In the second half of the XX century on the territory of Eastern Siberia began a new phase of industrialization, accompanied by rapid urban growth. The population, especially its most important component - people under 30 years of age, mostly in marginal condition, quickly started urban-izing, regardless of place of residence both in the city and in the village. In a relatively short period (1950-1980s) there has been a significant change in social structure and employment of the population of the region developed in a different socio-cultural environment. The key to understand metamorpho-sis is to study the evolution of the education system and its result - the Gen-eral literacy of the population. For 30 years urban population of the Anga-ra-Yenisey region have significantly increased their educational level. As a result of the considered processes is well established layer of the urban population with completed secondary and/or vocational education, which was 50.5 % of citizens and defined the character and needs of the city, 35.9 % of the people had lower secondary, primary education or were not educated. The figure is large enough for urban population in the late twentieth centu-ry, but in general typical for industrial society, given that the region was dominated by raw material industries that use unskilled labor. Quite a high percentage of citizens with higher education is 13.6 %. However, when com-paring employment in the production it turns out that only half of them worked according to their speciality.