I shop, therefore I am

"I shop, therefore I am" proclaim the cheap t-shirts and refrigerator magnets sold at the enormous markets all over Moscow, where low-quality consumer goods from China and Turkey are sold and fake labels of of well-known designer companies flash before the eyes of consumer. At the end of the 20th century Moscow is becoming a consumer paradise like any other big city in the world. Although the markets are still a dominating part of the scene, all sorts of small boutiques and great shopping malls appear with something in store for everyone.The t-shirt slogan is now appealing to the Muscovite and consuming becomes becomes a part of the persons self expression which was virtually impossible some years ago when the Soviet Union stilll existed and consumption as it is seen now was a part of Western reality not Soviet.

In the Western view of consumption it is the"means of creating culture in the urbanised and the industrialised societies of the modern world". Consuming is a common way of defining one's self-identity and proclaiming the difference between ''me" and "them". For the biggest part of the 20th century consumer experience of the Soviet citizen was radically different than that of a Westerner with the State regulating the life of its citizens through ideology and politics.The articles of Caroline Humphrey and Jukka Gronow take a look at different stages in the history of consumption in the USSR and both authors are concerned with a role of the state in defining peoples attitudes to products and establishing different standards of consumption among the population.Consumption in The Soviet Union was different from the Western model not only because of the economic system with with its five year plans and the state owning the means of production but also because of the State ideology seeking to control individuals' private life and make it integrated into the community.

Consumer is defined as a person "conscious of living through objects and images not of their own making". Humphrey describes the Soviet consumer, although not involved in the production of commodities directly, thinking of themselves as producers through the ideology of the state that seeked to associate every citizen with the activities of the state, that included centralised production and distribution of goods. This system of distribution that virtually left the people without free choice, generated the understanding that the citizens were all engaged in the great deceit (obman). Also this system produced all kinds of informal economic relationships between the people that seeked to improve ones economic situation and to deceive the state, although not deliberately, by means of informal social networks and blat - distribution of services and commodities through friends and acquaintances.The history of the Soviet consumption went through several stages, but the foundations laid already in the 1930s were persistent throughout the decades.

After the years of famine, rationing and the New Economic Policy that hasn't really fitted the goals of the Soviet system the government started to worry about the production of goods. The party put forward the models of typically Soviet lifestyle for people to emulate. While the real life was hard and the majority of people resided in barracks and numerous kommunalkas in the cities and engaged in work in the plants and factories the illusion of happiness and good life had to be created.Humphrey describes in her article that goals for the happy future were presented by the party propaganda and people were made to believe that they were consuming the goods they have themselves produced and that these things were definitely Soviet. Humphrey doesn't mention in her article the notion of democratic luxury or "plebian or common luxury instead" defined as such by Gronow who argues that it was an "essential part of everyday life in the Soviet Union". Products like champagne, caviar, chocolate and perfumes were accessible to a common worker.

These products were thought to represent the lifestyles of the rich aristocrats in the pre-revolutionary Russia. This created an illusion that in the Soviet state workers could consume products they couldn't even dream of before and that the goal of the revolution had been achieved: those who were nothing became everything.Together with common luxury that wasn't even perceived as luxury by many, "real" priviliges were establishing themselves.Access to special stores , cars , big flats and summer houses were perceived as objects of real luxurry available only to certain groups of people and desirable for others. Consumption in Moscow was clearly divided between the common wage worker and those of political elite and middle class of top specialists and "people of culture"like prominent writers and artists. The great masterpiece of the Russian literature "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov has brilliant satirical descriptions of the Muscovite lifestyle in the 1930s ,being very true if not exaggerated.

Prominent members of the literary circle had access to restaurants and housing that a common Muscovite could only dream about. There are vivid descriptions of a house occupied by members of the writer's association with its spacy rooms and expencive furniture and at the same time there are kommunalkas on the same street with dark and dirty passages and housewives quarelling over the communal stove, and while the common folk in a theatre cafeteria have to buy cheese that has some kind of green hue and sturgeon of "the second freshness", those who have access to currency can indulge in delights offered by a central department store with its counters loaded with chocolates, tangerines , fresh salmon and shelves bulging with exquisite materials and stacked shoeboxes of several kind. It is interesting that the real luxury goods could not be bought, but they were special priviliges allocated through one's work place or given as prizes for good work. Although in reality only a small group of people could achieve these priviliges, in principle a common worker could dream of acquiring them by breaking a record in production competition.

In the meantime there was common luxury to make the life of a Soviet citizen brighter.In the 1950s and 60s , during the Khrushchev's government, the pictures of the bright future in the land of the Soviets were no longer representing goals for the future, but the images were presented as if they were real. A limited range of products became available that came to be the attributes of every home. The lifestyle of the nomenklatura and affluent artists and writers, which resembled the ways of American and European middle class,or rather a small part of it, could become available to the common citizen. The system of distribution luxuries that belonged to ones "office", such as cars , dachas and private flats became challenged with an establishment of a car plant producing "Ladas".According to Gronow this marked a turn in history, when automobiles and entertainment electronics have started to make their ways slowly into the Soviet home.

At the same time blat became an even more firmly established institution than before. Because the quantity of desirable commodities was rather small and the state distribution system decided exclusively on the amount of products being allocated at the time, people engaged in the distribution of goods apart from the state. Through friends and acquaintances in trade one could acquire almost anything.The informal economy florished in the USSR with people engaged in making favours to one another and getting services in return.