Complaining as a Moral Discourse: Workers and Authorities during the Khrushchev’s Thaw (1953 – 1964)

The mechanism of complaining was an important and popular channel for communication with authorities during the Khrushchev’s Thaw. Through this channel people tried to solve various personal problems or inform authorities about the problems they saw around. Soviet legislation provided multiple paths for complaining, according to which a citizen did not have to carefully choose the addressee and could apply to any executive power with any problem. In my study I analyze the moral discourse which was created by this mechanism of complaining. I argue that the act of complaining and following processes created a special space through which Soviet citizens and authorities were able to exchange their knowledge and moral ideas. For the analysis of this discourse, I chose the cases of Soviet workers’ complaints connected with their personal problems at work, which were considered in the Leningrad City Executive Committee in the period from 1953 to 1964. Using various documents created in this process I analyze three parts of this discourse: legal and moral conditions of complaining in the Committee, strategies in workers’ complaints and the results and consequences of complaining. Despite the fact that, at first sight, workers' complaints are very different in their emotionality from the responses to them by the authorities, a study of the accompanying documents demonstrates that when making a decision, the authorities often relied not only on the law, but also used the same moral concepts as the authors of complaints.