EKONOMICZNE "PRZYWILEJE" I "UPRZYWILEJOWANIE" W UKRAIŃSKIM SPOŁECZEŃSTWIE SOWIECKIM (1945-1991)
ECONOMIC "PRIVILEGES" AND "PRIVILEGING" IN THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIETY (1945-1991)

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the study is to highlight the economic privileges that were widely enjoyed by the Soviet nomenklatura in the Ukrainian SSR, and to debunk the myth of the egalitarianism of the Soviet society. Systematisation of factual data and processing of historical sources was carried out using comparative-historical, problem-chronological, and analytical-synthetic methods. The comparative-historical method allows to identify general trends in the USSR and their manifestations in the Ukrainian SSR. The study is written from the standpoint of the theory of elitism, and of the corporatist and interdisciplinary approaches. The latter allowed to combine data from history, sociology, political science, and economic sciences to shed light on the problem at hand. Based on the analysed data, it is concluded that the slogan of equality of all members of the Soviet society was only a component of propaganda. Historical data show that the standard of living of the Soviet elite (nomenklatura), due to the use of numerous privileges, and of ordinary citizens significantly differed. The article highlights and illustrates with historical examples such categories as "income inequality" and "consumption inequality"; it highlights such a phenomenon as "user mentality", which was the result of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet power, in the structure of which privileges were an integral part of the functioning of the party-bureaucratic apparatus of the government.

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