The principal objectives of this article are to trace the course of occupational wage differentials in the Soviet Union since the first Five-Year Plan and to explain the changes that have occurred. While these objectives are of sufficient interest in themselves, the author also attempts to judge whether particular changes in skill differentials are mainly a function of the stage of industrialization and rate of secular growth, or of the institutional framework within which the labor market functions. The author's cautious conclusion is that, in the Soviet Union at least, official wage policies have been largely adaptive to or the consequence of labor-market developments resulting from changes in technology and rates of economic growth, rather than the converse. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)