Consumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and Russia in the Twentieth Century

0576462 - HÚ 2024 RIV DE eng M - Část monografie knihy
Gagyiova, Annina
Socialism Without Future: Consumption as a Marker of Growing Social Difference in 1980s Hungary.
Consumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and Russia in the Twentieth Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023 - (Eriksroed-Burger, M.; Hein-Kircher, H.; Malitska, J.), s. 181-204. ISBN 978-3-031-20203-2
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985963
Klíčová slova: consumption * inequality * state socialism
Obor OECD: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

In the field of socialist consumption history, major emphasis has been laid on the scarcity of consumer goods. This, together with the allure of largely absent Western products, is one of the reasons for the failure of the communist project, and the desire for Western-style consumerism across the Soviet bloc was one of the leading causes why many rejected an increasingly unpopular socialist system.
However, the case of Hungary, with its peculiar understanding of the socialist good life – very much shaped by the shattering experience of 1956 – created what became later known as “Goulash Communism.” In this liberal version of a socialist consumption culture, citizens enjoyed a largely stable provision of goods. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, Hungarian consumption culture became also very much informed by Western consumerist trends. In comparison to most other socialist countries, Hungary accomplished to provide more colorful and varied consumption possibilities.
At the same time, the state party responded to a slowing economy with major economic reforms in 1982. While Hungary found itself forced to take up credits provided by the World Bank and the IMF, the reforms legalized the Second Economy on an unprecedented scale. As a result, a small stratum of entrepreneurs developed while a growing group of citizens could not make ends meet. The conspicuous consumption of Western luxury goods by a new economic elite became a signifier of how the state party distanced itself from socialist values of equality and social security. Ultimately, this article aims to answer how the loss of socialist utopia came to be expressed in vastly varying consumption practices.
Trvalý link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0346182