Download Free Consumption In The Ussr Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Consumption In The Ussr and write the review.

Following Ronald Reagan's statement to the Soviet press that living standards in the USSR were a third of that in the USA, this book was written to examine the CIA study upon which his statement was based. The author also analyzes the Soviet economy and reveals how Soviets really live.
This book provides much prime material on how the Soviets really live: what they eat, drink and wear; how cramped are their apartments and with what facilities; how many books they read; how any TV sets, roads and cinemas they have; why shopping is so difficult; and so on. The Soviet economy, the author contends, is much smaller than is commonly thought. In December 1987 Ronald Reagan told the Soviet readers of Izvestia that their living standards was only a third of that in the USA. This estimate was based on a special CIA study. The author of this book reviewed the study, discovered numerous mistakes, disagreed sharply with the methodology, considered mounds of additional facts and figures, and concluded that the CIA was wrong.
This is a social and cultural history of the Stalinist campaign to establish 'Soviet' retail trade, exploring how societies in the interwar era responded to the challenges of mass distribution and consumption.
After decades of turmoil and trauma, the Brezhnev era brought stability and an unprecedented rise in living standards to the Soviet Union, enabling ordinary people to enjoy modern consumer goods on an entirely new scale. This book analyses the politics and economics of the state’s efforts to improve living standards, and shows how mass consumption was often used as an instrument of legitimacy, ideology and modernization. However, the resulting consumer revolution brought its own problems for the socialist regime. Rising well-being and the resulting ethos of consumption altered citizens’ relationship with the state and had profound consequences for the communist project. The book uses a wealth of sources to explore the challenge that consumer modernity was posing to Soviet ‘mature socialism’ between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. It combines analysis of economic policy and public debates on consumerism with the stories of ordinary people and their attitudes to fashion, Western goods and the home. The book contests the notion that Soviet consumers were merely passive, abused, eternally queuing victims and that the Brezhnev era was a period of ‘stagnation’, arguing instead that personal consumption provided the incentive and the space for individuals to connect and interact with society and the regime even before perestroika. This book offers a lively account of Soviet society and everyday life during a period which is rapidly becoming a new frontier of historical research.
Consumption in Russia and the former USSR has been lately studied as regards the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period. The history of Soviet consumption and the Soviet variety of consumerism in the 1950s-1990s has hardly been studied at all. This book concentrates on the late Soviet period but it also considers pre-WWII and even pre-revolutionary times.The book consists of articles, which survey the longue durée of Russian and Soviet consumer attitudes, Soviet ideology of consumption as indicated in texts concerning fashion, the world of Soviet fashion planning and the survival strategies of the Soviet consumer complaining against sub-standard goods and services in a command economy. There's also a case study concerning the uses of concepts with anti-consumerist content. Contributors include: Lena Bogdanova, Olga Gurova, Timo Vihavainen and Larissa Zakharova.