The pictures on this page and on page five were taken by Allen H. Kassof, a graduate student fellow at the Russian Research Center, on his recent trip to the Soviet Union.

What is life really like in the Soviet system?

For almost a year now, individuals have been permitted to enter Russia and to do a limited amount of traveling. These people have duly made notes and reported back to the western world their findings. But they have always been individual impressions, based more on chance interviews and meetings than on systematic research.

This summer, however, three members of the Russian Research Center published a report entitled "How the Soviet System Works." It is based on the first large-scale study of attitudes and life-experiences of Soviet citizens--some 3,000 of them--and was conducted by the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, with the support of the U.S. Air Force. It is the first scholarly approach to the subject.

All the Soviet citizens interviewed left Russia during and after World War II. Most of them were moved out of their homeland involuntarily by the Germans as prisoners of war or as workers. The mass-interview techniques employed by the Projects are not used, or permitted, inside Russia.

Co-authors of the report are: Raymond A. Bauer, lecturer on Social Psychology; Alex Inkeles, lecturer on Sociology; and Clyde K.M. Kluckhohn, professor of Anthropology.

Here, in brief, are the main points of the report:

The former citizens of the USSR express "intense hatred" for the people in power and for the Communist Party.

In the USSR, they lived in fear of "the terror" of sudden arrest by secret police. They resent the "politicalization" of all aspects of life.

Next to the police terror, the system of collective farms is resented most, both by city dwellers and by peasants. The peasant is the "angry man" of the system. The manual workers share the peasants' feelings, but are "less intense and resentful."

But the report goes considerably beyond these generalizations. Published by the Harvard University Press it discusses specific aspects of the Soviet System. What, in short, is life really like for the man or woman living under the Soviet System? Here, in more detail, are some of the report's findings:

Jobs

"The work situation in the Soviet Union ranges from one of frustration and dissatisfaction for the manual groups to one of gratification for the members of the intelligentsia and the white-collar workers."

"The level of pay was the strongest factor determining the attractiveness of of a job (to the emigres)." But "the most desirable jobs were those that paid the most and were simultaneously dangerous (politically)."

Intelligentsia and white-collar employees generally were satisfied with their pay, liked their work (82 percent of the intelligentsia, 74 percent of the employees), and found their working environment pleasant. But they resented others being advanced beyond them on political grounds.