Consumer fever in the USSR in the mid-1930s

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 1934-35 in the USSR, unexpectedly for many, a consumer fever began. Restaurants opened, shops filled with food and clothing. Fashion magazines promoted hedonism. They began to impose a consumer paradise on the intelligentsia: it acquired housemaids, cars, new apartments.

Tennis became fashionable, jazz and foxtrot were wildly successful. The party's maximum salary cap has been abolished. The sharp turn in the mid-thirties was explained by the general process of "bourgeoisization" of the Stalinist regime and the rejection of revolutionary ideals.

The middle and especially the end of the thirties in Russian historiography are usually represented as a time of rampant repression. The formal reason for them was the assassination of Kirov in December 1934. But for Western historians, this time - a coincidence up to the year 1934 - it was the beginning of the "humanization" of the Stalinist regime. The card system, propagandized revolutionary asceticism are a thing of the past: in the USSR, they suddenly began to build a consumer society, not yet for everyone, but for the top 5-10% of the population. American historian Sheila Fitzpatrick writes about how this happened in the book Everyday Stalinism. We are publishing an excerpt from her book about the beginning of the era of consumption in the Stalinist USSR.

Return of food

"Life has become better, comrades; life has become more fun." This phrase, endlessly repeated by Soviet propaganda, was one of the most popular slogans of the 1930s. It was worn on posters by demonstrators, placed as a "hat" in New Year's editions of newspapers, written on banners in parks and forced labor camps, and quoted in speeches. Imprinted in this phrase, the change in orientation, which one American sociologist called "the great retreat", in the very beginning of 1935 heralded a propaganda campaign on the occasion of the abolition of bread cards, announcing the end of hardship and the onset of an era of wealth.

The new orientation implied several important points. The first, and most obvious, is that she promised that there would be more items in stores. This marked a fundamental turn from the anti-consumerist approach of the past to a re-value (quite unexpectedly, given the Marxist ideology) of commodities. The second point is the transition from the puritanical asceticism, characteristic of the era of the Cultural Revolution, to tolerance towards people who enjoy life. From now on, all kinds of mass leisure were encouraged: carnivals, parks of culture and recreation, masquerades, dances, even jazz. New opportunities and privileges also opened up for the elite.

The public savoring of life's blessings in advertising in the mid-1930s turned into some kind of consumer orgy. Food and drink came first. Here is how the newspaper describes the assortment of goods of the newly opened commercial grocery store (former Eliseevsky, more recently - Torgsin store) on Gorky Street:

In the gastronomic section there are 38 varieties of sausages, of which 20 are new varieties that have not been sold anywhere else. In the same section, three varieties of cheese produced by special order of the store will be sold - Camembert, Brie and Limburg. In the confectionery section there are 200 varieties sweets and cookies.

There are up to 50 types of bread products in the bakery department. The meat is stored in glass refrigerated cabinets. In the fish department there are pools with live mirror carp, bream, pike, crucian carp. At the choice of buyers, fish is caught from the pools using nets."

A. Mikoyan, who was responsible for supply throughout the 1930s, did a lot to develop this trend. He was especially enthusiastic about certain products, such as ice cream and sausages. These were either new products or products made using a new technology, and Mikoyan did his best to accustom the mass urban consumer to it. He emphasized that these products are an integral part of the image of contentment and prosperity, as well as modernity. Sausages, a new type of sausage for Russians, which came from Germany, according to Mikoyan, were once "a sign of bourgeois abundance and prosperity." They are now available to the masses. Massively machine-produced, they are superior to traditional hand-made products. Mikoyan was also an enthusiast for ice cream, a "delicious and nutritious" product, especially one that is mass produced by machine technology in the United States. It, too, was once an item of bourgeois luxury, it was eaten on holidays, but from now on it will be available to Soviet citizens every day. The USSR imported the latest ice cream machines, and soon the most exotic assortment will go on sale: even in the provinces, you can buy chocolate popsicle, cream, cherry, raspberry ice cream.

Mikoyan's patronage also extended to drinks, especially sparkling ones. "What a fun life it will be if there is not enough good beer and good liquor" - he asked. - "It's a shame that the Soviet Union is so lagging behind Europe in viticulture and winemaking; even Romania is ahead of it. Champagne is a sign of material well-being, a sign of prosperity. In the West, only the capitalist bourgeoisie can enjoy it. In the USSR, it is now available to many, if not everyone." … "Comrade Stalin said that the Stakhanovites now earn a lot of money, engineers and other workers earn a lot. Production should be sharply increased to meet their growing demands," concluded Mikoyan.

New products were frequently advertised in the press despite the general decline in newspaper advertisements in the late 1920s. Knowledge of consumer goods, as well as good taste, were part of the culture demanded of Soviet citizens, especially women, recognized experts in the field of consumption. One of the functions of the Soviet "cultural trade" was to disseminate this knowledge through advertisements, advice from sellers to buyers, buying meetings and exhibitions. At trade exhibitions organized in large cities of the USSR, goods were demonstrated that are completely inaccessible to an ordinary buyer: washing machines, cameras, cars.

Red Russia is turning pink

Cologne was also one of the most popular educational advertisements in the 1930s. "Eau de cologne has firmly entered the everyday life of the Soviet woman," declared in a special article on perfumery in a popular illustrated weekly. "Tens of thousands of bottles of cologne are required daily by the hairdressers of the Soviet Union." Surprisingly, even contraceptives were advertised, which in reality were almost impossible to get.

"Red Russia is turning pink," wrote the Moscow correspondent of the Baltimore Sun in late 1938. - In the elite circles, luxury items like silk stockings, which have long been considered "bourgeois", have again come into use. Tennis has become fashionable; jazz and foxtrot were wildly successful. The party's maximum salary cap has been abolished. It was la vie en rose (life in pink) in the Soviet way.

One of the signs of the times was the revival of Moscow restaurants in 1934. Before that, a dead streak lasted for four years, when restaurants were open only to foreigners, payments were accepted in hard currency, and the OGPU was deeply suspicious of any Soviet citizen who decided to go there. Now everyone who could afford it could go to the Metropol hotel, where "a tender young sterlet swam in the pool right in the center of the hall" and the Czech band Antonin Ziegler played jazz, or to National - listen to Soviet jazzmen A. Tsfasman and L. Utyosov, or to the hotel "Prague" on the Arbat, where gypsy singers and dancers performed. Restaurants were especially popular among the theatrical environment and among other representatives of the "new elite", for ordinary citizens the prices in them, of course, were not available. Their existence was not hidden in the least. Praga, for example, advertised its "first-class cuisine" ("daily pancakes, pies, dumplings"), gypsy singers and "dancing among the public with light effects" in a Moscow evening newspaper.

Privileges for the intelligentsia

It was not only the elite who benefited from the softening of mores and the promotion of a culture of leisure in the mid-1930s. Sound films were the new vehicle of culture to the masses, and the second half of the 30s became a great era for Soviet musical comedy. Funny, dynamic entertaining films with fiery music in jazz arrangement: "Merry Fellows" (1934), "Circus" (1936), "Volga-Volga" (1938), "Light Path" (1940) - gained immense popularity. There were even ambitious plans (never realized) to build "Soviet Hollywood" in the south. Dancing was also in vogue among the elite and the masses. Dance schools grew like mushrooms in the cities, and the young worker, describing her achievements in the field of cultural development, in addition to attending educational programs, also mentioned that she and her Stakhanovite husband were learning to dance.

In the same period, after several years of banning, the traditional New Year celebration returned - with a Christmas tree and Santa Claus. "Never before has there been such fun" - this was the title of a report from Leningrad in 1936.

But the privileges were not only enjoyed by the communists. The intelligentsia, at least its main representatives, also received them. As one émigré magazine noted, the political leadership has clearly begun to practice a new approach to the intelligentsia: "She is looked after, she is courted, she is bribed. She is needed."

Engineers were among the first among the intelligentsia to receive special privileges, which is quite understandable, given their significant contribution to industrialization. More surprising is the fact that along with them writers, composers, architects, artists, theatrical figures and other representatives of the "creative intelligentsia" were awarded the same honor. The immoderate honors that fell on the writers in connection with the First Congress of the Soviet Socialist Party in 1934 set a new tone in relation to them, combining an emphasized respect for high culture with a hidden hint that the intelligentsia is obliged to serve the cause of the Soviets.

The press, which was usually silent about the privileges of the communist nomenklatura, often proudly announced the privileges of the intelligentsia. The opinion that some representatives of the creative intelligentsia in the USSR enjoyed just fabulous privileges was deposited in the popular consciousness. According to rumors that seem to have reached the ears of every Soviet citizen, the novelist A. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, the jazzman L. Utyosov and the popular composer I. Dunaevsky were millionaires, and the Soviet government allowed them to have inexhaustible bank accounts.

Even those whose living conditions did not meet accepted standards usually kept a housemaid. As a rule, this was considered permissible if the wife was working. In financial terms, this was extremely beneficial for the supplier: his wife (in addition to his own income) worked as a typist and earned 300 rubles. per month; while they "paid the housekeeper 18 rubles a month, plus a table and housing. She slept in the kitchen."

Even convinced communists saw nothing wrong with using the services of a housekeeper. John Scott, an American who worked as a laborer in Magnitogorsk and was married to a Russian, started a servant after the birth of their first child. His wife Masha, a teacher, in spite of her peasant origin and strong communist convictions, was not at all embarrassed by this. As an emancipated woman, she was strongly opposed to domestic work and considered it quite decent and necessary for someone less educated to do it instead of her."