Sociological approaches to the study of professions are incomplete if they do not focus on a central aspect of their existence—their relation to the state. First and foremost, professional groups provide skills and societal functions so critical to industrial nations that their activity cannot be ignored by the state. Since the time of the medieval guilds, professions have signed charters with the state combining some compromise between the rights of monopoly and self-regulation, on the one hand, with some kind of control or check on their central activity by the state, on the other, in return for such rights...

The aim of this chapter is to examine the medical profession in the Soviet Union, the historical background of the profession, and its position in the late 1980s.

“Profession” has a multiplicity of meanings. These range from a declaration or an oath (a “profession of faith”) to that of a specialized occupation and a group of persons who are solidary because they perform the same work, as for example guilds in the Middle Ages or labor unions at the present time. Moreover, the adjective “professional” is often used to characterize something that is well done and thus distinguishes it from...

The legal profession in the USSR is in a state of transition, as Gorbachev has made law one of his primary vehicles of change. The prestige of the legal profession has been enhanced. The role of the legal system in Soviet society and the function of lawyers within the state is under reassessment. Serious systematic research is being undertaken for the first time to address the questions discussed here—the relative prestige, the autonomy, the working conditions, and the attitudes toward law and legality of the members of the different branches of the legal system.¹

Gorbachev believes that a legal...

Since the time of the czars and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the engineering profession in Russia has changed in many regards. During the czarist period engineers could be described as technical assistants of the emperor and of his commanders. They were responsible for the construction of roads, bridges, channels, ports, shipyards, and sluices as well as of strictly military structures during military expeditions or battles. Czar Peter I, one of the most innovative emperors in Russia, founded the first engineering school in Moscow in 1712. The educational training of the first technical scientists in the eighteenth century consisted of...

In an article that has become a classic, “The Profession of Science and Its Powers,” Joseph Ben-David summarized the reasons for regarding science as a profession, “like medicine, law and engineering.” The features he saw as common to all these occupations, known as “liberal professions” or “professions” proper, which distinguish them from other vocations not considered as such, were the following: “1) a higher educational qualification as a prerequisite to entry into the occupation; 2) the privilege of monopoly in the performance of certain functions (such as treating patients, signing the blueprints for constructional projects); 3) a measure of control...

“In this country, the profession of schoolteacher is one of those most honored, most respected by the people.”¹ Teaching has an ambiguous status in theories of the professions, since along with nursing it does not fit most of the defining characteristics of a profession. Although some nevertheless accept it as a profession, others would rather define it as a “semiprofession,” and still others would deny it even this status, claiming that it is not, and can never become, a profession. To a large extent this is a consequence of the historical development of teaching as an occupation. Since education came...

Professionalism is a matter of collective power. It is one strategy used by members of highly educated occupations to transform their control over scarce knowledge and skills into various forms of privilege.¹ Professional power is augmented when members of an occupation increase their ability (1) to control the conditions of their occupational practice and reproduction and (2) to shape other institutions, particularly of distribution, in their collective interest.

Various occupations have had notably different measures of success in this professional project. U.S. physicians between 1900 and 1970 are considered the prototypical profession in both power and privilege.² Their professional power...

There are many questions one could discuss in an examination of the hierarchy of status and prestige within the medical profession in Czechoslovakia. This study focuses upon three interrelated issues: (1) an exploration of the ways in which socialist medicine in Czechoslovakia can be defined as a bureaucratic profession; (2) an examination of the segmentation and rank ordering of various medical specialties, as well as of general practitioners, specialists, and administrators; and (3) a brief review of the ranking and power of socialist medicine in relation to other occupations. The examination of the attitudes and values concerning the prestige of...

Like any other group of societies, socialist nations have exhibited a great variety of forms in spite of their commonalities. Since their inception they have also been undergoing constant change. Moreover, they are currently undergoing a series of fundamental changes in their organization, ethos, and relationship with the world environment. All of this means that generalizations about the professions in these societies need to be hedged about with many qualifications and exceptions. That this is a very new endeavor only increases the problem.

Despite the hazards of such an enterprise, we venture in this closing chapter to suggest some of...