Campaigns to Regularize the Use by Official Cars in the USSR (from the 1950՚s to the 1980՚s)

Abstract

This article examimes efforts to regularize the use of official cars in the USSR during a campaign against the privelages of the Soviet 'ruling class', which is a topic not previously covered by social research. The research is based on archival documents, laws and regulations, materials from periodicals, and sources of personal origin. The research covers the period of the late 1950’s, when party debate began over the nomenklatura’s increasingly visible access to privelages and their usage of state vehicles for personal use. On one hand, this led to the expansion of the state vehicle fleet, on the other, there was the demand to construct a society of social fairness. Krushchev’s campaign worsened his popularity among the high nomenklatura and hastened his removal from power. In the following years, all attempts to reform the system of access to state vehicles were left to the Transport Department. Its main remit was adding vehicles to fleet pool whole reducing expenses for maintaining this pool. Not one of these reforms brought substantial results; examining the case of this campaign to regulate car use tells us much about Soviet motorization. Car access gained the symbolic function of prestige and was monopolized by a privelaged minority; in other words, it served as an element of social stratification. In this light, the reform of the automobile fleet was doomed to failure and was a classic example of attempting to realise political utopianism by achieving social equality.