Custom and mentality of production societas in the realities of everyday life in the 1960s-80s (An interpretation of archive materials from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History)

Abstract

Based on the sources of the Russian State Archive of Modern History, the article describes the establishment and operation of customs in the socio-economic life of the second half of the 20th century, which influence the everyday life, attitude and worldview of the production (industrial) part of Russian societas. The question is raised about the consolidation of new features in consciousness, individualistic tendencies as the basis of the worldview. Attention is focused on the fact that the dissonance in the levels of social differentiation, material wealth and social status formed the basis of the mental separation of the production elite, representatives of management and the working class. The author draws attention to the fact that the phenomena of nepotism, clannishness, favours and thuggery that penetrate into everyday life and the labour sphere of life were especially negatively perceived by the workers. The negative reactions of the workers were reinforced by the realities of life – the deficit, the housing issue as a problem of social arrangement, the outdated wage system. It is noted that the public niches in which customs and traditions were firmly rooted, were to a greater extent connected with topical and acute social processes, including the institutions of power, property and trade. The researcher comes to the conclusion that by the 1980s, due to the passage of the stages of further ideological, social and economic differentiation, the separation of the individual from the working collective, the isolation of the elite and a certain isolation of its ordinary members in the production environment, bourgeois aspirations and ideals of hoarding were growing stronger.