ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the notion of competition in state socialist societies through the prism of the Soviet-era beauty contests (konkurs krasoty). These beauty contests provide an example of how one particular Western model of competition in the socio-cultural sphere was adapted to a specific Eastern European local context and how such models of competition served to promote the breakdown of barriers between East and West during the final years of the Cold War. The beauty contests are also illustrative of the internal fragility of the dominance of Russian-defined Soviet cultural norms, which faced particular challenges especially in the more Western-facing Baltic States, even as the central authorities in Moscow under Gorbachev sought to adapt their own practices to perceived Western values.
