The goal of my paper is to analyse the micro-level operation of the Soviet political dictatorship through the example of one of the Transcarpathian settlements. The paper describes the disciplinary (reward) techniques being used by the communist elite in the collective farms (’kolkhozes’) and examines the everyday responses and adaptive strategies of the members of the rural society of this period. The study is based on different archival documents and narrative interviews.
The first part of the paper presents some regional features of the change of the elite after 1945, the second part discusses the informal and formal privileges of the new rural elite (farm and factory leaders, leading-edge workers, Stakhanovites) in the context of the local political and economic inequalities.
Keywords: state power, party elite, inequality, consumption, informal and formal rewards
