Khrushchev’s Cash-and-Goods Lotteries and the Turn Toward Positive Incentives
-
Kristy Ironside [1]
-
[1] Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Center for the History and Sociology of wwii and Its Consequences, National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
-
- Localización: The Soviet and post-Soviet Review, ISSN 1075-1262, Vol. 41, Nº. 3, 2014, págs. 296-323
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
-
Resumen
This article focuses on the Soviet government’s turn to positive incentives to play the state lottery in the late 1950s, after thirty years of coercing citizens to buy state lottery bonds under Stalin. Khrushchev discontinued the Stalinist bonds in April 1957 and, in their wake, introduced “cash-and-goods lotteries” featuring voluntary participation. The Khrushchev government identified a powerful positive incentive to buy tickets in the coveted consumer goods the lotteries offered as prizes. Citizens were no longer asked to sacrifice toward the state lottery, rather, they were encouraged to risk small sums toward potential consumer gain and the improvement of their living standards – a new way of conceptualizing Soviet citizens’ personal financial contributions to the state as the Soviet Union approached communist prosperity.
