Competition in Socialist Society

The project's main objective is to study the concept of competition as it appeared in socialism. Our research team argues that a new situation occurred from the 1960s onward, in which the power-holders realised that in order to achieve economic progress they needed to learn from the “enemy”. This, in turn, led to the adoption of Western practices, including the urge for competitiveness. Some forms of this newly invented competition were simply imitations of their Western equivalents, while others modified Western models to the socialist framework. We study competition that enjoyed the approval of the people, even though, it was officially declared from above, thus suggesting that it served the interests of both the power elite and society. Through this analysis we intend to contribute to theoretical discussions on the Cold War era and on the working mechanism of state socialism.