Subjective Mobility after 1989

The article analyses two types of subjective mobility between 1988 and 1993. It asks how people evaluate the changes in their social status and economic situation and seeks to identify the links with certain objective social characteristics (which fix the position of an individual in the stratification system.) It considers improvements, stability and decline in the social position in six countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and, primarily, the Czech Republic. It concludes that in all the countries considered, a sense of improved social position is linked with certain social characteristics (lower age group, higher level of education, profession, independent economic activity) while a sense of decline (relative deprivation) is linked with others (older age group, lower level of education, economic inactivity or relatively unqualified work, membership in the Communist Party). Social characteristics connected with a sense of advancement or deprivation are more or less the same in all countries. In certain countries, however, particularly the Czech Republic, the sense of relative deprivation is relatively lower than in others,  and the sense of an improved social position is stronger. The article considers the factors which reinforce the link between a sense of advancement or of relative deprivation with given social characteristics, as well as the factors contributing to the much more widespread sense of relative deprivation in individual countries compared to the Czech Republic.