Mobilitate socială și limite de aparat: observații pe marginea poveștii vieții unui intelectual moldovean din epoca sovietică târzie

Abstract

The biography of Ion, who came from a poor peasant family, then became professor (he obtained his PhD at the most prestigious university in the former Soviet empire) and member of the first freely elected Moldovan parliament, offers a case study in which we can observe, at the micro scale, the upward social mobility process that took place in the Soviet Union through secondary and higher education institutions. However, this “life story” illustrates a certain cap which was sometimes imposed to new “national cadres” (employees) in their career development, who were suspected of disloyalty towards the Soviet regime. This new elite formed and capped by the same system (a process which was subject to a double logic: training of professionals and political control) became in the years of perestroika and the “velvet revolutions”, the new vanguard which took over after the departure of the Soviet government, by embracing the values of the “national revival” and liberal democracy.

Keywords

• biography
• USSR
• Moldavia
• social mobility
• intellectuals