Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era

280 Pages·2013·4.166 MB·English

by  Natalya Chernyshova

Soviet Consumer Culture in the
Brezhnev Era
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 stand-
ards, and shows how mass consumption was often used as an instrument of
legitimacy, ideology and modernisation. However, the resulting consumer revolu-
tion 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.
Natalya Chernyshova is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of
Winchester, UK.
BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East
European Studies
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Richard Sakwa,Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Kent
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Roy Allison,St Antony’s College, Oxford
Birgit Beumers,Department of Russian, University of Bristol
Richard Connolly,Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of
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Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of
Glasgow
Peter Duncan, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University
College London
Zoe Knox, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester
Rosalind Marsh,Department of European Studies and Modern Languages,
University of Bath
David Moon,Department of History, University of York
Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester
Graham Timmins, Department of Politics, University of Birmingham
Stephen White,Department of Politics, University of Glasgow
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Paisley
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Soviet Consumer Culture
in the Brezhnev Era
Natalya Chernyshova