When you're in such a school you can really feel what's up, especially in Soviet/post-Soviet case: the socioeconomical situation is exactly the same (because communism), and you usually know the families of other pupils. Then you see the ones who try hard but still can't get it, you also see the lazy smarts.
I am a kid from a post-communist state. What I saw was that abused children had it very rough even though they were very bright, and the lazy smarts generally had perfect conditions at home with loving parents ready to help at any time - and I don't mean with homework itself. You wouldn't believe what sense of not being loved and stress does to a child.
> the socioeconomical situation is exactly the same (because communism)
Not true at all. It might look that way to an american, but there are things like social capital, and it's not even true for financial capital. From USA perspective we were all equally poor, but from our perspective and "in our world", 300 vs 900 usd monthly wage is (was) a huuuuuge difference.
You have to consider that my parents and parents of my former classmates were raised during actual communism. Do you know how they raised children during communism? They beat them, because disobedience could mean death or lifelong prison or being sent to uranium mines - for the whole family. One bad word was all it took. And many parents haven't yet realized, even today's, that this is not the correct way. On top of that, during the 90's, rampant corruption has emerged, then the economical crisis, etc.
And then of course the teachers - their role during communism was different that what it should really be today, and many have not realized yet.
The "social capital" was based on the proximity to the ruling minority. The power was greatly centralized so there weren't many of those type of families. Majority had all same: same stuff like photocopied all over the place.
About the beatings: it's more about the Russian culture, it's even kinda normal for the husband-wife relationships in some regions. To the West there was less of it.
> The "social capital" was based on the proximity to the ruling minority. The power was greatly centralized so there weren't many of those type of families. Majority had all same: same stuff like photocopied all over the place.
Sounds like something from a school history textbook. It was way more complicated than that; the "ruling minority" or proximity to it was nearly irrelevant to most people (and also a direct threat - you stayed away from these people and their 'friends' as much as you could), what mattered more was your street's communist committee, the teachers at schools, if you wanted to have nicer (or any at all) stuff, then you had to know the shopkeepers, if you wanted your child to go to a high school, you had to know the principal, if you wanted your child to go to university, then the whole family had to have a clean and pro-communist record, if you wanted to visit a doctor, you had to know them or bring something (not necessarily money - money was not that useful), if you wanted to have a okay-ish workplace then... (I could go on forever)
In my previous comments, I was talking mainly about the 90's and early 00's - post-communism. I'm also not a Russian, I'm as west as communism got.
Well, you were apparently too far from that ruling minority. At the level of the shopkeepers/teachers/etc.
For the positions like for example even drivers for the high party members it starts getting unequal.
And about the nineties: inequality in the nineties is weird because very large amount of the criminals who got rich didn't bother to educate their children. Of course, some part of them opted for expensive teachers/schools or for sending children to the Western schools, but the "getting by force" attitude of the parents didn't really mesh well with learning.
Everyone was "too far" and no one wanted to be close, it was more of a death sentence than anything else, not a good price for not that much better life. You're talking at most about hundreds of people - out of hundreds of millions (in the Eastern Bloc as a whole).
