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Appealing for a Car: Consumption Policies and Entitlement in the USSR, the GDR, and Romania, 1950s-1980s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the correspondence between state authorities and citizens in the USSR, the GDR, and Romania. As the consumerist turn spread across the eastern bloc, an important focus of the populations' appeals to the authorities concerned the appropriate levels and conditions of consumption. Their letters display growing consumer aspirations, and from the mid-1960s onward a significant number of these petitions expressed the desire to buy a car. However, when state authorities failed to deliver enough cars, they also shaped a new attitude toward consumption. On the one hand, the population asked for automobiles as favors. On the other, a new discourse of entitlement and even “consumer rights” surfaced. Citizens started to expect a certain lifestyle; moreover, they even believed themselves to be entitled to it. As a consequence, their new sense of entitlement diluted the culture of favors and privilege, thereby contributing to the crisis of legitimacy in late socialism.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2016

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References

I thank Jan Plamper, Svetlana Suveica, Eszter Varsa, Stefano Petrungaro, and the anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review for their useful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Mark Hatlie for language editing.

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112. BArchB, DL1/22953 (6.6.1977).

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