Bonnell
1989:311, 313, 314; Kennedy 1992:38, 39). “Elite” and “mass” are the most com-
mon of these, though authors who focus on the socialist period on occasion opt
for alternative terms, which nonetheless convey the same uniform meaning. “Ben-
eficiaries” and “victims,” “nomenclature” and “others,” “party people” and “non-
party people” belong on this list (Tökés 1996:11; Pano 1997:304; Curry 1988:490,
495; Cook 1993:3; Kostecki & Mrela 1984:138; Staniszkis 1979:182, 183, 187;
Parrott 1997:13). The use of terminology connoting homogeneity did not end with
socialism. Transition scholarship, however, demonstrates growing preference for
“the public,” “citizens,” “public opinion”, and, most recently, “the electorate” as
referents that unite the overwhelming majority of the region’s inhabitants into a
single, sociologically undifferentiated group (Schöpflin 1991:235; Parrott 1997:2;
Offe 1997:38, 73, 83; Kluegel & Mason 1999:41; Wolicki 1995:75; Jasiewicz
1995:149; Tökés 1997:380).
The cause of social homogeneity is advanced in other ways as well. Many
studies of political culture, a concept in which Dawisha (1997:51) reports a resur-
gence of interest, fall into this trap (McFalls 1995:Ch 4, Parrott 1997:21–22). This
happens because political cultures are commonly perceived as conglomerates of
politically relevant attitudes, value systems, and behaviors held more or less uni-
versally within a particular unit. In terms of the ease with which it lumps nearly
everyone into a single social heap, a concept like “East German political culture”
is thus just as successful as the “East German masses.” Institutionalists do not nec-
essarily fare any better. Róna-Tas, for instance, despite his stated desire to move
beyond a simplistic elite-mass analysis of Hungary, ends up perpetuating his own
brand of homogeneous socialism by centering his inquiry around universal state
employment, “the central fact of life for almost all adults under communist rule,”
which reduced “the entire population to wage labor” (Róna-Tas 1997:4, 5; my
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588 FULLER
italics). As with many analyses based on political culture, his glazes over a great
deal of social difference with a frosting of homogeneity.
For a number of reasons civil society, “one of the more fashionable concepts
in the context of Central and Eastern Europe” (Schöpflin 1991:240), bears a more
complex and ambiguous relationship to the homogeneity paradigm. This is partly
because, when it comes to the social identity of those who actually create and
comprise civil society, a topic often avoided entirely, the literature displays a con-
tradictory bifurcation. On the one hand, civil society is seen as the province of
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narrow bands, small pockets, and tiny circles of dissident intellectuals (Kennedy
1992:51, 54; Schöpflin 1991:224; Torpey 1995:186; Parrott 1997:13, 38, n. 99;
Tismaneanu 1997:409; 427–43). On the other, authors use the term as another
proxy for the monotonous social mass, of which the homogeneous paradigm un-
derstands nearly everyone in East and Central Europe to be a member. As examples,
we find civil society considered to be the articulation of society’s interests inde-
pendent of the state and the representative of “a higher ethics and morality,” rather
than “any particular fraction, or class of society” (Schöpflin 1991:241; Szelényi
et al 1997:207; Iankova 1998:240; Meininger & Radoeva 1996:47). Kennedy’s
(1990) discussion highlights the pitfalls likely to await any attempt to reconcile
these two highly inconsistent conceptions of “civil society as virtually no one”
and “civil society as virtually everyone.” For Kennedy, civil society in Eastern
Europe depends for its formation and democratic vitality on critical intellectuals.
He further reinforces, though unintentionally, an exclusive conception of civil so-
ciety by detailing how Polish physicians and peace activists, small minorities of
the population, become critical intellectuals. But at the same time, in describing
these new members of civil society as “ordinary individuals” and mere “people”
(Kennedy 1990:281, 300), Kennedy reverts to the mass notion of East and Central
European civil societies as comprised of a wide swatch of citizens of equal social
prospect.
Given my discussion thus far, it should come as little surprise that many in-
tellectuals who produce knowledge about East and Central Europe assume the
right to speak for everyone in the region with far less hesitation than they might
have, had the content of the elite-mass paradigm not encouraged them to view
the lives, experiences, opinions, and interests of the region’s intellectuals as anal-
ogous to those of almost everyone else. The logic here is unassailable. So long
as nearly everyone is in the same social boat, what should it matter that it is
only from the intelligentsia that we learn about the area, or that outside scholars
dutifully reproduce these same voices as those of society in general? Because in-
tellectuals are principal producers of academic social knowledge of all types, the
danger of overexposure to their renditions of complex social formations is never
completely absent. In other instances, however, the content of guiding paradigms
can help temper this epistemological danger. But in the case of East and Central
Europe, the thread of homogeneity weaving so prominently through our knowledge
base magnifies this risk (Burawoy 1989:32, n. 40; Daskalov 1996:80; Burawoy
1996:97).
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A number of troubling, even contradictory, practices accompany the paradigm-

induced ease with which intellectuals assume the right to speak for everyone else in
analyses of East and Central Europe. Sometimes, authors simply redefine inclusive
terms like “people” to be synonymous with the much narrower social category of
intellectuals. “Hungary’s political transformation . . . was facilitated by people and
their ideas for change. By ‘people’ I mean professional political, academic, and
literary elites and unattached intellectuals” (Tökés 1996:167; Frentzel-Zagórska
& Zagórski 1989:96). We hear scholars, under cover of the paradigm, over-
?
eagerly delivering all manner of pronouncements on what “the masses” think,
feel, do, want, need, and care about, which are at least debatable and at most
challenged by some credible evidence (Schöpflin 1991:249; Kennedy 1992:65;

Torpey 1995:10; Offe 1997:38; Judt 1988:207; Djilas 1998:301). Finally, we de-
tect an air of superiority in some statements about intellectuals and a patronizing
tone in many of those referring to everyone else. “That the introduction of property
rights and market mechanisms,” Offe (1997:38) informs us, “is in the interest of
society as a whole is, however, typically not reliably recognized and appreciated
by the empirical will of the majority of the population” (Kennedy 1990:287, 299;
Kostecki & Mrela 1984:137, quoting Sztompka; Baylis 1998:299; Kurczewska
179, n. 11).
Of course, the political intelligentsia under socialism has long been criticized
for speaking on behalf of the rest of society (Kennedy 1990:282; Djilas 1998:179,
296–297; Stark & Bruszt 1998:27, 40, 41). But, as the preceding reveals, many
scholars who have published before and after the transition, who study different
countries, and who harbor a variety of political persuasions, many critical of the
socialist political elite of the region, have followed suit. Nor has this inclination
to speak for everyone been limited to the socialist political intelligentsia and the
heterogeneous group of scholars who write about the area. East Central European
dissident intellectual activists often do the same. “What distinguishes all these [East
German, Czech, and Slovak church leaders, scholars, lawyers, former communists,
bankers, etc.],” according to Baylis (1998:298–99), “is their ability to speak for
very different needs and feelings in their population” (Tökés 1996:306; Stark
& Bruszt 1998:28, 40, 214, n. 41; Tismaneanu 1997:428; Meininger & Radovea
1996:60; Kennedy 1992:38, 51). And, insofar as opinion polls capture the thinking
of additional intellectuals who have not necessarily produced written knowledge
of or been politically active in the area, we encounter a similar proclivity. Thus,
according to Kurczewska (1995:179, n. 11), 37% of a national sample of college-
educated Poles “believed that intellectuals should act in behalf of society and offer
values on society’s behalf.”
Although such epistemologial concerns are always intertwined with method-
ological ones, it is worth focusing more specifically on the latter for a moment.
Here my principal discomfort is the remarkably high proportion of scholarship on
East and Central Europe that relies exclusively, or near exclusively, on primary
evidence gathered from or about the minority of individuals I have defined as in-
tellectuals. Goodwyn (1991:xxiv), at least, has detected an even more worrisome
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590 FULLER
tendency to offer no substantiating evidence at all in some cases, since “in views
from afar, supporting evidence is not presumed to be needed.”
Explanations for the narrowness of the evidence vary. The most disconcerting
revolve around the epistemological matters broached above. If intellectuals feel
especially entitled by the substance of the paradigm to speak on behalf of everyone,
why should the collection of data from beyond their own class circle be of pressing
concern? In addition, it is usually easier and simpler for intellectuals to establish
research contacts with other intellectuals, whether supporters or opponents of the
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powerful. In my experience in the GDR these people sought me out, indeed were
sometimes difficult to shake, whereas workers were usually far less curious about
who I was and what I was up to. Moreover, despite my determination to gather
data from nonintellectual sources, I found that being among people with whom I
shared the most was troublingly seductive. Unfortunately, while in other research
situations, reigning knowledge paradigms can provide a strong antidote to such
predilections, the homogenous paradigm serves to encourage them.
A more familiar explanation offered for the socially restrictive character of much
data on socialist countries is that these societies were closed, heavily policed, and
tightly censored (Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:1; Crowley 1997:3; Goodwyn
1991:vii–xxx). Access to evidence from non-party, non-party–approved, and non-
intellectual sources, when it could be had at all, was severely limited. Yet this
difficulty, which I do not minimize, cannot explain why, once socialism collapsed
and evidence from expanded sectors of the population became more accessible, so
many analyses continue to be crafted from a scaffold of intellectual data. Thank-
fully, this seems to be changing; post-communist studies of workers and scholar-
ship self-consciously based on information emanating from beyond the socially
narrow confines of the intelligentsia are more common (Goodwyn 1991; Laba
1991; Crowley 1997; BlÃ aszkiewicz et al 1999; Creed 1998; Burawoy & Lukács
1992). But the death throes of scholars’ data-gathering and methodological habits
have been prolonged. For example, two major works on Hungary by Tökés (1996)
and Róna-Tas (1997) are based largely on transcripts of Central Committee and
Politburo deliberations, party and ministerial archives, parliamentary minutes, in-
terviews with policy makers, top party leaders, and private entrepreneurs, and, in
the case of Tökés (1996:xiii, xiv), meetings with the “crème de la crème” of the
reform intelligentsia and his work as a senior advisor to the foreign minister. Data
for three important volumes on the GDR by Torpey (1995), Joppke (1995), and
Maier (1997) come from socially analogous sources, and, even though McFalls’
(1995:13–15, 191) work on the GDR utilizes data from over two hundred survey
responses from “ordinary East Germans,” nearly 60% of these people turn out to
have college or university degrees, a sure sign of a sample heavily weighted toward
the intelligentsia. Finally, so far as I can tell, a significant portion of the primary
evidence undergirding Lane’s (1996) study of the rise and fall of socialism relies
on interviews with communist-era political intellectuals.
Objections may be raised that such research projects intend to produce knowl-
edge about intellectuals or that they deal with topics about which intellectual
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sources simply have the most to tell us. Yet wherever scholars hint at broader
foci, for example, through their titles [The Rise and Fall of State Socialism (Lane
1996), The Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany
(Maier 1997)], this argument does not satisfy me. Whether intended or not, such
titles based on such data advance, however implicitly, the cause of the uniformity
paradigm and embolden knowledge producers to promote their own interpretations
as those of everyone else, which is one of the paradigm’s most discomforting by-
products. All the while, the principal point is worth remembering: We can never
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produce credible scholarship on matters about which we have gathered no evidence.
Finally, as the following otherwise provocative piece of scholarship exempli-
fies, even when the research agenda has more to do with workers than intellectuals,
and even when authors themselves are aware that information on worker-related
topics is sorely lacking, evidence can still end up heavily skewed toward what
Goodwyn (1991:xxvi) terms the “evidential desert” of intellectual sources. Thus
Ost & Weinstein’s (1999) article on governance changes in post-communist Polish
workplaces is based largely on surveys of managers, workers elected or appointed
to management bodies, and trade union officials. Rank-and-file workers are mostly
ignored as a data source. Even in the one subsection that does focus on “Polish
workers, in general, not union activists” (Ost & Weinstein 1999:7), the authors,
despite the revelation that they had engaged in field research in over twenty enter-
prises, rely on information from two attitudinal surveys conducted by other people.
In making such methodological choices, Ost & Weinstein pass up an all-too-rare
opportunity to broaden our knowledge of East Central European societies, based
on close-in and unmediated evidence from the working-class majority.
ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCY FROM THE STANDPOINT

OF INTELLECTUALS
From the perspectives of a great many intellectuals, those hailing from East and
Central Europe and those analyzing the area from the outside, those who have
written about the region and those who have not, socialist economies were mon-
strously inefficient, and most detect vestiges of this inefficiency in the transition
period. On this matter even partial dissenters are few (Burawoy & Lukács 1985;
Szelényi & Szelényi 1994:218–21; Spenner et al 1988:604). Many times intellec-
tuals convey this judgment haphazardly and without amplification by qualifying
nouns like “economy” and “enterprise” with a string of uncomplimentary ad-
jectives. Favorites include not only inefficient but also irrational, unsustainable,
uncompetitive, submarginal, dismal, decaying, closed, corrupt, distorted, bloated,
subsidy-dependent, crisis-ridden, self-suffocating, obsolete, and unsophisticated
(Georgescu 1988:69, 75, 77; Judt 1988:201; Pantev 1996:18; Offe 1997:13; Gerber
& Hout 1998:36; Clarke et al 1994:182; Staniszkis 1979:167, 170, 171, 186; Clarke
& Donova 1999:214; Dawisha 1997:47; Pano 1997:297; Glasman 1994:69; Ekiert
1997:304).
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592 FULLER
Other times the meaning of inefficiency emerges in more thorough and systemic
discussions. Some intellectuals, for instance, associate it with low productivity,
outdated and inferior technology, unbalanced and declining growth, lack of inno-
vation, high debt, waste, misallocation of resources, and poor quality. For others,
inefficiency acquires more organizational meanings, such as lack of coordination
between economic units and actors, undersupply of production inputs, central-
ization, bureaucratization, monopolization, and the inability to self-monitor. But
beyond such understandings of socialist and post-socialist economic inefficiency,
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intellectuals often stress one other—bad workers. There is an obvious contradiction
here. To associate bad workers with economic inefficiency is, on some level, to ac-
knowledge the existence of class, something the homogenous paradigm disputes.

The point I mean to emphasize here, however, is that, despite this contradiction,
the connection intellectuals often draw between bad workers and economic inef-
ficiency stands as strong testimony to the importance of the class divide, for, as
we soon discover, it contrasts sharply with working-class perspectives on what
efficiency means.
For some intellectuals, five Soviet factory workers come to typify the short-
comings of the socialist working class:
Ivanov left without permission before work had finished; Grigor’ev followed
Ivanov’s example; Gretyukov came 10 minutes late twice in September;
Piskunov, a fitter, goes walking around the shop during work hours. He does
this on average 40 to 60 minutes a day. Pashkevich loves to stroll around the
shop with ‘his hands in his pockets’. This is putting it mildly: one of his
strolls lasts 10 to 20 minutes. (Filtzer 1996:26 quoting a factory newspaper)
The intellectual-derived list of worker failings does not end here, however. Regu-
larly, even viscerally, accounts refer to workers as dependent, dawdling, irresponsi-
ble, egoistic, unmotivated, undisciplined, insubordinate, and uncontrollable drunks
and thieves. Intellectuals seem rarely to tire of portraying how workers likewise
withhold effort, go shopping during the work day, lack regard for the quality of
their work, and are quite prepared to take leisurely lunches when they show up for
work at all (Kotkin 1996:6; Filtzer 1996:9, 10, 17, 18, 26, n. 12; Creed 1998:176,
198, 217, 257; Crowley 1997:15, 56, 64, 96, 164, 167, 168; Clarke et al 1994:197;
Burawoy 1989:23; Róna-Tas 1997:55–57, 59, 154–55; Laba 1991:123). According
to Filtzer (1996:20), a scholar particularly alert to workers’ defects, “Negligence
also took its toll.” Given the prevalence of such characterizations of workers’
attitudes and behaviors, one sometimes wonders how socialist economies ever
produced or delivered any products or services at all, let alone inefficiently.
While there is no question that students of East and Central Europe have
made immense contributions to our knowledge of the structural underpinnings
of inefficiency in socialist and transition economies (Nove 1983; Kornal 1986,
1992), it should come as no surprise, given their readiness to associate economic
inefficiency with bad workers, that many intellectuals also view workers as, to some
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degree, responsible for the problem. Certainly not a few have qualified this stance,
perceiving the causal connection between bad workers and economic inefficiency
as indirect, partial, or neither deliberate nor irrational on workers’ part (Tökés
1996:109; Creed 1998:198; Crowley 1997:55; Pano 1997:304; Filtzer 1996:16,
26, quoting Pravda). Still, in the course of assigning workers some liability, intel-
lectuals have expanded the previous list of ways worker behaviors and qualities
might result in economic inefficiency. As examples, Spenner and his co-authors
(1998:107), puzzled by their finding that layoffs have a negative impact on effi-
?
ciency in some Bulgarian firms undergoing transition, suggest part of the reason
may be workers’ uncertainty about their future employment, which could lower
their productivity. And the fact that workers exercised even a “limited” amount of
control over their own labor under socialism becomes, for Filtzer (1996:12, 19),
“a source of the myriad dysfunctions and disruptions which plagued production
and distribution.”
Intellectuals are far less eager to assign themselves any blame for economic
inefficiency, and, when they do, their discussions are notable for their comparative
lack of both elaboration and vehemence (Georgescu 1988;76; Burawoy 1996:86–
87; Lane 1996:101; Róna-Tas 1997:33; Dimitrov 1996:107; Filtzer 1996:20). In
other instances, intellectual culpability is chalked up to guilt by association. Thus,
Tökés (1996:261) notes that some socialist economists view managers’ negative
effects on economic performance as attributable to their membership in an “unholy
alliance” with workers and unionists. Rather than making a palpable contribution to
economic inefficiency, as workers are often understood to do, intellectuals are more
likely to apprehend themselves as the ones who struggle to keep the economy afloat.
Yet the sharpest disagreement between intellectuals and workers on the causes
of economic inefficiency, both before and after the socialist era, revolves not around
bad workers but around remunerative equality. Again, to posit remunerative equal-
ity as a cause of inefficiency reveals a contradiction, for in order to make such an
argument, intellectuals must to some extent acknowledge class, thereby renouncing
the homogeneity proposition. This contradiction notwithstanding, because intel-
lectuals’ and workers’ views on this matter are so discordant, the intellectual stance
on remunerative equality and economic inefficiency simultaneously suggests the
depth of the class divide.
The intellectual argument regarding economic inefficiency and remunerative
equality has several variants, but most begin from the premise that, under social-
ism, intellectuals were decidedly underpaid in comparison to workers. Some even
complain they were underrewarded in absolute terms, and that, despite mounting
claims to the contrary (Róna-Tas 1997:205; Clarke et al 1994:197, 201–6, 214 n.
◦
36; Spenner et al 1998:605; Matěju 1999:18; SlÃ omczyński & Shabad 1997:170),
the “pauperization” of the intelligentsia has continued into the subsequent era
(Frentzel-Zagórska & Zagórski 1989:94; Daskalov 1996:83). Intellectual com-
plaints on this score are periodically punctuated with what, in their judgment,
are humiliating examples of the absurdities to which remunerative equality leads–
theoretical physicists earning less than gutter cleaners and research scientists forced
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594 FULLER
into prostitution (Gerber & Hout 1998:37; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:164;
Crowley 1997:246, n. 11).
As in other class societies, intellectuals often employ human capital reasoning
to support their case for higher relative pay. They invest more in acquiring or they
possess more skills, training, and education than workers, and they deserve a return
commensurate with their trouble and accomplishments. In a less genteel version
of the claim, intellectuals simply understand themselves to work harder, take more
initiative, and be more critical than workers and therefore to be worthy of higher
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pay. The general director of a Russian chemical factory even attempted to justify
widening wage differentials with a sort of perverted affirmative action logic. For
years, he claimed, workers had earned much more than their supervisors, who
had “suffered in silence.” “Now it is your turn to suffer in silence,” he told an

undoubtedly skeptical work force (Clarke et al 1994:214, n. 38).
Some intellectuals reinforce their argument for a wider pay gap between classes
by maintaining that their greater stock of human capital translates into greater pro-
ductivity and hence greater economic efficiency (Ruble 1986:44). Vastly under-
researched in the literature on socialist and transition economies, this linkage
between human capital attributes, productivity, and efficiency requires intellectu-
als to embark upon a journey of faith on which few workers would accompany
them. I would expect, however, that this last argument for the inegalitarian ba-
sis of economic efficiency undergirds the often vociferous intellectual support
for actions that countered “dysfunctional” wage-levelling policies under social-
ism. Many intellectuals assume an analogous stance toward transition policies,
supporting those that “accord priority to responding to the needs of the rich and
successful” (Zloch-Christy 1996:153), and opposing inefficient “populist” poli-
cies associated with egalitarian moves such as income redistribution, collective
ownership, and working-class wage increases (Zloch-Christy 1996:160; Crowley
1997:162; Clarke et al 1994:198, 201, 205; Lane 1996:161, 162, 168, 169; Comisso
1988:462–63; Fuller 1999:87–88; SlÃ omczyński & Shabad 1997:186).
ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCY AS WORKERS SAW IT
Workers in East and Central Europe understood socialist economies to be ineffi-

cient in some of the same ways intellectuals did, and like intellectuals they have
witnessed the persistence of many of these same inefficiencies into the transition
period. In major ways, however, their perspectives on the relationship between
economic inefficiency and effort, and of management, technology, discipline, re-
muneration systems, and other topics diverged notably from those of the intelli-
gentsia, and recognition of the depth and breadth of these differences proves a
good illustration of the social prominence of the class divide in the region.
We have seen how many intellectuals view bad workers both as an illustration
and a cause of economic inefficiency. Yet neither the intellectual position that
many workers judged it their “social right” not to work hard under socialism
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(Connor 1991:147) nor the idea that workers are now daunted by the “grim prospect
of competitive hard work” (Lasky 1991:22) jibes with workers’ experiences or
judgments. Both before and during the transition many workers have insisted, and
observers with some knowledge of workers’ lives have corroborated, that they work
hard, sometimes very hard, at their paid jobs and that periods of idleness embarrass
and anger rather than please them (Creed 1998:247; Szlajfer 1995:18–20; Clarke
& Donova 1999; Burawoy and Lukács 1985:727, 734; Fuller 1999:42–44; Laba
1991:122–123; Ferguson 1998:460–61).
?
There are a number of reasons why workers often experienced their paid jobs
as demanding under socialism. Not only had normal work weeks often been 20%
longer than those in the West, but also overtime was commonly expected of many
workers (Laba 1991:123; Fuller 1999:43; Róna-Tas 1997:59, 101, 154; Georgescu
1998:79; Jankowska 1995:317). Workers who were paid on a piece-rate system
faced continuous norm increases. “Establish a record today, and it will be the
norm tomorrow,” a Ukrainian miner once told Siegelbaum & Walkowitz (1995:28).
Not a few workers performed more than one job, whether at the same worksite,
for example simultaneously tending multiple machines, or at a different work-
site, sometimes in the second economy (Fuller 1999:190, n. 8; Burawoy 1996:81;
Róna-Tas 1997:118, 154; Creed 1998:4, 104, 176; Tökés 1996:159). Shortages,
the bane of the workday for many producers, were often implicated in these and
many other experiences of hard work. They lay behind the uneven rhythm of
labor, which workers found particularly tiring and stressful, and behind the phe-
nomenon of “storming,” which was the normal state of affairs for up to half the
month in some workplaces, leaving workers in urgent need of “rest and repair”
(Goodwyn 1991:56, 60; Filtzer 1996:126; Stark 1986:494). The absence of nec-
essary and proper tools, machinery, materials, and labor made completing any
job far more difficult. Electricians with insufficient wire, office workers without
typewriter ribbons, sewage plant workers lacking proper protective clothing, steel
workers forced to transport alloys by wheelbarrow because automatic chutes were
inoperable, even farmworkers without enough produce crates, were commonplace
situations throughout East and Central Europe (Fuller 1999:42; Creed 1998:87;
Burawoy 1989:12). A GDR machinist explained it best: “Workers in the shops
have always worked hard. On top of that, their work required much more energy
than in the West, because they had to make gold out of shit” (Philipsen 1993:287).
More often than not, workers placed the blame for economic inefficiency not
with themselves but with the intelligentsia. For workers, the critical link between
the intellectuals and inefficiency, both during and especially before the transition,
is the disorganization of the work process. From their perspectives, disorganization
is the epitome of economic inefficiency, and they often judge bosses and bureau-
crats, both at their worksites and above them, as responsible for this chaos. Espe-
cially under socialism, workers could see that the confusion at their workplaces
sometimes stemmed as much from managerial powerlessness as managerial blun-
der. Nonetheless, workers regularly suggested, and at times adamantly insisted,
otherwise.
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596 FULLER
We can infer this from their general comments on work and their superiors
(“Many rank-and-file workers began to wonder whether we had idiots organizing
our production. If we as workers understood [how badly things were organized],
one would assume that someone who went to college should be able to grasp that
as well” [Philipsen 1993:128]), and we know that such assessments have not au-
tomatically evaporated during the transition (Crowley 1997:233; Laba 1991:122–
23; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:4; Clarke & Donova 1999:225; Clarke et al
1994:206; Curry 1988:501–503; BlÃ aszkiewicz et al 1994:129). Workers also of-
?
fered more specific formulations of the socialist link between the intelligentsia,
disorganization, and economic inefficiency. For instance, they saw disorganization
as a consequence of superiors who drew plans incorrectly or refused to schedule

preventative equipment maintenance, who changed economic targets in mid-year,

who hoarded labor, and who put little effort into marketing or design improve-
ments. As a result of such management mistakes and miscalculations, workers
witnessed production slow downs, job orders and projects abandoned or half com-
pleted, and the translation of their hard work into useful and desired products
and services thwarted (Filtzer 1996:16, 21; Clarke & Donova 1999:237; Clarke
et al 1994:199; Creed 1998:156, 181, 239). Workers also faulted the authoritarian
and arbitrary management style of many bosses, which rarely solved production
problems and often made them worse, for the turmoil at work (Burawoy 1989:18,
26; Curry 1988:503). While socialist management regularly shifted the blame for
disorganization onto shortages, workers often did not buy this excuse. Bulgarian
hay collectors instructed to show up to work with plum-picking buckets, GDR
construction workers demolishing new construction because they received con-
flicting orders from multiple supervisors, Polish colonels telling plumbers how
to fix broken pipes, party secretaries overwatering strawberries until they rot-
ted, all these were examples of the maddening disorder that prevailed at their
workplaces for which workers often judged their superiors, not shortages, re-
sponsible (Creed 1998:88, 103, 104; Laba 1991:122; Fuller 1999:46; Szlajfer
1995:21).
An additional example further illustrates how far apart workers and intellectu-
als were in their thinking on the causes of socialist economic inefficiency. Many
intellectuals were unabashed technophiles. They associated the lack of up-to-date
technology with inefficiency and regarded more advanced technology as one so-
lution to socialist economic woes. Workers’ outlook on this matter was more
complicated. There were many instances in which they would like to have seen
technological improvements at their workplaces. Yet, in many workers’ judgment,
management decisions about technology many times exacerbated, rather than alle-
viated, inefficiency. Workers often considered technologies ridiculously expensive,
and, given the real-life workplace environments in which they knew they would
operate, immensely impractical. High-tech cooling systems left rusting in the open
air, robot technology, not estimated to pay for itself in 500 years, abandoned for
lack of parts, steel mill technology requiring highly accurate, but impossible to at-
tain, input calibrations in order to function properly, even a dough mixing machine
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that did not function correctly yet was inexplicably never returned, all seemed to
workers foolhardy in the extreme (Fuller 1999:46; Filtzer 1996:27, n. 36; Burawoy
1996:86; Creed 1998:156–157; Burawoy 1989:17–18; Philipsen 1992:128). Such
examples taught them that technology alone was too simple a prescription for
reversing the spiral of inefficiency in which their economies were trapped.
Workers also understand disciplinary systems to contribute to economic ineffi-
ciency, and here too differences between their viewpoints and those of intellectuals
are discernible. Many of the bad behaviors for which intellectuals have impugned
?
workers, from the earliest decades of socialism through the transition, fall into
the category of indiscipline (Róna-Tas 1997:56–57; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz
1995:100; Crowley 1997:96, 167, 168). From the perspectives of many intellec-
tuals, socialist disciplinary systems were partially responsible for the widespread
problem of indiscipline. Laws were full of loopholes; procedures were cumber-
some; cases against workers were initiated too rarely, and when they were, penalties
were lax and prosecutions few (Voskamp & Wittke 1991:359; Creed 1998:256,
257; Clarke et al 1994:180; Róna-Tas 1997:55–56, 101, 161; Crowley 1997:73,
164, 168, 169; Burawoy and Lukács 1985:732). Disciplinary systems needed dras-
tic overhaul. The scope of offenses had to be broadened, and penalties had to be
stiffened. Economic efficiency demanded it.
Workers, on the other hand, expressed a more nuanced view. As workers saw
it, not only did most of them labor hard and well under far less than optimal
circumstances but also many workers whom intellectuals labeled undisciplined
had little choice about how they worked. How could they not be occasionally
late to work when the only living quarters they could find were miles from their
workplaces? Could playing cards at work really be considered indiscipline when
there were either no orders to fill or necessary production inputs had not been
delivered? How could they afford not to leave work early or take unauthorized
mid-day breaks when shops were out of everything by the time work was over?
(Filtzer 1996:18, 19; Crowley 1997:168; Fuller 1999:220, n. 31). More important,
producers felt intellectuals did not acknowledge that workers themselves were
extremely distressed by the few egregious violators who were a great burden and
a danger to their co-workers but who were never fired. Drunks were merely re-
assigned to less desirable jobs; thieves only had their wages cut; even workers
who were actually let go, something most everyone agreed was virtually impos-
sible, usually found another job quickly, sometimes at the same factory, often for
higher pay, and occasionally with compensation for unused vacation time (Crowley
1997:85, 168; Creed 1998:177; Philipsen 1992:291; Voskamp & Wittke 1991:359;
Filtzer 1996:28, n. 48; Róna-Tas 1997:59). Individual workers undoubtedly dis-
agreed over where to draw the line between indiscipline and indiscipline extreme
enough to warrant termination. But to recognize no line at all, which is what many
workers saw happening at their workplaces, was quite simply inefficient. The few
outrageous, yet atypical, offenders wasted extraordinary amounts of their work-
mates’ and their bosses’ time and energy. Workers even complained that unions,
when forced to devote so much time to defending total laggards, were unable
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598 FULLER
to attend to the pressing needs of the remainder of workers, whose productivity

suffered as a result.
Given these concerns, workers could not agree that indiscriminately tightening
workplace disciplinary systems would do much to improve economic efficiency.
Periodic attempts to do so during the socialist era, which have become more
frequent and zealous during the transition, not only miss the point but also are
counterproductive because they provoke worker resentment and resistance (Filtzer
1996:11, 26, n. 12; Lane 1996:101; Offe 1997:223, n. 33; Crowley 1997:164, 168,
?
169; Clarke et al 1994:186, 191, 198; Szlajfer 1995:20, 61–62, n. 22). Workers’
lived experience of socialism had taught them that the cause of economic efficiency
was far better served in any system by disciplinary procedures that differentiate
between unavoidable and intentional indiscipline and that focus the spotlight on the
few chronic and flagrant offenders who truly interfere with efficient production,
rather than turning a floodlight on the majority of conscientious workers, upon
whose best efforts and ongoing cooperation economic efficiency depends.
How pay differentials relate to socialist, and later post-socialist, economic effi-
ciency is another topic on which the thinking of workers and intellectuals diverges.
Workers did not concur with many intellectuals’ human capital arguments linking
wage equality to socialist economic inefficiency. In their view, such arguments
obscured a more important issue. Workers were not primarily concerned about the
damage to economic efficiency of remuneration systems that did not sufficiently re-
ward people for prestigious job titles, higher education credentials, entrepreneurial
traits, and so forth. Their principal apprehension was that socialist remuneration
systems glossed over distinctions between any job well done and any job poorly
done. Workers focused on how productively people actually used their labor, on
the quantity and quality of the contributions they made at work, and for them
economic efficiency was enhanced to the extent that those who contributed more
were paid more.
Many workers, however, saw no straightforward correspondence between hu-
man capital attributes and how much and how well someone produced at work.
Quite the contrary, they expressed deep reservations about the economic contri-
butions of many intellectuals occupying managerial and professional positions,
often describing them as ineffective, superfluous, and unproductive. Thus one
Bulgarian claimed the agro-industrial complex in his village had over thirty offi-
cials, a “specialist for every type of agricultural activity,” none of whom really did
much (Creed 1998:77). Crowley (1997:44, 134) discovered Soviet coal miners to
harbor a similar view that “bosses, after all produced nothing,” while a part of each
miner’s labor went to support five to seven “parasites” in the managerial apparatus
(Crowley 1997:135, 136; Burawoy 1996:86; Comisso 1988:464; Fuller 1999:29,
55; Bahro 1978:209; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:121–22). In other words,
workers located an important source of inefficiency in remunerative systems that
guaranteed the highest rewards to intellectuals who, though they had more formal
education, higher status job descriptions, and so forth, did not appear to produce
as much, or as much of value, as workers did. In workers’ vision of economic
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efficiency, these things were no substitute for accomplishment as determinants of

remuneration. This position helps explain workers’ frequent criticism of socialist
and post-socialist era schemes to promote income inequality, their repeated calls
for reductions in the number and the remuneration levels of administrative and
managerial staff during the transition, and perhaps even the empirical and anec-
dotal evidence from throughout the region that reveals widely held post-socialist
preferences for reducing the gap between rich and poor (Crowley 1997:41, 57
243, n. 65; Clarke et al 1994:206; Laba 1991:40, 68, 162, 165; Fuller 1999:87–88,
?
200, n. 35; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:115; Szelényi et al 1996:472; Schöpflin
1991:247).
Perspectives on socialist economic functioning differed by class on one final

count as well. Where many intellectuals were unlikely or unwilling to attribute any
manner of efficiency to socialist economies, many workers’ saw things differently.
Along with incisive economic critiques, workers also spoke with pride about in-
novations at their workplaces, their ongoing acquisition of new skills, the quality
of production, and high productivity levels at particular plants and on particular
projects. They likewise praised a panoply of job-related benefits, for example paid
sick and maternity leave, cheap meals, vacation spots, and emergency financial as-
sistance, not to mention system-wide benefits such as high employment levels and
the availability of affordable and varied public services (Siegelbaum & Walkowitz
1995:35–36; Fuller 1999:44, 60, 194–95, n. 7). For many workers these things
constituted some evidence of socialist economic efficiency, even as intellectuals
regularly argued such benefits and outcomes “coddled” and “controlled” work-
ers, relegating them to a position of perpetual dependency on the state (Róna-Tas
1997:84; Glasman 1994; Fuller 1999:29). It was, in other words, socialism’s most
advantaged who were most inclined to dismiss socialist economies as unmitigated
disasters, “disproven by history” (Offe 1997:189), and who are unable to conceive
of changes wrought during the transition as “anything other than improvement”
(Róna-Tas 1997:8; Schöpflin 1991:239). From workers’ experience matters were
not so clear cut. As suggested in Crowley’s (1997:180) observation that socialism
both “protected and enraged” them, many workers entertained more mixed, more
complicated, and less narrow views of what economic efficiency was all about.
Workers’ equivocal reactions to developments during the transition are undoubt-
edly grounded in their ambivalent opinions of what their economies were like
under socialism (Creed 1998:29, 73, 278; Fuller 1999:152–53; SlÃ omczyński &
Shabad 1997:188).
Workers detected efficiency in an economic system they otherwise understood
as plagued by inefficiencies in one more important way. In contrast to some in-
tellectuals, many workers perceived the amount of control they enjoyed over the
socialist labor process, despite its limits and despite scholarly disagreements over
its nature, as a cornerstone of efficiency, not inefficiency, in socialist economic
systems (Filtzer 1996:17, 19; Burawoy 1989:18, 20; Clarke et al 1994:181, 182;
Fuller 1999:123–26). On the one hand, workers’ control meant that, for production
to continue, producers were continuously required successfully to make, repair,
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600 FULLER
and improve machinery and equipment without standard parts or preformulated

plans, often acceptable products and services could not be produced or delivered
at all unless resourceful workers, lacking sufficient or proper production inputs,
could invent a way to do so. Exercise of this brand of workers’ control varied
by economic sector, gender, and skill level. Yet in the GDR at least, white-collar
workers recounted “making everything from scratch” and “figuring out how to
finish a report without the typewriter ribbon or the duplicating machine,” just as
blue-collar workers told of “making new things from old things or keeping old
?
things going from new things” (Fuller 1999:123–24; Filtzer 1996:14, 21; Wierling
1996:54; Clarke & Donova 1999:228). In other words, day in and day out for
decades, many workers had engaged in a number of the very same flexible, cre-
ative, enterprising, frugal, imaginative, and solution-oriented work practices that

many intellectuals associate with economic efficiency.
A second brand of control socialist producers exercised was the self-manage-
ment of their own labor. Workers’ self-management meant that many producers
continually made decisions about work and production that are routinely left to
managers in capitalist settings. Thus we find references to socialist workers formu-
lating their own job classifications, concocting their own division and integration
of tasks, establishing and maintaining cooperative networks inside and outside
the shop, overseeing discipline, determining production speeds and job assign-
ments, deciding work and delivery schedules, arranging production sequences,
determining the quality and mix of production, hiring co-workers, determining
how pay should be divided, and even assuming some control over the amount of
goods and services they produced and delivered. Surely it was in specialized work
groups like the Hungarian VGMKs and in brigades, which elsewhere prolifer-
ated as socialism matured, that workers’ self-management reached its apex (Creed
1998:153, 154, 180; Lane 1996:100; Róna-Tas 1997:149; Burawoy 1989:15). But
self-management had long been part of the daily work experience of many who did
not participate in such forms of work organization as well (Fuller 1999:125–26;
Mitchell 1992:693; Filtzer 1996:14, 19, 23). Burawoy (1996:92) even maintains
that workers’ self-management has increased in some places during the transition,
and others report forceful worker attempts to protect and increase self-management
during the struggles that have everywhere accompanied the demise of socialism
(Fuller 1999:114–20; Kennedy 1992:40). Soviet and Russian coal miners, some
of whom expanded their conception of self-management to include workers’ own-
ership and election of enterprise management, are a case in point (Crowley 1997).
From workers’ perspectives, self-management was not just an obligatory re-
sponse to an inefficient economy. It was also a noteworthy sign of system effi-
ciency. Workers judged self-management economically rational and productive.
They saw how it allowed for smooth, non-bureaucratized, and coordinated control
and monitoring of work, and how it conserved time and resources and minimized
conflict at the point of production. While many intellectuals defined precisely such
outcomes as efficient, most never admitted any such connection between workers’
self-management and socialist economic efficiency.
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HOMOGENEITY AND WORKING-CLASS

POLITICAL ACTIVISM
It is certainly a truism, though one of which it is good to remain mindful, that to
comprehend the present social researchers must understand the past. Despite their
different views on how the socialist past matters for understanding the present,
this point has often been made with regard to East and Central Europe (Sørensen
1997:47; Stark & Bruszt 1998:5–7; Iankova 1998:257–58; Gerber & Hout 1998:37;
?
Ekiert 1997:300, 337–38; BlÃ aszkiewicz et al 1994:126–27). But the past can only
help illuminate what succeeds it if we have gotten the past right, and, as I have
argued, insofar as scholarship on East and Central Europe has been dominated by
the homogenous view of socialism, we have not gotten the past right.
My particular concern has been how the attachment to homogeneity has con-
cealed a deep social fissure between workers and intellectuals in socialist societies.
The fact that this fundamental class fissure has been inadequately explored, indeed
often ignored altogether, has meant serious misreadings and significant blind spots
in our understanding of how and why East and Central European socialism un-
raveled. I fear the number of these to be potentially quite large, but in this and
the following section I highlight only two. Both concern working-class politics,
particularly in the earliest phases of socialism’s collapse.
To begin with, compared to the voluminous analyses of what intellectuals were
up to during this period, we know desperately little about any active political roles
workers assumed. Too many scholars dismiss workers in a sentence or two as
marginal to these historic struggles, mention their involvement in strikes, demon-
strations, and so forth with little attempt to integrate working-class politics into
their broader analyses, or seem willing to ascribe workers an influential role only
by denying their class identity (Lane 1996:143; Dimitrov 1996:112; Georgescu
1988:93; SlÃ omczyński & Shabad 1997:171; Tismaneanu 1997:414–15; Pantev
1996:21; Michnik 1995:234–35; Stark & Bruzst 1998:34). Even in the scholar-
ship on Poland, the country where working-class activism is hardest to overlook,
the homogenous paradigm encourages interpretations that de-emphasize working-
class and highlight intellectual activism (Schöpflin 1991:244; Kennedy 1992:40).
Insofar as scholars rely on versions of reality forwarded by dissident Polish intel-
lectuals, this is understandable. Hence, Jacek Kuroń, one of the better known of
this lot, has let it be known that he considers Solidarity his “brainchild” and that
he was the one who “dreamed up” the Interfactory Strike Committee (Jankowska
1995:293, 296; Goodwyn 1991:324; Kennedy 1990:289).
The homogeneity paradigm interferes with the ability to uncover political ac-
tivism among East and Central European workers in at least two ways. First, it
deflects our research gaze away from the social nooks and crannies in which we
would likely find it. If history is any guide, a major site of working-class poli-
tics during crisis periods is the workplace, where workers around the globe have
taken advantage of power vacuums to refashion and expand their control over
production and the economy. Such actions occurred as socialism disintegrated in
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602 FULLER
Poland, the GDR, and the Soviet Union (Fuller 1999:ch 6; Philipsen 1993:289;
Crowley 1997), and it is probable that, were more researchers disposed to consider
this obvious working-class space, we would know more than we do about workers’
activism elsewhere in the region. Working-class families and neighborhoods may
also prove fruitful spaces in which to unearth more information about the forms
and dynamics of working-class political activism during this era (Siegelbaum &
Walkowitz 1995).
We need also to broaden our vision beyond what counts as politics for intel-
?
lectuals, if we are to comprehend how working people’s actions affect processes
of political change. In the case of political struggles surrounding the demise of
socialism, workers’ efforts to reform pre-existing unions might be one example,

as might activities reminiscent of socialist-era “silent boycotts” in Hungary. So

too might be many people’s refusal to vote once elections became regularized
(Siegelbaum & Walkowitz 1995:125; Szelényi & Szelényi 1994:228–29; Fuller
1999:101, 110–14; Szelényi et al 1996:466, 469, 473, 476; Szelényi & Szelényi
1991:128–29; Ferguson 1998:462). In sum, to come upon evidence of working-
class political involvement researchers must be willing to scrutinize different social
spaces and different activities than those commonly associated with the political
activism of intellectuals.
HOMOGENEITY AND WORKING-CLASS

POLITICAL DEMOBILIZATION
Some may object to what I have said above on the grounds that in most countries
workers were simply not very involved in politics at the beginning of the transition.
Researchers’ emphasis on intellectual politics therefore reflects reality. While I
remain skeptical of this argument, out of suspicion that it reveals as much about the
substantive, epistemological, and methodological limits of the reigning paradigm
as it does about workers’ politics, it is clear that many workers were not active
in these events. This, however, is not a reason for continued attachment to the
homogeneity paradigm. Quite the contrary. The homogeneity paradigm, in blinding
us to class relationships, bears much responsibility for how little effort has gone
toward explaining the political demobilization of so many workers. There are a
potentially large number of investigative paths we might pursue in searching for
clues about how class relations under socialism are implicated in working-class
political withdrawal during the transition. Below I mention three.
First, it is impossible to ignore the amount of tension and hostility between work-
ers and intellectuals reported in the literature on East Central European socialism.
The relationship between the two classes is frequently described as estranged, for-
mal, and uneasy at best and as tense, deeply antagonistic, and sharply contradictory
at worst (Djilas 1998:140; Connelly 1997:313; Judt 1988:188; Szelényi & Szelényi
1994:229; Filtzer 1996:11). While we might wonder that the overwhelmingly
negative portrayal of this relationship did not raise more doubts about the utility of
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the homogeneous paradigm, when we review the opinions intellectuals and work-
ers held of each other more closely, it is not surprising that their relationship would
come to be described in such dismal terms.
Workers often considered intellectuals, both party-identified and not, as par-
asites and spongers, and as arrogant, authoritarian, manipulative, and genuinely
dangerous bullies. Add to this list weak-kneed and obsequious in the face of
authority, hypocritical, condescending, and even laughable, and the none-too-
pretty impression many workers harbored of the intelligentsia is near complete
?
(Crowley 1997:72, 119, 228, n. 15; Creed 1998:235, 244; Curry 1988:492, 501,
502, 506; Torpey 1995:161, 162, 164; Kennedy 1992:39; Fuller 1999:30;
BlÃ aszkiewicz et al 1994:129, 132; Clarke et al 1994:203; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz

1995:190, 194, 199). Thanks to the homogenous paradigm, we know much more
about how intellectuals viewed workers, and their perceptions appear equally, if
not more, unflattering. To many intellectuals workers seemed children in the most
pejorative sense of the term. They were immature, irresponsible, easily duped,
and not all that sharp either (Schöpflin 1991:238, 242, 249; Djilas 1998:117, 127;
Szlajfer 1995:30–40, 33; Staniszkis 1979:178–79; Kostecki & Mrela 1984:138;
Connelly 1997:327, 329; Wolicki 1995:78; Fuller 1999:30; Clarke et al 1994:204;
Curry 1988:501; Tismaneanu 1997:44, n. 35; Creed 1998:219; Freed 1996:175;
Torpey 1995:156, 163; Róna-Tas 1997:159). Although they sometimes saw work-
ers as cowardly, timid, and politically ineffective, at other times intellectuals wor-
ried that workers were, at least potentially, too active and too influential. This
appears Offe’s (1997:45–46) fear as he counsels “patience,” “discipline,” and “civ-
ilized behaviour,” especially among society’s less fortunate, during the transition
(Ost & Weinstein 1999:22; Kennedy 1992:65; Crowley 1997:13; Ekiert 1997:305,
311; Stark & Bruzst 1998:20–24; Freed 1996:172; Tökés 1996:167).
A second matter that holds promise for the development of explanations for
workers’ political demobilization expands the theme of the second and third sec-
tions of this paper. There I argued that, in terms of their perceptions of economic
inefficiency, workers and intellectuals were miles apart. Their divergent views
stemmed from the fact that their lived experiences of socialism were so dissimilar,
though the homogeneous paradigm succeeded in disguising the extent to which
this was so.
There are numerous ways in which workers and intellectuals could be said to
have inhabited separate socialist worlds, a number reminiscent of those familiar
in other class societies (Konrád & Szelényi 1979:172–74; Andorka et al 1984:36,
40; Szelényi 1978:67; Schöpflin 1991:246–48; Tökés 1996:122, 123, 414; Fuller
1999:19–20, 88–97; Connelly 1997; Ferguson 1998:466; SlÃ omczyński & Shabad
1997:181, 183). But in terms of explaining the dearth of working-class involvement
in the demise of socialism, one of the most important is that they had rarely done
any sort of transformative politics together. They did not, in other words, share a
joint oppositional history under socialism. In Romania, Czechoslovakia, the GDR,
and Hungary, they engaged in very different kinds of activities, and neither offered
support to nor solicited it from those on the other side of the class divide (Georgescu
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604 FULLER
1988:88, 89; Tismaneanu 1997:427; Offe 1997:141; Schöpflin 1991:244; Judt

1988:189; Torpey 1995:chs 1–3, 208; Joppke 1995:57–65; Tökés 1996:175, 188;
Kennedy 1992:46–51). At certain times and places, they even publicly opposed
the political undertakings of the other class. In the early days of Czechoslovak
socialism, for example, workers and unions chastised student demonstrators, called
for investigations of their activities, urged that no mercy be shown them, and
attacked property in at least one university (Connelly 1997:313–15). In like fashion,
during the workers’ rebellion of 1953, the secretary of the GDR writers’ union
?
published a letter castigating workers, smugly warning them, “You will have to
lay a great deal of brick and very well . . . before you will be forgotten [for]
this disgrace” (Torpey 1995:30). Even in the rare instances when workers and
intellectuals undertook opposition politics together, Poland between 1976–1981

being the most notable example, their efforts were replete with difficult moments
and proved impossible to sustain over the long run (Kostecki & Mrela 1984:138,
139; Jankowska 1995:306, 313, 322, 324; Kennedy 1992; Judt 1988:228; Iankova
1998: 248–49).
The homogeneous paradigm has obscured a final feature of the class relationship
in East and Central European socialist societies that might also yield insights into
the lack of political participation among workers during the struggles surrounding
the end of socialism. Put simply, workers tended to perceive all intellectuals,
whether party or government officials, bosses, engineers, artists, educators, or
dissidents, as socially similar. From the bottom of the class ladder looking up,
all these people shared a good deal. Whether we think workers accurate in their
unvariegated assessment of the intelligentsia, it is worth reviewing some of the
reasons they embraced such a view. Here I focus on the overlap between the
socialist political intelligentsia and the rest of the intellectual stratum, which many
adherents of the homogeneous paradigm consider of minor consequence.
To begin with, as socialism matured, intellectuals of all kinds came increasingly
to dominate the membership and leadership of the communist parties in numbers
far exceeding their proportion of the general population. While some intellectual
party members were surely reluctant participants in party life and exercised little
power within these organizations, such subtleties were easily lost on most workers,
who were neither party members themselves nor privy to internal party processes
◦
(Kennedy 1991:264; Lane 1996:163, 164, 169; Matěju 1999:31; Pravda 1979:233;
Fuller 1999:25–26; Tökés 1996:134, 135). What was more obvious to many work-
ers was how frequently representatives of the academic, technical, cultural, and
even dissident intelligentsia lent open support to the political intelligentsia, often
in moments of crisis (Offe 1997:2; Lane 1996:169; Torpey 1995:74–75; Tökés
1996:175; Kennedy 1992:49; see also Gerber & Hout 1998:9; Kornai 1992:325;
Fuller 1999:26–27; Creed 1998:167). The conspicuous reluctance of many intel-
lectuals ever to challenge or oppose the political intelligentsia less overtly in more
ordinary times further reinforced workers’ impression of proximity between the
two subgroups of intellectuals (Fuller 1999:26; Torpey 1995:40, 51, 123, 143;
Daskalov 1996:75–76; Tökés 1996:187).
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The other side of the coin was that the political intelligentsia often coddled and
rewarded, humored and courted their intellectual brethren. Whether best consid-
ered calculated moves at cooptation or reflections of a less conscious prejudice
in favor of those for whom they felt a certain social affinity, the political intel-
ligentsia afforded others of their stratum preferential treatment so often and so
obviously that Daskalov (1996:74) declares it one-sided and incorrect “(t)o see
the career of the intelligentsia under state socialism only or even predominantly
in terms of ‘oppression’.” Rather than persecuting other intellectuals, the political
?
intelligentsia was often as likely to grant them visas, cede them degrees of per-
sonal, professional, and organizational freedom unmatched elsewhere in society,
shower them with prestigious public awards and positions, channel hefty public
resources in their direction, and safeguard their ability to take disproportionate

advantage of certain social opportunities, such as higher education and participa-
tion in the private sector of the economy (Ekiert 1997:314; Connelly 1997:309,
321, 323, 325, 332; Fuller 1999:27–28; Schöpflin 1991:246–47; Creed 1998:167;
Róna-Tas 1997:131–32; Torpey 1995:17, 24; Szelényi & Szelényi 1994:226–27).
Beyond this, in many countries the political intelligentsia treated workers who
opposed them more harshly than they did other intellectuals who did so. While
intellectual opponents of the regime were sometimes ignored, allowed to emigrate,
granted concessions, drafted, or expelled from school, oppositional workers were
more likely arrested and jailed, disappeared, beaten, wounded, and even killed
(Georgescu 1988:89; Torpey 1995:38; Kennedy 1992:55–56; Kostecki & Mrela
1984:139, 140, n. 10; Ekiert 1997:310, 318, 320, 325).
When we assign these three features of the relationship between workers and
intellectuals a prominent place in our sociological conception of what East and
Central European socialism was like—a task never easily accomplished in the
shadow of the homogeneous paradigm—working-class withdrawal from the polit-
ical maelstrom accompanying the end of socialism seems less a mystery. Merely
to pose the logical questions prompted by the recognition that the relationship
between workers and intellectuals was marred by tension and antagonism, that the
two had virtually no joint history of oppositional political engagement, and that
workers tended to view all intellectuals as socially similar, is to suggest how we
might begin to explain the political passivity of many East and Central European
workers at this critical historical juncture.
Why would workers, who had hitherto not rushed to the support of opposition
intellectuals, all of a sudden, historically speaking, have done so? Given their lack
of a joint political history, not to mention other ways in which they could be said
to live in separate social worlds, on what shared understandings and experiences
could workers and intellectuals have built the trust essential for joint politics in
risky times? Would not their low opinions of intellectuals have made it unlikely
workers would have been attracted to, or taken the initiative to form, alliances with
them? Equally important, given that workers’ negative perceptions of intellectuals
were reciprocated, why would activist intellectuals have gone out of their way
to recruit workers to their political cause, be that supporting or challenging the
P1: FQK
606 FULLER
socialist status quo? Wouldn’t this have simply been too difficult and unrewarding
a task, abandoned in favor of the easier one of reaching out to one’s own kind?
Might the few intellectuals who tried anyway not have floundered on clumsy and
ineffective attempts to enter worlds and to reach people they did not know? Might
it not have been more likely that intellectual activists did things and said things
with an arrogance guaranteeing workers would rebuff their overtures? Viewing all
intellectuals as close social kin, why would workers have been much interested
in the struggles of the day? Why wouldn’t they instead have seen them as none
?
of their affair, as quarrels between members of a privileged family of which they
were not a part, as socialist politics as usual? Why would the eventual elections,
an outstanding feature of which has been the circulation of power between parties
of the old political intelligentsia and those led by other segments of the intellectual
stratum, have inspired working-class political activism? Would the issues raised
by the all-intellectual protagonists in these struggles and electoral contests, the
analyses they offered, and the solutions they proposed have found much resonance
with the working class?
On occasion, researchers have suggested answers to such questions that clarify
how socialist class relations are an important key to explaining working-class polit-
ical demobilization in the transition period (Judt 1988:226; Clarke et al 1994:194;
Baylis 1998:294; Szelényi et al 1996; Jankowska 1995:323; Fuller 1999:97–105;
Crowley 1997:29, 190, 204, 218, n. 26 and 27; Stark & Bruszt 1998:ch 1; Kennedy
1992:51–52, 56; Schöpflin 1991:244–46; Ferguson 1998:459; Tökés 1996:394;
Lane 1996:162, 185, 196; Goodwyn 1991:328; Róna-Tas 1997:197). But as a
consequence of the continuing, if hopefully diminishing, adherence to the ho-
mogenous paradigm, this key has too seldom been noticed and more rarely turned.
In my view, unlocking the many doors now closed through both unwitting and
enthusiastic acceptance of homogeneity is precisely what is required to uncover
new evidence, reopen long settled questions, and generally deepen and expand our
knowledge of East and Central Europe’s socialist past, in order that it better inform
our analyses of what succeeds it.
Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org
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Annual Review of Sociology
Volume 26, 2000
CONTENTS
COHABITATION IN THE UNITED STATES: An Appraisal of
Research Themes, Findings, and Implications, Pamela J. Smock 1
DOUBLE STANDARDS FOR COMPETENCE: Theory and Research,
Martha Foschi 21
THE CHANGING NATURE OF DEATH PENALTY DEBATES,
Michael L. Radelet, Marian J. Borg 43
WEALTH INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, Lisa A. Keister,
Stephanie Moller 63
CRIME AND DEMOGRAPHY: Multiple Linkages, Reciprocal Relations,
Scott J. South, Steven F. Messner 83
ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Joane Nagel 107
PREJUDICE, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC OPINION: Understanding the

Sources of Racial Policy Attitudes, Maria Krysan 135

RACE AND RACE THEORY, Howard Winant 169
STATES AND MARKETS IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION, Seán
Ó Riain 187
VOLUNTEERING, John Wilson 215
HOW WELFARE REFORM IS AFFECTING WOMEN''S WORK, Mary
Corcoran, Sandra K. Danziger, Ariel Kalil, Kristin S. Seefeldt
241
FERTILITY AND WOMEN''S EMPLOYMENT IN INDUSTRIALIZED

NATIONS, Karin L. Brewster, Ronald R. Rindfuss 271
POLITICAL SOCIOLOGICAL MODELS OF THE U.S. NEW DEAL,
Jeff Manza 297
THE TREND IN BETWEEN-NATION INCOME INEQUALITY, Glenn
Firebaugh 323
NONSTANDARD EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS: Part-time, Temporary
and Contract Work, Arne L. Kalleberg 341
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF IDENTITIES, Judith A. Howard 367
SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES: Ecological and Institutional
Dimensions, Richard Arum 395
RACIAL AND ETHNIC VARIATIONS IN GENDER-RELATED
ATTITUDES, Emily W. Kane 419
MULTILEVEL MODELING FOR BINARY DATA, Guang Guo,
Hongxin Zhao 441
A SPACE FOR PLACE IN SOCIOLOGY, Thomas F. Gieryn 463
WEALTH AND STRATIFICATION PROCESSES, Seymour Spilerman
497
THE CHOICE-WITHIN-CONSTRAINTS NEW INSTITUTIONALISM
AND IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIOLOGY, Paul Ingram, Karen Clay
525
POVERTY RESEARCH AND POLICY FOR THE POST-WELFARE
ERA, Alice O'Connor 547
CLOSING THE ""GREAT DIVIDE"": New Social Theory on Society
and Nature, Michael Goldman, Rachel A. Schurman 563
SOCIALISM AND THE TRANSITION IN EAST AND CENTRAL
EUROPE: The Homogeneity Paradigm, Class, and Economic , Linda
Fuller 585
FRAMING PROCESSES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: An Overview
and Assessment, Robert D. Benford, David A. Snow 611
FEMINIST STATE THEORY: Applications to Jurisprudence,
Criminology, and the Welfare State, Lynne A. Haney 641
PATHWAYS TO ADULTHOOD IN CHANGING SOCIETIES:
Variability and Mechanisms in Life Course Perspective, Michael J.
Shanahan 667
A SOCIOLOGY FOR THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION,
Michael Burawoy 693
AGENDA FOR SOCIOLOGY AT THE START OF THE TWENTY-
FIRST CENTURY, Michael Hechter 697
WHAT I DON'T KNOW ABOUT MY FIELD BUT WISH I DID,
Douglas S. Massey 699
FAMILY, STATE, AND CHILD WELL-BEING, Sara McLanahan 703
GETTING IT RIGHT: SEX AND RACE INEQUALITY IN WORK
ORGANIZATIONS, Barbara F. Reskin 707
WHITHER THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF CRIME, Robert J.
Sampson 711
ON GRANULARITY, Emanuel Schegloff 715

HOW DO RELATIONS STORE HISTORIES?, Charles Tilly 721

Fuller 2000

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June 3, 2000 14:5 Annual Reviews AR105-25

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2000. 26:585–609

SOCIALISM AND THE TRANSITION IN EAST AND

Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1291;

Key Words working class, intelligentsia, transition politics, epistemology,

Although the perception of uniformity has always obscured many significant

HOMOGENEITY AND CLASS, EPISTEMOLOGY

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 587

of this paradigm, it is inadvisable to dismiss the relationship between know-

paradigmatic chorus—indeed some must be counted among its founders—thereby

reinforcing the flattened view of the region’s social landscape.

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 589

A number of troubling, even contradictory, practices accompany the paradigm-

challenged by some credible evidence (Schöpflin 1991:249; Kennedy 1992:65;

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 591

ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCY FROM THE STANDPOINT

knowledge the existence of class, something the homogenous paradigm disputes.

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 593

had “suffered in silence.” “Now it is your turn to suffer in silence,” he told an

ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCY AS WORKERS SAW IT

Workers in East and Central Europe understood socialist economies to be ineffi-

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 595

as a consequence of superiors who drew plans incorrectly or refused to schedule

preventative equipment maintenance, who changed economic targets in mid-year,

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 597

to attend to the pressing needs of the remainder of workers, whose productivity

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 599

efficiency, these things were no substitute for accomplishment as determinants of

Perspectives on socialist economic functioning differed by class on one final

and improve machinery and equipment without standard parts or preformulated

ative, enterprising, frugal, imaginative, and solution-oriented work practices that

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 601

HOMOGENEITY AND WORKING-CLASS

socialism, workers’ efforts to reform pre-existing unions might be one example,

as might activities reminiscent of socialist-era “silent boycotts” in Hungary. So

HOMOGENEITY AND WORKING-CLASS

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 603

BlÃ aszkiewicz et al 1994:129, 132; Clarke et al 1994:203; Siegelbaum & Walkowitz

1988:88, 89; Tismaneanu 1997:427; Offe 1997:141; Schöpflin 1991:244; Judt

intellectuals undertook opposition politics together, Poland between 1976–1981

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 605

resources in their direction, and safeguard their ability to take disproportionate

Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 607

ism and advanced capitalism. Am. Soc. Rev. 338

50:723–37 Ferguson R. 1998. Will democracy strike back?

Compar. Commun. XXIII:218–303 Stud. Soc. Hist. 34:679–94

SOCIALISM IN TRANSITION 609

Schöpflin G. 1991. Post-communism: construc- Szelényi I, Szelényi S. 1991. The vacuum in

LB Eliason, pp. 8–18. Aarhus, Denmark: pluralism in post-Ceauşescu Romania. In

PREJUDICE, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC OPINION: Understanding the

Sources of Racial Policy Attitudes, Maria Krysan 135

FERTILITY AND WOMEN''S EMPLOYMENT IN INDUSTRIALIZED

ON GRANULARITY, Emanuel Schegloff 715

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