The peasants appreciated some of the material benefits granted by the new government, such as educational opportunities for their children and expanded industrial employment that offered new outlets for underemployed rural youth. As a whole, however, the peasantry bitterly resented being grouped with workers in the ideological frame of reference of the new leaders. To the peasant, landless workers who lacked tradition and security occupied a lower social position than he, and he saw this grouping together as a debasement of his own status. The blow to his pride and to his traditional position in society was complete when collectivization deprived him of his precious land. Were it not for the private farm plot, which allows the peasant to continue on a very small scale his cherished way of life and thereby perpetuate his values, the cooperative peasant would be little more than an agricultural worker.
In the restructured Bulgarian society the peasantry, encompassing roughly 30 percent of the population, forms the bottom of the social pyramid. Although it derives some benefits from the educational, health, and welfare services instituted by the government, the peasantry is the forgotten and most disadvantaged segment of the population. Peasants continue to work hard and long for very meager rewards, and they no longer have the pride and satisfaction of owning their own land and of being independent.
The next social stratum, the industrial working class, has been the object of much glorification by the regime and has benefited most by the social measures passed since 1944. In terms of their standard of living and their social status, workers occupy the lowest level of urban society; however, the educational benefits available to them and the growing job market offer prospects for betterment and advancement. The group has grown more rapidly than any other social class as a result of the crash industrialization program and constitute between 40 and 50 percent of the population, as compared to about 29 percent in the mid-1950s. Most members of the working class are peasants who have left the village to find a better life in the growing cities and towns. Some workers are members of the former middle or upper classes who have been demoted by the new social order. Many members of the small prewar working class were propelled upward out of the working class into managerial and administrative positions of industry.