Politics & Society

Narratives of Inequality Under Communism Voices from Below

28.04.2008

Socialist ideology in general and the October Revolution in particular were heavily saturated with the notions of equality and social justice. As a result, when the Soviet regime failed to live up to its earlier promises of socialist egalitarianism, there was a sense of betrayal among the Soviet people, who resented the growing inequalities, especially the various privileges of the ruling elites such as chauffeured limousines and magnificent houses with tennis courts, pools and so on. In spite of widespread discontent, the official press avoided severe criticism of this sensitive issue because it was heavily censored by the Soviet regime. Under such circumstances, what did the Soviet people really think, feel and talk about various privileges and inequalities? When the Soviet regime established a system of censorship so thorough that it inspected even the labels on matchboxes, people eventually responded by developing anonymous social practices of samizdat – uncensored underground publications. Analyzing the archival sources of Arkhiv Samizdata, this paper resuscitates the angry voices of the silent, or rather the silenced, in order to understand the popular perceptions of and reactions to privileges and inequalities in the first “socialist” country.

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