'We Had to Become Criminals to Survive Under Communism!' Testimonies of Petty Criminality and Everyday Morality in Late Socialist Central Europe.

Although communist propaganda frequently claimed that crime rates were negligible in Eastern Europe, a substantial informal economy developed during the latter decades of communist rule. Large numbers of citizens regularly engaged in a range of ‘petty illegalities’ including theft, underground trading and economic exchange, bribery and corruption. These activities were officially prohibited, but were widely accepted and tolerated in practice, both by ordinary citizens and state authorities. Drawing on written memoirs and original data from a series of oral interviews conducted in three former communist countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – this chapter analyses popular motivations for engaging in petty economic crime under communism, providing some fascinating insights into the ways in which individuals internalised, interpreted and presented their own criminal behaviour, through the adoption of various ‘coping mechanisms’ to minimise the contradictions evident in personal accounts of life under the communist system and to justify and ‘normalise’ their own behaviour within it. The result is a complex and richly textured analysis of petty criminality and popular morality in late-communist central Europe.

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