This book explores how the concept of "competition", which is usually associated with market economies, operated under state socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the socialist system, based on command economic planning and state-centred control over society, was supposed to emphasise "co-operation", rather than competitive mechanisms. The book considers competition in a wider range of industries and social fields across the Soviet bloc, and shows how the gradual adoption and adaptation of Western practices led to the emergence of more open competitiveness in socialist society. The book includes discussion of the state’s view of competition, and focuses especially on how competition operated at the grassroots level. It covers politico-economic reforms and their impact, both overall and at the enterprise level; competition in the cultural sphere; and the huge effect of increasing competition on socialist ways of thinking.
Introduction: Competition in State Socialism
1. To Catch Up and
Overtake the West: Soviet Discourse on Socialist Competition
2. Optimal
Planning, Optimal Economy, Optimal Life? The Kosygin Reforms, 196572
3. More
Efficiency via Democracy: Debates over Reforming the GDR
4. The Kirov
Kolkhoz: A Socialist Success Story
5. Selling Fashion to the Soviets:
Competitive Practices in Polish Clothes Export in the Early 1960s
6. Hotel
Intercontinental in Bucharest: Competitive Advantage for the Socialist
Tourist Industry in Romania
7. Competing for Popularity: Song Contests and
Interactive Television in Communist Hungary
8. The World Youth Festival as an
Arena of the Cultural Olympics: Meanings of Competition in Soviet Culture
in the 1940s and 1950s
9. Mole Holes in the Iron Curtain: The Success Story
of the Krtek Animated Films
10. Women and Competition in State Socialist
Societies: Soviet Beauty Contests
11. Concluding Remarks: Typology and
Consequences of Competition
Katalin Miklóssy is an Assistant Professor in Political History at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland
Melanie Ilic is Professor of Soviet History at the University of Gloucestershire, UK
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