Bread and Circuses as Responses to the Threat of Ideological Subversion

By the 1960s, there was this sense that the main external danger that communist regimes face is not a military invasion. And one response was to provide citizens with consumer goods. The idea in Eastern Europe was that communist regimes are also capable of increasing standards of living. These circuses were deployed as a conscious strategy to distract from the consumption of Western cultural products and build patriotic loyalties.