The 1917 revolution destroyed the economic power of the landowners, the industrial capitalists and the large merchants. But at the end of the first decade after the revolution the occupational structure of the population as a whole was little changed from before the First World War. Over 80 per cent of the population were engaged in agriculture both in 1914 and in 1926. Among the 20 per cent outside the agricultural sector, the main changes were a precipitate decline in the number of domestic servants, the reduction in the size of the armed forces by 50 per cent, and a substantial growth in unemployment.

Between the two population censuses of 1926 and 1939, an occupational revolution took place. The number of persons working in the agricultural sector declined considerably, while the number engaged in all kinds of non-agricultural activities more than trebled. This included a trebling of the number employed in the education and health services as well as in industry. Educational levels rose sharply. The number of schoolchildren increased by over 150 per cent, so that by the end of the 1930s two-thirds of all children were attending school for seven years. The number of graduates increased from less than a quarter of a million in 1928 to nearly a million by the eve of the Second World War, though they still amounted to only just over one per cent of the labour force.