'Jokes Get Mixed up with Reality': Rumours and Observations of Citizens on the Eve of the Monetary Reform of 1947 (Based on Ego-Documents)

2025

Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки, Vol 26, Iss 4 (2025)

This article analyses the diary entries of residents of the cities of the RSFSR in order to identify judgments, rumours and economic expectations of the population associated with the monetary reform of 1947. The source basis of the study is the materials of the diaries of 22 citizens. The indication in the diary entries of citizens for the time and the general content and reasons for the reform (similar to those stated in the text of the Resolution on Reform) makes it possible to talk about the fact of information leakage. At the same time, the most important conditions of the reform (the exchange rate, the difference in the exchange rate of cash and deposits, etc.) did not become public knowledge. The situation was fertile ground not only for various rumours, but also actualised a variety of saving strategies implemented by the population in the post-reform period — purchases of goods, withdrawal of deposits, opening of deposits, etc. The uncertainty of the economic situation on the eve of the reform made it possible to reveal the problem of material inequality existing in postwar Soviet society. Regarding the consequences of the reform, citizens expressed rather optimistic expectations, associating it with an increase in living standards. The specifics of the post-reform reasoning of citizens allow us to speak about the prevalence in the Soviet postwar society of an adaptive model of judgments that helps interpret the lived reality, “mitigating” the severity of the problem being explained. The prevalence of this model of judgments determined by postwar hopes for a better future makes it possible to speak about the loyal attitude of the population to the regime existing in the postwar USSR.

article

Russian

Ural Federal University Press, 2025.

денежная реформа, отмена карточек, городское население, суждения, слухи, 1947, эго-документы, дневники, сберегательные стратегии, History (General) and history of Europe, Language and Literature