ABSTRACT
According to Stalin, by the mid-1930s the Soviet Union had evolved into a socialist society without private property or antagonistic classes, in which workers, peasants and intelligentsia shared common interests. The sense of impotence, of being superfluous to the workings of power, generated some apathy and alienation from politics on the part of workers. In their characterization of the social divide, people often had recourse to moral metaphors. While inequalities of power were frequently articulated using political and moral language, the reality of economic difference was the most immediately perceptible and intelligible facet of everyday life. A common perception existed that the elite made policies that promoted their own economic interests rather than those of the workers and peasants. The Stakhanovite movement was accompanied by the public promotion of consumer values and a status revolution. This made the growing economic inequality glaringly obvious to the nizy.
