Metadata language
Letters of complaint and reports of public interest written to the people's control Committee
Subtitle:Listy do władzy 1945-1989 : studia przypadków
Creator: Publisher:Oficyna Wydawnicza ASPRA ; Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Place of publishing: Date issued/created: Description:p. 207-237 ; Bibliography under articles. Index ; See also "Listy do władz centralnych w Polsce 1945–1989 (przewodnik)" = Letters to the Central Authorities in Poland, 1945–1989 (Guidebook): ; click here to follow the link
Type of object: Subject and Keywords:Hungary - politics and government - 1945-1989 ; Hungary - social condition - 1945-1989 ; Socialist property ; social control ; complaints ; letters of complaint ; reports of public interest ; common property ; thefts ; corruption of the local elite ; formal-linguistic features ; strategies and argumentation of letter writing
Abstract:
The author investigates a certain group of documents from the Socialist era: public interest reports and letters of complaints submitted to a district level unit of the People’s Control Committee (NEB) in North-East Hungary between 1968–1989. NEB was established at the end of 1957 with the primary objective to protect people’s wealth and to disclose misuse and abuse (e.g. larceny, fraud, embezzlement, inappropriate management of common property and damages due to omission). The content analysis of the documents provides a down-to-top view into the conflict-stricken Socialist weekdays, and especially the major conflicts and power relations of local societies in the countryside. The change of values after ejection, the ambivalent relationship to common property and the differing social practices of the increasingly consumption-oriented life of the 1970s and 1980s can be revealed via the inspection of these documents. The most typical cases were as follows: reports criticising the operation of agricultural cooperatives, state and party organisations, the actual or supposed abuses of leaders and their clients, commercial units and services. With regard to these written reports the author examines, besides the formal-linguistic features of correspondence, the argumentative strategies applied by the correspondents in order to gain a positive evaluation, the impact these made on the NEB controllers, and the possible motivations of the correspondents having an attitude adjusted to the ideal of the new Socialist man.
978-83-7545-933-3 ; 978-83-65880-51-2
Source:IH PAN, call no. II.14637 ; IH PAN, call no. II.14636 Podr. ; click here to follow the link
Language: Language of abstract: Rights:Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license
Terms of use:Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -
Digitizing institution:Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Original in:Library of the Institute of History PAS
Projects co-financed by: Access: