Consumer Culture in the USSR

Access to Goods

In a centrally planned, socialist economy, one could get access to deficit goods by one of four ways: first, one could wait for them—either concretely by standing in a line, often for hours or even overnight, whenever the desired goods happened to be available in the local shops. Second, one could have access to such goods due to one's social position or one's workplace. Until the very end of the Soviet Union, many consumer goods and durables from better food to cars and refrigerators, as well as, for instance, new apartments and summer cottages, were distributed through the workplaces and other official social organizations. The consumer, as a rule, had to pay the full, official price for them, which the state planning offices had determined. The main difference was that they were either not at all available or sold only very irregularly in the ordinary Soviet shops. Third, one could buy them in the local kolkhoz market, where peasants sold the produce of their small private plots. The prices of these, mainly food items, came closest to the “real” market prices. They were usually much higher than the prices in the state-owned or co-operative food stores. The main difference was that, on the peasant markets, they were available without long waiting lines. These peasant markets selling food products grown on very small peasant plots of land catered to the Soviet consumption of many major food items, from milk and eggs to fresh vegetables and meat.

Finally, one could buy consumer goods, food included, on the black market. Although official statistics do not exist, it can be estimated that the share of the black market in the distribution of many consumer goods was quite remarkable. Black market prices were often quite out of proportion. For instance, for a pair of illegally imported American jeans, one would have to pay almost the whole monthly wages of an industrial worker. The products sold on the black market came basically from two sources: they were either stolen from the state economic organizations or illegally imported from abroad. A third alternative was that people who had access to them due to their privileged position sold them further to other private customers.

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