Anthropology of East Europe Review

IDEOLOGY OF CONSUMPTION IN : FROM ASCETICISM TO THE LEGITIMATING OF CONSUMER GOODS Olga Gurova European University at St. Petersburg,

This article explores mass discourse on some of which were developed by scholars of the consumption and official attitudes about Frankfurt school. For example, Theodor Adorno consumer goods (mostly clothes) in the Soviet and Max Horkheimer examine ideology in the Union from 1917 up to the beginning of the context of the critique of mass culture and the 1980s. On the basis of media discourse analysis media (2002). They consider ideology as false the historical epoch was split into four periods consciousness and as a false view of social according to the changes of dominant frames in reality, which the Establishment imposes upon official ideology of consumption in Soviet people via the media, with the aim of preserving culture. In the 1917-20s, the frame of everyday the existing social order and power relations. asceticism and critics of pre-Revolutionary Roland Barthes, who also analyzed the media patterns of consumption such as philistinism and mass culture, points out the link between and conspicuous consumption dominated. In the ideology and myth, and considers ideology to be second part of the 1930s the idea of meanings which are ascribed to different cultural "cultureness" ("kulturnost") was raised, and the objects (clothes, images, words) by the mass possessing of material goods was rehabilitated. media (Barthes 2000). According to Barthes, In the 1950-60s the imitation of western ideology uses the bodies of "innocent" cultural consumer patterns was critiqued by the Soviet objects to give them particular meaning. authorities. In the 1970s the idea of de- Similarly to Marx, Engels, Adorno and materialization (“razveschestvlenie”) of Horkheimer, Barthes considers ideology to be a everyday life became of current importance. In negative phenomenon, or a phenomenon with this article it is demonstrated that the ideology negative functions such as the representation of of consumption was not consistent and reality in a false way according to the will of the homogeneous during the whole Soviet Era, it ruling class with the purpose of promoting the was changing as a result of political, cultural, existing social order of domination and economics and everyday life transformations. subordination. Some concepts of ideology in sociology refuse to treat ideology as a false The concept of ideology picture of social reality and understand it as a In this research the concept of ideology is reality in itself. They also refuse to understand defined according to tradition, begun by Karl ideology as a part of public consciousness, Marx and Friedrich Engels in their paper called considering it rather to be a collective "The German Ideology" (1956a). They consider unconsciousness. For example, Louis Althusser ideology as a set of ideas, which aims to considers ideology in that manner, and defines it promote and to preserve the existing social order. as a set of representations of social and cultural According to these philosophers, individuals reality, a set of concepts, ideas, myths and who comprise the ruling class define the images of reality, which form people’s particular historical epoch, and the thought of the understanding, estimating and experiencing the ruling class becomes dominant at a certain time. real conditions of their existence (Althusser Marx and Engels do not use the category of 2000). In this article, ideology will be treated as "ideology" itself, they rather discuss "false a set of dominant discourses, which contains consciousness" or "illusions", and use these ideas about consumerism, attitudes toward categories in the meaning similar to that of consumption and consumer practices represented ideology. So, ideology according to them can be in the Soviet media. These discourses circulate considered as a set of illusory thoughts of the through various forms of cultural production, or ruling class, which relate to the existing social cultural artifacts (magazines, newspapers, TV, order and to the ways of its organization. Such cinema, material objects), which promote illusions as a set of thoughts legitimize relations particular ideas, values, beliefs and everyday of domination/subordination in society, and practices. This paper focuses on the ideas and those who are in a subordinate position usually concepts which contain information about passively accept them. The ideas of Marx and attitudes toward clothes, fashion, and everyday Engels inspired the other concepts of ideology, consumer practices in the Soviet Union from

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1917 to the 1980s. These ideas and concepts are ideology of everyday asceticism. Material goods part of official discourse: on the one hand, they were not to be consumed for the sake of goods construct social reality, and, on the other hand, themselves. Considering the use of things, if they represent it. Four main periods in the coziness was created for the sake of coziness ideology of consumption were defined on the itself, it was regarded as a sign of narrow- basis of media discourse analysis. mindedness and philistinism (Zhilina & Frolova 1969:41). Revolutionary doctrine of taste and everyday asceticism, the 1920s After the Revolution, attitudes toward material things assumed criticism of conspicuous The Revolution of 1917 brought consumption, of false beauty and their function to essential political, social and cultural changes, symbolize the social status. As one article in the and stimulated the reconstruction of everyday journal Rabotnitsa put it, "Have you ever been life. Clothing and appearance were under the in the Bolshoy theatre? In the first row you can special care of the new authorities, and this see ladies with make-up wearing furs. Chinchilla, attention can be considered as a component of a arctic fox and other expensive furs. This nation-building policy. The reconstruction of competition by furs, jewelries stems from pre- everyday life according to the revolutionary Revolutionary times. To show the richness and doctrine of taste was called "life-building" profits! Before, in pre-revolutionary times people (zhiznestroenie). The revolutionary doctrine of were regarded in this way" (Lyn 1926:15). Here, taste was in many respects based on the theory of the author clearly communicates a critical commodity fetishism offered by Karl Marx, and attitude toward clothes and their function as a particularly on his statement that under symbol of social status. According to capitalism the cult of consumer goods transforms revolutionary ideology, clothes were not the relationships between people into the supposed to differentiate between people, they relationships of things (Marx & Engels were supposed to provide a person with warmth, 1956b:593). Marx critically mentions that protect them from the cold, but they were not material goods function as symbols of social supposed to represent wealth. This last fact was status and prestige in capitalist society, and, very important in a state where "everybody is hence, the social importance of a person is equal" according to ideology. It was declared that replaced with the social meaning of things. “the Revolution had destroyed the privileges of Socialism, as compared to capitalism, is also chinchillas” (Lyn 1926:15), therefore the aimed at the abundance of goods; however, in competition by means of clothes was very much opposite to capitalism, the person should be free criticized. Such idealistic attitudes supposed from the oppression of consumer goods. It means that in socialist society, the prices of clothes that s/he has to avoid estimating people on the should be reasonable enough to make them basis of the material objects they possess accessible to everyone. It was mentioned that (Zhilina & Frolova 1969:40). Objects should be Soviet fashion should be simple, convenient, treated as friends to the person that allows easily made, cheap, available to working class overcoming the obsession with them (Marx & women, and it was emphasized that clothes Engels 1956b:593). should meet the requirements of a primarily In post-revolutionary times, clothes, functional device (Ob odezhdah 1924:30-31). their quantity, qualities and attitudes toward This citation shows one more time all the them were paid special attention in the context of mentioned requirements for clothes: they had to the reconstruction of everyday life. Svetlana be functional; they were not supposed to Boym mentions that the category "thing" differentiate between people. Furthermore, it (vesch’) had negative connotations in clearly shows a key distinction between "our" revolutionary discourse (Boym 1994). fashion and the fashion of others, in this case, Ideologists criticized things as a source of those who represent pre-Revolutionary bourgeois consumerism-like obsession. They actively society: post-revolutionary discourse on fashion condemned the individual desire to obtain more and taste was constructed around the opposition things than is necessary in the functional sense. between revolutionary and pre-revolutionary To have a lot of things, especially those bourgeois societies, where the latter was produced and obtained before the Revolution, critiqued. meant to be loyal to the reactionary past, and to One more noticeable thing is the use of the values of the old world. According to the the word fashion with quotation marks– Revolutionary doctrine of taste, clothes had to be "fashion" in media discourse of that time. This functional and rational, that is why the ideology fact is important, because it helps to reconstruct of consumption in the 1920s can be called the the official view of fashion as something frivolous

Volume 24, No. 2 Page 92 Anthropology of East Europe Review and even worthless. In 1923 women who and "health" and not with cosmetics and make- followed fashion were described in very up. derogatory terms, for example as "wretches" Thus, clothes and personal appearance (negodnitsy): "Ah, fashion addicted girls, you are came under special scrutiny between 1917-1920s. wretches … Working women spit on you from The main ideas which defined them were the seventh floor" (Step. K-na 1927:30-31). functionality and usefulness, instead of social According to the ideology, fashion addiction had differentiation or the demonstration of status. to be excluded from the life style of working According to the Marxist idea of materiality class women. The sarcastic tone of the statement determining human consciousness, the above and the haughty attitude of working reconstruction of everyday life had a significant women toward fashion addicts, as well as the political value and nation-building meaning in opposition between working women and fashion the Soviet culture. addicted girls shows the negative attitude to fashion, which was promoted in official culture of The ideology of kulturnost’ and the the 1920s. The functional attitude towards legitimization of consumption in the 1930-50s fashion and clothes was reflected in the By the middle of the 1930s, the experiments of Soviet fashion designers ideology of consumption had significantly Aleksandra Ekster, Lubov’ Popova, and Varvara changed. Sociologists and historians found Stepanova. With the aim of achieving the reasons for such a transformation in the so-called aesthetic transformation of everyday life according "Great Retreat", which referred to the changes in to Soviet ideas, the designers put regime-friendly ideological orientation from Bolshevik era social symbols such as sickles and hammers, tractors, experimentation to the conservative ideals of the screws, airplanes and pioneers on material Stalin epoch (Timasheff 1946). The reference to objects such as fabrics or dishes. The quality of conservative ideals in this case is understood as such prints and pictures, made on fabric the reassessment of Bolshevik ideology of 1920s, (agittekstil’) was not very good; however, they of the anti-consumer approach to material goods, were easily identified, and in this way they clothes and fashion, and the transition from propagandized new social order in a simple way. aesthetic puritanism to tolerance toward elements Such practices concerned with material objects of ex-bourgeois lifestyle with its glamour, promoted the socialization of one’s taste as well luxury, coziness and pleasures. as symbolic attribution of material culture by the Historian Vera Dunham offers an new authorities. analytical explanation of such transformations The beauty of the body was under the (Dunham 1976). She speaks about the so-called influence of the idea of functionality as well as "The Big Deal", which was made between the fashion; otherwise, beauty was criticized and authorities and the Soviet middle class. During regarded as a bourgeois phenomenon, a «deceit» the Stalin period, even in the most difficult or a «scab» on one’s body. One article, entitled times, the official power was supported not only "Young working class girls build a new life" by the means of terror. Power was based on the gives the following example of such attitudes: secret contract between the Party and Soviet working class girls were asked whether they middle class. Dunham supposes that the middle thought it was a good habit to use powder and class required a stable life filled with consumer other cosmetics. They provided the radical goods, and luxury and leisure in exchange for answer: "do not use any types of cosmetics. It their support of the state policy. Therefore, post- spoils the face” (Yunye 1924:13). Finally, the revolutionary vanguard experiments were stopped girls decided: "when the cultural level of women in the 1930s, and the life patterns and values of increases, all cosmetics will be logically the Russian educated class of mid-nineteenth liquidated" (Ilyina 1927:15-16). However, at century replaced the ideas of the radical least one type of beauty was legitimate in Soviet Bolshevists’ reconstruction of daily life (Gronow culture, which is "natural beauty": as one author 1997, Timasheff 1946, Volkov 2000). put it, "We, communists and komsomols, vote The speech of was in a for a natural beauty, a graceful body. For the sense a discursive marker of this "conservative natural beauty, instead of an artificial one" (Lyn turn". In 1935 Stalin stated: 1926:15). Natural beauty was opposed to artificial beauty, which was considered to be a "some people think that socialism can form of cheating, because it hid the true essence be strengthened by achieving the of a person, or his or her inner personality. In material equality of people on the basis contrast to the bourgeois artificial beauty, Soviet of a poor life. It’s not true. This is the beauty was associated with ideas of "naturalness" petty-bourgeois view of socialism. Actually, socialism can win only on the Volume 24, No. 2 Page 93 Anthropology of East Europe Review

basis of the high efficiency of labor, man as a consumer took its legitimate place in which is higher than the one under the mass discourse in the 1930s. In the context capitalism, and on the basis of the of the ideology of kulturnost’, a lot of consumer abundance of products and consumer values such as coziness were rehabilitated. goods, and on the basis of rich cultural Pleasures of a cozy home came again to life and life of each member of our society” became an echo of pre-revolutionary bourgeois (Rech 1935:3-4). life (Buchli 2000). The rehabilitation of Soviet discourse on consumption and everyday consumer goods in discourse called for the life at that time was structured in accordance with necessity of rethinking and rewriting the the three key categories resulting from the logic meanings ascribed to them before. Philistinism of this statement. First of them was "equality", and its values, which, according to official point the second one was "abundance", and the third of view, had already been liquidated, now were one was "cultural life". Stalin declared the recreated in "secondary" petty-bourgeois culture orientation to the prosperous, cultural and of Stalin’s times (Boym 1994). cheerful life. British anthropologist Victor Buchli in This important structural 'turn" meant his book "An Archeology of socialism" gives an the ascendance of the ideology of "cultureness" example on how the attitudes to sofa were (kulturnost’), or the orientation toward relatively changing according to Marxist doctrine from the high standards of individual consumption. In the 1920s to the 1930s (Buchli 2000:56-57). context of this transformation of values, material According to this doctrine, as it is known, goods were permitted to appear in the daily life material conditions define human consciousness. of the Soviet people. They even became subject What is important, is not the object itself but the to consumer worship. The category of cultural interpretation of the material object. "consumer" more and more often accompanied Thus, for example, the sofa as a thing itself did the category "Soviet man" in mass media texts. not represent petty-bourgeois values. The value Such expressions as "this good will have a of a sofa is determined by its use: if the Soviet success in consumer market" or "according to the worker uses a sofa to sleep on, this does not consumers needs" became popular in official allow us to consider it to be a petty bourgeois discourse. Negative connotations towards object, as it was considered in the 1920s. Buchli consumption started to disappear from the explained such a shift in interpretation of things discourse during the second part of the 1930s. as a transition from a denotative model of Attitudes toward consumption were changing; understanding things, which was characteristic of the media, mostly newspapers, in the 1930s Lenin’s culture, to the contextual model of became a source of so-called "consumer Stalin’s culture. In the first case it was easy to pornography" as historians have put it manipulate the values attributed to things. The (Fitzpatrick 1999:90). Articles about fashion focus on denotative attributes, and the judgments shows, exhibitions of fabrics, and the quality of made on the basis of the difference between consumer goods appeared again and again. They proletarian and a petty-bourgeois attitude to gave information about shops, which were consumer goods were peculiarities of the first overfilled with different types of consumer goods, post-revolutionary decade. The shift to the capable of satisfying the most exacting consumer contextual model provided a justification for tastes. further increasing the quantity of material objects. Attitudes toward fashion were also changing: while in the 1920s, journals were "Consumer pornography" was depicted filled with the critique of fashion, in the second as consumer goods, which expose themselves half of the 1930s the ideology changed to a more "for show" and, thus, construct the consumer as a positive way of talking about it: "Our fetishist. The following question can be raised: requirement of beauty in clothes is growing. My were all these consumer goods actually available style is simple, but it is beautiful in my point of for purchase in shops or was it just an illusion view. We can look beautiful, because we have and discursive frame? Such a question is valid taste and follow fashion" (Rabonitsa 1937:15). indeed, because historians have proven that the These citations from the letters of girls from a consumer market was poor (Osokina 1997). village shows the emergence of such categories as Thus, consumer pornography as well as "beauty", "style", "taste" or "fashion", and the consumer fetishism emerged on the pages of positive way of talking about them became Soviet magazines and newspapers mostly, but important, not only for city girls. The change in not in real life. attitude toward fashion is also proven by the Despite shortages, the idea of the Soviet opening of Fashion Houses in cities with the aim

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"to create the style of Soviet costume" (Yakub lived as an ascetic, in an empty apartment 1936:18-19). without any domestic appliances was considered Thus, in the 1930s, the discourse on to be strange (Zhilina, Frolova 1969:42). consumption became more intensive than in the The dominant discursive concept, previous period, and what is more important, it which determined the attitude to things in the gained a positive meaning. The reassessment of 1960s, was the concept of Soviet taste. To quote revolutionary values and the shift to "petty- from some sources, "What is necessary today is bourgeois" values such as coziness, beauty and taste" (Mertsalova 1964:30). "Making the taste comfort accompanied with the re-evaluation of is one of the most important forms of struggle for the anti-consumer approach to material goods, the rising of Soviet socialist culture, for cultural and the shift from aesthetic purism to the growth of all Soviet people" (Zhukov 1954:159). tolerance toward "bourgeois life" with its The actualization of the concept of taste had at glamour, luxury and pleasures. least two meanings. On the one hand, the The ideology of Soviet taste, 1950-60s category of taste supposed the rise of individualization in choosing clothes, so a Changes in ideology during the second Soviet person was socialized to be conscious of half of the twentieth century concerned the their appearance. On the other hand, taste played political, economic and social spheres as well as an important role in regulating consumer the cultural domain. This period was behavior and choosing things to wear, no matter characterized by the intensification of cultural if they corresponded to Soviet style or not. Taste contacts between Soviet Russia and the West. thus regulated the "irrational consumer behavior" The "turn to the West" was related to the of the Soviet man (Buchli 2000:139). Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956. Beginning in the 1950s, economic and Taste formed a common symbolic space cultural networks between the Soviet Union and for different social groups in Soviet culture. It foreign countries started to be rebuilt. Due to the functioned as a means for the symbolic design of International festival of youth and students, the the life style for such groups. It also functioned film festival and other international as a boundary for the whole nation, because those events such as international exhibitions, clothes Soviet people wore or the furniture they "crowds" of foreigners had the chance to come to had in their apartments had to represent the Russia. International contacts promoted cultural values of socialist culture according to official and commodity exchange, which was carried out ideology. In this sense fashion played a role in at the level of State institutions as well as in nation building in Soviet society. The question daily life. The idea "everything is for the person" of how to recognize good taste and how to form can be considered a principal discursive frame of it was arising regularly on the pages of the 1960s. Thus, if in the 1930s, the lifestyle newspapers and magazines: "What are the dominating the discourse was borrowed from the attributes of good taste?". The answer was: lifestyle of the pre-revolutionary educated class, "Good taste represents a combination of the post-war period can be characterized by the simplicity and a sense of proportion". "Too domination of western values, at least, in relation much is bad" (Kantor 1963:26) – this was a to consumption. The Soviet middle class quintessence of the idea of Soviet taste. consumed life-style patterns taken from post-war The rise of the idea of Soviet taste can American middle class. be explained as a reaction to ideological What were those patterns like? Those competition with America and other so-called ideals included financial security, the "suburban "bourgeois" countries, to the penetration of dream" - a private house in the suburbs of a city. patterns of Western culture and fashion, and to In the USSR, people did not dream of private the distribution of consumer-type values in the houses; the dream was rather to have a separate daily life of Soviet people. If we consider Soviet apartment instead of rooms in communal discourse on fashion and clothes, it is possible to apartments (kommunalka). With the separate find out, that this discourse is built around the apartment, a Soviet man could obtain not only a opposition of the Soviet lifestyle versus private space but also a place to keep their bourgeois or capitalist lifestyle at this time. Such clothes. Consumer goods became more available discourse became more intense when Western in shops, and these changes became possible due fashion appeared on the streets of Soviet cities. to the transformations of structural conditions as The struggle to influence the taste of Soviet well as those of values: the possession of youth was manifest in the campaign against the consumer goods in general was no longer looked youth subculture styliagi. upon negatively. On the contrary, a person who The well-known Soviet writer Lev

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Kassil’ wrote in 1958: distinguish between authentic beauty Why are our notorious 'styliagi' and and artificial 'prettiness', and to so-called 'fify' so ridiculous? The struggle against petty-bourgeois problem is not that they strongly desire worship for the expensive things that to follow western fashion, or that they are often deprived of authentic beauty are two years behind the times and look (Kantor 1963:15). like Parisian dandies looked last year… Thus, in the official discourse of the 1950-60s, The critical point is not only in the the concept of Soviet taste was dominating. This length of jacket, in the extreme frame was developed in the context of an narrowness of the trousers or skirts or, ideological competition with America and the on the contrary, on the vast breadth of Western life style as well as with vestiges of the their bell-bottom trousers! God save previous Stalin era "secondary philistinism". them… The point is not with their These features of everyday life in the 1950-60s style. The problem is that such lad or became preconditions for the "dematerialization' girl tries to look like a foreigner on our campaign in the late Soviet times. streets. They have a special manner of The ideology of de-materialization, 1970s speech with some «imported glamour», which they have adopted from the According to many historians, from the movies, which were not duplicated into end of the 1960s to the 1970s when Leonid . They develop a Brezhnev was at the helm, the state made a so- special weakened gait as if they passed called "Little Deal" with the Soviet middle class. all the world around on the ribbed This deal was called "little" in opposition to soles of their shoes, saw everything, "The Big Deal", proposed by Vera Dunham in that is why everything is boring for her book In Stalin’s Time. What is understood them, and they have got tired … Good by "The Little Deal", is the agreement between taste is a true, truthful taste. It calls the ruling Party and the middle class, which was everyone to be oneself, to remain honest made in the second part of the 1930s. According in words and deeds (Kassil’ 1958:25- to Dunham, the social order, which existed in 26). those times, was supported not only by means of terror. The Soviet middle class supported the However, not everyone could take authorities in exchange for financial security and advantages of such opportunity to be in fashion: a good life (Dunham 1976). The meaning of this styliagi were declared “out of moral” and 'driven deal was to maintain the stability of the existing from the streets" as a result of the campaign against Western style appearance. Public opinion social order. The deal assumed that the authorities provided differential wages, considered the desire to be different in clothes or legitimated the Establishment and turned a blind appearance to be vulgar. In A.Golybina's eye toward the shadow economy and informal tendentious book "The Art of Dressing economic practices (Millar 1985; Buchli 2000). Beautifully" which is really a discussion of the position of styliagi in Soviet culture, the author In the context of "The Little Deal" and states: "Some Soviet young boys and girls create the relative stabilization of life there were double a ridiculous style when they uncritically follow standards in relation to consumer goods. On the the last achievements of Western fashions. one hand, the main frame in official discourse Instead of wearing clothes which are was the frame of "de-materialization". According recommended by Soviet Fashion houses, they to the idea of dematerialization, the individual in copy Western style costumes, frequently socialist society was free of commodity fetishism exaggerating them" (Golybina 1974:242-243). In and not dependent on things. On the other hand, the context of the critique of the western life in his speech at the twenty-fifth party congress, style, the concept of Soviet beauty in clothes was Leonid Brezhnev spoke about the increased raised: supply of consumer goods and the growth of the ideological, ethical and cultural consciousness of The democracy of our public life does people in the Soviet Union. This statement not leave any opportunity for tasteless allowed consumer goods to appear in the luxury, senseless ornamentation, or the everyday life of Soviet people because the desire of making visible 'richness'. Our negative connotations associated with the society rejects such an understanding of 'beauty' which was born during the volume of consumer goods on shops’ shelves, one’s apartment or wardrobe were officially development of capitalist attitudes, removed from official discourse, and shifted to when the word 'beautiful' meant personal attitudes. It is important to emphasize 'expensive'. Today it is necessary to

Volume 24, No. 2 Page 96 Anthropology of East Europe Review that attention has been moved to the person's Thus, in this article it was shown, that the attitudes toward material objects: the person ideology of consumption, which regulated the him/herself should be conscious about them. As attitudes toward consumer goods, was not a matter of fact, the aim of the Soviet state was to monolithic during the whole period, and the create a socialist post-materialistic world in official attitudes toward clothes and consumption which there would be plenty of consumer goods, were different in different periods of Soviet but they would not have any excessive history. Such transformations were complex significance for the person. The Soviet person combinations of changes in politics, economics, was not supposed to be obsessed with or adoring culture and daily life. of things, rather, he should look upon them in a functional way. To use a semiotic interpretation, References it was supposed that the material object as a Adorno T.W. and Horkheimer M. 2002. signifier should be equal to the importance of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. material object as signified. Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanfor University Press. In the 1960s the motto "nothing superfluous" became popular; it corresponded to Althusser L. 2000. Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. In/ Identity: A the ideology of dematerialization and was very Reader, P. du Gay et al. (ed.) London: actual in the context of the growth of SAGE. p.31–38. materialistic attitudes, which was observed in those times. It resulted in a new wave of Barthes R. 2000. Mythologies. London: development of philistinism and consumerism. Vintage. As a consequence of such trends, the state turned Boym S. 1994. Common places. Mythologies of back to the promotion of the idea of everyday life in Russia. Cambridge: dematerialization. However, the ideology of Harvard University Press. dematerialization started to disappear by the end Buchli V. 2000. An Archeology of Socialism. of the 1970s, because of the visible contradiction Oxford. between ideological statements and rising demand for consumer goods, especially those made outside the Soviet Union. Between 1970s- Dunham V.S. 1976. In Stalin’s Time. 1980s, official discourse was full of Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction. contemporary-sounding categories such as "the Cambridge: Cambridge University culture of consumption" and "consumerism", and Press. until the middle of the 1980s it was reoriented Fitzpatrick S. 1999. Everyday Stalinism. from socialist values to the values of new Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: materialism of post-socialist Russia. Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Conclusion Oxford University Press. In this paper the question of the Golybina A. 1974. Vkus I moda (Taste and ideological context of the history of consumption Fashion). Мoscow. in Soviet culture was discussed. "Ideology" was Gronow J. 1997. The Sociology of Taste. understood as a system of concepts, ideas, myths London, NewYork: Routledge. and images by means of which people Ilyna M. 1927. V chem krasota (What is understand, estimate and experience real Beauty), Rabotnitsa. № 37. С, 15–16. conditions of their existence. Such an approach Kantor K. 1963. Kultura v bytu (Culture in the to ideology allowed investigating a structural Byt). Moscow, 1963, p. 26. context of daily life of Soviet people and a context of their attitudes toward things. On the Kassil’ L. 1958. Devushka so vkusom (Girl basis of discourse analysis, four main stages were Who has Taste), Rabotnitsa. №3, p. defined. In the 1917-20s, the ideology of 25-26. everyday asceticism and revolutionary Lyn I. 1926. V chem krasota (What is Beauty), reorganization of life dominated. In the 1930s, Rabotnitsa. № 27. P. 15. the idea of kulturnost’ prevailed, which promoted Marx K. and Engels F. 1956a. Nemetskaia rehabilitation of coziness and consumer values. ideologia (The German Ideology). In the 1950-60s, ideological opposition between Moscow: Politizdat. Soviet Union and the West got special attention, which resulted in the development of the idea of Marx K. and Engels F. 1956b. Iz rannih proizvedenii (From Earlier Works). Soviet taste. The discourse of the 1970s was Moscow: Politizdat. built around the frame of dematerialization.

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Mertsalova M. 1964. Chto cherezchur, to ploho Step. K-na 1923. Rabotnitsa. № 12, p. 36–37. (Too Much is too Bad), Rabotnitsa. № Timasheff N. 1946. The Great Retreat: the 11, p. 30. Growth and Decline of Communism in Millar J. 1985. The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Russia. New York. Contribution to Acquisition socialism, Volkov V. 2000. The Concept of Kulturnost': Slavic Review. №44, p. 694-706. Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Ob odezhde I modah (On Clothes and Fashions), Process" In Stalinism: New Directions. Rabotnitsa. 1924. № 3, p. 30–31. S. Fitzpatrick (ed.). London, New York: Routledge, p. 210-230. Osokina E. 1997. Za fasadom stalinskogo Yakub E. 1936. O novom sovetskom kostume, izobilija: raspredelenie I rynok v Rabotnitsa. № 1, p. 18–19. snabzhenii naseleniia v gody Yunye rabotnitsy stroiat novyi byt (Young industrializatsii, 1927-1941 (Behind the Workers Woman build a New Byt), façade of Stalin’s Abundance: Rabotnitsa. 1924. № 2. P. 13. Distribution and Market Supply in Zhilina L., Frolova T. 1969. Problemy Times of Industrialization, potreblenia I vospitania lichnosti 1927–1941). Мoscow: ROSSPEN. (Problems of Consumption and Rabotnitsa. 1937. № 5, p. 19. Socialization of Personality). Moscow. Rech’ tovarischa Stalina na pervom vsesouznom Zhukov N. 1954. Vospitanie vkusa. Zametki soveschanii stakhanovtsev (Comrade hudozhnika (Socialization of Taste. Stalin’s Speech on the First All-Soviet Artist’s Notes), Novyi Mir. № 10, Union meeting of Stakhanovites), p. 159-179. Rabotnitsa. 1935. № 20, p. 3–4.

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