Preliminary Programme

In my current research, I study the means and practices which the Soviet Union used in attempting to strengthen its sphere of influence and to extend its cultural and ideological influences to its post-war bloc. In general, what methods did the Soviet Union use to project “the superiority” of its political and cultural system within the framework of its domain and to demonstrate the contrast with the other political and cultural systems of the world, most notably the American one?
One of the means at the disposal of the Soviet Union for demonstrating the superiority of its system, ideology and culture was the powerful force of the Soviet elites. Among them, the Soviet cultural intelligentsia, namely, Soviet performers, was one of the most influential groups at the disposal of Soviet government. In my paper, I show some examples in the use of Soviet artists who were sent to the Soviet bloc or the West as cultural diplomats in order to illustrate the superiority of the Soviet system. For example, the talent of such artists as violinist David Oistrakh, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and pianist Sviatoslav Richter was shamelessly harnessed to propagate the notion of Soviet superiority in foreign countries. After Stalin’s death, the Soviet State Concert Agency (Gostkontsert SSSR) plundered the substantial foreign concert commissions and fees from the hands of these titans. Therefore, the propagandistic message of Viktor Kovetsky’s 1948 poster illustrating the road of an teenage violinist in the Capitalist countries as well as Socialist countries is really descriptive of the situation. The message which had once changed to its opposite because of the foreign concert tours by these high-level performers soon reverted to its 1948 status even if was somewhat altered. The role of the talent in the Capitalist countries had changed in one respect. The violinist was poor but celebrated in the West (but in the propaganda version he was poor and unwanted in the West). In reality the talent was not shunned but nearly homeless because he or she did not have money to spend for food or a decent hotel room because of Goskontrol abuse. In Socialism, all paths might have been open to one with talent, but the artist also had huge responsibilities and had to endure personal sacrifice. (Show less)

Observation of economic reform and competition in the socialist countries offers a new approach for understanding not only the collapse, but the survival of socialist one party regimes during the Cold War.

On the most general level this research deals with the following question: How is competition linked to legitimacy and alliance cohesion? Studying the limits of the attempted economic and administrative reforms will provide answers to this question.

Under which conditions could economic reform and competition surface as political arguments in the Soviet Union? Which interest groups in the Soviet society were most prone to use this argument and how did this affect to their position and decision-making? Was the Brezhnev era a period of more consensual decision-making in this sense, in comparison to the previous Khruschev era? How did the attempted reforms influence on alliance cohesion?

These processes are observed through the cases of Soviet Sovnarkhozy (Councils of national economy) reform and its consequences in 1957–1964 and Kosygin reform in 1965 – 1968.
Hungarian economic reform (NEM) in 1965–1973 will form an important point of reference from the viewpoint of alliance cohesion, or development of East – West interdependence, as the USSR was the leading superpower of the Socialist camp while Hungary was one of the smaller members. (Show less)