Private consumption in the USSR: Changes in the assortment of goods 1940–1959

Ruban, Maksym

doi:10.1080/09668136208410286

Soviet Studies

1962

DOI: 10.1080/09668136208410286

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Private consumption in the USSR: Changes in the assortment of goods 1940–1959

Maksym Ruban

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2016

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Cold War binaries and the culture of consumption in the late Soviet home

Reid

2016

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing

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Cold War Binaries and the Culture of Consumption in the Late Soviet Home "The Kremlin has made concessions to consumers, but Russia is far from being a consumer society," reported New York Times Moscow correspondent Hedrick Smith in his 1976 book The Russians (Smith, 1976, p. 105). His doubts notwithstanding, Smith dedicated a chapter to Soviet consumption. Its title juxtaposed two seemingly incompatible concepts: "Consumers: the Art of Queuing". Thereby Smith followed a Cold War convention that still underpins retrospective accounts today: if western commentators acknowledged Eastern Bloc consumption as a legitimate object of study at all, they characterized it in terms of paradox, associating it with sacrifice, austerity, and scarcity, and with patient, passive waiting for goods. While western consumer culture was synonymous with superfluity, indulgence and redundancy of consumer choice, the USSR and its satellites were described as "societies of shortage" that were structured by "dictatorship over needs." Relations with goods were defined by necessity rather than choice, desire, image and semiosis; by nature rather than culture; and by central command rather than decentralized demand (

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Cold War binaries and the culture of consumption in the late Soviet home

Reid

2016

Journal of Historical Research in Marketing

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Private consumption in the USSR: Changes in the assortment of goods 1940–1959

Cited by 1 publication

References 1 publication

Cold War binaries and the culture of consumption in the late Soviet home

Cold War binaries and the culture of consumption in the late Soviet home

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