Soviet Union Table of Contents
Soviet sociologists have grouped many of those who perform nonmanual labor into a category comparable to Western "white-collar workers." The approximately 25 million members of this group ranged from specialists who possessed high educational qualifications to administrators and clerks. The group included the majority of party and government bureaucrats, teachers, scientists, scholars, physicians, military and police officers, artists, writers, actors, and business managers. In the late 1980s, about 30 percent of white-collar workers belonged to the CPSU; the more prestigious occupations within this group had the highest percentage of CPSU members. White-collar workers on the average received higher wages and more privileges than the average Soviet worker, although physicians and schoolteachers who were just starting out earned less than the national average for all employees.
Data as of May 1989