Shabashniks: A history of the USSR's dissenting protagonists of free enterprise.

摘要

Shabashniks, as dissenting protagonists of free enterprise within the Soviet economic system did as much or more to undermine the political and economic security and control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) than many of the more well known political dissidents of the Soviet era. While it was never the conscious or primary motivation of those Soviet citizens working as shabashniks to challenge the political primacy of the CPSU in their self proclaimed position as the vanguard of the development of communism in the Soviet Union, the scope and the scale of the private economic activities engaged in by shabashniks represented a significant source of the impetus for the eventual decline in the Party's monopoly on political and economic power.; This study investigates the place of shabashniks within the Soviet system, their contributions to that system and their part in its eventual decline. The narrative created as a result of this study relied primarily on Soviet newspaper, journal and magazine articles to describe the lifestyles of shabashniks. There were no Russian language monographs available on the subject at the time of this study. This study then combined the existing Soviet discussions concerning the private economic activities of shabashniks and the effects of those activities on the Soviet system, as reflected in the Soviet press, with the information gleaned from conversations the author had while working with and interviewing former shabashniks and Soviet citizens in Russia during the fall of 1994 and the winter 1997.