When it comes to analyzing problems of mobility, most studies of the post-Soviet era have cited random and unconnected data with respect to the Soviet era, on the principle of comparing "the old" and "the new." The authors have deemed it possible (although based on material that is not fully comparable) to examine the late Soviet past as a period that precedes and, to a large extent, explains the phenomena that relate to the post-Soviet reality, including the present time. The aim of this survey was to study individual career professional and social shifts over the span of three generations that represent three eras in the life of the country: (1) the period leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist system (the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s); (2) the active phase of the postsocialist transformation (the mid-1990s); and (3) the years of relative social and economic stability leading up to the world financial crisis (2000-7). Comparisons of Soviet-era and post-Soviet mobility show that the move from one type of social dynamic to another has had negative consequences for social mobility in Russia. The lack of upward mobility and increase in downward mobility of the 1990s had not been reversed during the past decade. (Contains 15 tables and 2 notes.) [This article was translated by Kim Braithwaite.]