Abstract
Organized explicitly like a “Five and Dime” in the United States, the unit price store that opened in April 1937 on Moscow’s Kirov Street was a model of innovation, efficiency, and convenience compared to most Soviet stores.1 It featured a panoply of manufactured goods, including haberdashery, household items, and toys. It sold merchandise that was premeasured and sorted, allowing for speedier sales transactions. Because the store displayed merchandise on open shelves with premarked prices, customers could see goods and their costs without the assistance of a salesclerk. The store’s distinguishing feature was its policy of selling all merchandise according to eleven fixed prices of “2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20, 23, and 25 rubles.” This scheme simplified things for store employees and customers alike by obviating the need to deal with small change.2 The unit price also introduced “bundling,” a “new way of selling goods” that involved selling different items together in a set. One toy set “Voroshilov gunner,” for example, featured a toy helmet, mini-cannon, rifle, and other accessories which could not be purchased separately. Standardization of prices allowed for further rationalization of the customer experience. Instead of the department store norm of standing in different lines and interacting with different employees to assemble purchases, customers paid the salesclerk directly, a practice which was believed to reduce the average transaction time to less than two and a half minutes.
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Notes
RGASPI 17/3/974: 21; M. Epshtein, Osnovnye zadachi Moskovskoi torgovli (Moscow, 1936), 22.
I. Saffo, “Torgovlia po standartnymi tsenam,” June 10 1937, 3; “Novye tovary univermaga standartnykh tsen,’ August 29 1937, 4, both in ST; L. Zholkovskii, “Magazin standartnykh tsen,” VST 4–5 (1938): 64–83.
Z. Bolotin, a deputy commissar of trade, entitled a section of his book, “The Organized Perestroika of Trade.” Z. Bolotin, Reshaiushchii god v razvertyvanii sovetskoi torgovli (Moscow, 1936), 26. Other trade authorities also used this term.
See G. Ia. Neiman, Vnutrenniaia torgovlia SSSR (Moscow, 1935), 348; Epshtein, 16.
I. Zelenskii, “O tekhushchikh zadachakh potrebkooperatsii v sviazi s resheniem TsK VKP(b) i SNK SSSR ot maia 12 1931,” Problemy marksizma 5–6 (1931), 13–14.
RGAE 7971/1/246: 19–20, 40; GARF 5452/28/48: 60ob; L. Berlinraut, “Posylochnaia torgovlia v SShA,” ST 3 (1936): 78; I. Isaev, “Torgovlia v Amerike,”Izvestiia, November 11936, 4; idem, “Kaktorguiutprodovol’stviem v Amerike,” Za pishchevuiu industriiu, November 2 1936, 3.
RGASPI 17/3/975: 6; 17/3/977: 7; 17/114/615: 4; RGAE 7971/1/246 and 371a; 7971/16/24: 132; 7971/16/25: 26–32, 42–4, 61–5, 70–2, 80–2, 158, 266–70. For a brief discussion of how trade leaders traveled to the West in search of new “commercial techniques,” see Julie Hessler, “Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn to Consumerism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed., Sheila Fitzpatrick (London and New York, 2000), 191. According to Osokina, the Soviet leadership’s interest in reproducing the “abundance” they saw in capitalist retailing — both in terms of consumer goods as well as trade equipment — “appeared genuine.”
Elena Osokina, Za fasadom, “Stalinskogo izobiliia”: Raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927–1941 (Moscow, 1997), 176.
Many household items, for example, were brought back and displayed at an exhibit organized by the All-Union Chamber of Commerce. Specialists then selected goods for mass production that were not yet produced in the U.S.S.R. “Bytovoi shirpotreb,” VM, August 11 1937, 2. For more on the borrowing of goods and machinery, see Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (Berg, 2003), 74–5, 116.
Epshtein, 20, 22; Iu. Berkovich, “Stakhanovskoe dvizhenie v torgovle,” ST 12 (1935): 23.
“Dvizhushchaiasia vitrina,” and “Stend s podstavkoi dlia gotovogo plat’ia,” ZKU 2 (1937), 18–19, 22; “Okonnye vitriny,” ZKU3 (1937): 20–2. For Selfridge, see Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 138–9
Erika Diane Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton, 2000), 144–70.
Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (1883), trans. Brian Nelson (Berkeley, 1992).
For France’s association with a bourgeois regime of consumption, see Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (Princeton, 1981)
De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 154–9; Leora Auslunder, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley, 1996)
Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siècle France (Berkeley, 2001).
“Iz praktiki zagranichnykh universal’nykh magazinov,” ZKU 6 (1936): 11–19; I. Tsitron, “Bor’ba za pokupatelia,” ST 3 (1936): 58–64; RGAE 7971/1/371a: 1–7.
For Tsarist Russia’s interest in German technologies and practices, see Kendall Bailes, “The American Connection: Ideology and the Transfer of American Technology to the Soviet Union, 1917–1941,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23: 3 (1981): 425–48.
T. Gumnitskii, “Kak zavoevyvaiut pokupatelia,” ST 1 (1937): 64.
Joseph Bradley, Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb, 1990); Bailes, 428–9.
Hans Rogger, “Amerikanizm and the Economic Development of Russia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23: 3 (1981)
Alan Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York and Oxford, 2003)
This interest was not one-sided. Many Americans were similarly fascinated with the Soviet Union’s economic experimentation as a possible model for emulation. David Engerman, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 171 and chapter 3. For German fascination with and anxiety about the U.S., see Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (Oxford, 1994).
For general European interest and ambivalence, see Victoria de Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1998), 59–83.
G. Neiman, “Za razvernutuiu sovetskuiu torgovliu,” PK 2 (1932): 77–8.
A. Koniaev, “O vesoizmeritel’nom khoziaistve,” ST 10–11 (1935): 141. To improve manufacturing, Communist authorities ordered the standardization of weighing and measuring devices.
K. Grichik and V. Pirkovskii, eds., Organizatsiia i pravila roznichnoi torgovli (Moscow, 1936), 213.
Koniaev, 141; I. Aizenshtein, “Za kul’turnoe vesovoe khoziaistvo,” ST 5 (1934): 74; GARF 5446/18a/281: 6, 24; RGAE 7971/1/105: 73.
GARF 5446/18a/281: 23. To remedy the situation, Narkomvnutorg sent specialists abroad to bring back sample models for possible emulation and to conclude purchasing agreements with companies. Of particular interest were registers from the American company, “National Cash Register.” Ultimately the trade establishment envisioned the expansion of domestically produced and standardized mechanical cash registers that would combine all the best elements of foreign models. RGAE 7971/16/25: 72; I. K. i L. P., “Sovetskie avtomaticheskie kassy,” ST 1 (1933): 136–7
Z. Bolotin, “Kul’turno torgovat’ i zabotit’sia o potrebitele,” Bol’shevik 3 (1935): 40
I. Kaganov, “Rekonstruktsiia material’no-tekhnicheskoi bazy torgovli,” ST 1 (1934): 138.
Bolotin, “Kul’turno,” 40; P. Savostikov, “Mekhanizatsiia i khladofikiatsiia v sovetskoi torgovle,” VST 5 (1939): 20; Kaganov, 138.
RGAE 7971/1/246: 55; Isaev, “Torgovlia v Amerike,” 4; S. Chizhevskii, “Novoe v oborudovanii plodoovshchnykh magazinov,” ST 10–11 (1935): 129–30.
E. P. Golovina, “Bor’ba partii za razvitie torgovli v period pobedi uprocheniia sotsializma, 1933–1941,” in Sbornik trudov, vol. 34 (Leningrad, 1969), 256–308; Potrebitel’skaia kooperatsiia, 26–7.
GARF 5446/18a/281: 22; N. B. Perepelitskii, “Novoe v obsluzhivanii pokupatelei,” ST, June 3 1936, 2. Trade authorities claimed that prepackaging was good for food and nonfood items. RGAE 7971/1/246: 37; T. Gumnitskii, “Priemka, khranenie i kontrol’ v univermage firmy Meisi,” ST 2 (1937): 66.
Tsitron, “Kul’tura torgovli,” 2; M. P. Smirnov, “Iz opyta Amerikanskoi prodovol’stvennoi torgovli,” ST 5 (1937): 55; RGAE 7971/1/275: 155–6.
GARF 5446/18a/278: 1–5; G. Neiman, “Sovetskaia torgovlia na pod″eme,” ST 4–5 (1936): 20.
M. Ostroumov and I. Tsitron, “Tekhnicheskoe oborudovanie krupnogo univermaga,” ST 1 (1936): 67; “Protivopozharnye meropriatiia,” ZKU 1 (1937): 21–2.
Christine Ruane, “Clothes Shopping in Imperial Russia: The Development of a Consumer Culture,” Journal of Social History 28 (1995): 767.
Epshtein, 16–24. For similar negative commentary, see “Zadachi stakhanovskogo goda v torgovle,” ST 1 (1936): 9; Bolotin, “Kul’turno,” 39. For more on the planning for rural stores and their architectural design, see A. Zhivotovskii i V. Makhov, “Rol’ i zadachi raimagov v sele,” ST 2 (1934): 74–84;
M. Ostroumov i I. Tsitron, “Tipovye proekty raimagov i sel’magov Tsentrosoiuza,” ST 4–5 (1936): 117–24.
William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993), 317–18.
M. Shereshevskii, “Zadachi sovetskoi torgovoi reklamy,” VST 8 (1939): 32.
Tsitron, “Bor’ba,” 59. Soviet advertising has been explored in great detail elsewhere. See R. Barnz, “Obshchestvennaia psikhologiia v SShA i SSSR 20–30-x godov v svete teorii potrebleniia,” Voprosy istorii 2 (1995): 133–7
Randi Cox, “All This Can Be Yours! Soviet Commercial Advertising and the Social Construction of Space, 1928–1956,” in The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, eds. Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Seattle, 2003): 125–62; “NEP Without Nepmen! Soviet Advertising and the Transition to Socialism in the 1920s” in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, eds. Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington, 2006), 119–51
Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 143–97.
Bolotin, Reshaiushchii, 66; Lermakhovskii, “Bol’she vnimaniia vitrine,” ST 6 (1935): 76. Poor displays were also the result of goods shortages.
Tsitron, “Bor’ba,” 59–63; V. Vinogradov i T. Gunina, “Organizatsiia vitrinnoi reklamy,” ST 5 (1937): 46–7; “Iz zagranichnoi pechati,” ZKU 6 (1936): 8
B. Il’in, “O vitrine i inventare dlia nee,” ZKU 2 (1937): 7–9
T. L. Gumnitskii, “Vitrina, osveshchenie,” ZKU 3 (1937): 2–3.
“V ocheredi za mandarinom,” VM, January 25 1936, 2; “0 prostykh veshchakh,” ST, August 30 1937, 4; Alexander Wicksteed, Life under the Soviets (London, 1928), 6–7; Nauchno-issledovatel’skii Institut Potrebkooperatsii, Organizatsiia i tekhnika sovetskoi roznichnoi torgovli (Leningrad, 1933), 129.
L. Darinskaia i I. Strogov, “Novye metody i formy obsluzhivaniia pokupatelia,” ST 7–8 (1936): 95–100.
N. Shinkarevskii, “Torgovlia shtuchnymi tovarami,” ST 4 (1937): 55.
G. Ravdin, “Novye formy torgovli,” ST 2–3 (1932): 192–9.
V. Utrobin, “Dostavka tovarov na dom,” ST 10–11 (1935): 137–40; Perepelitskii, 2; RGAE 7971/1/246: 44, 56.
“Palatki-peredvizhki,” Stakhanovets torgovli 1 (1936): 2; RGAE 7971/1/238: 79–80, 99–101; 7971/1/270: 378; F. Kilevits, “Peredovoe tekhnicheskoe oborudovanie — na sluzhbu kul’turnoi sovetskoi torgovle,” ST 6 (1936): 60; “Avtolavka v raione,” ST, May 16 1936, 2; “Informatsiia,” ST 3 (1936): 80; “Informatsiia,” ST 4–5 (1936): 149; Epshtein, 23.
These stores were initially sanctioned by the Soviet regime in 1929 and then again in 1931. Direktivy KPSS i Sovetskogo pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam (Moscow, 1957), 328–9; Z. Molochnikov, “O spetsializatii gosroznitsy,” ST 2 (1934): 85; Kaganov, 118–20.
V. Stushkov, “O sovetskoi torgovle v svete zadach vtoroi piatiletki,” PE 6 (1932): 73–4.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste,” in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, 1992), 224; A. Gnedysh, “‘Gastronom’ No 1,” ST, November 4 1937, 3.
Elena Osokina, Iierarkhiia potrebleniia: o zhizni liudei v usloviiakh stalinskogo snabzheniia, 1928–1935 g.g. (Moscow, 1993).
G. Neiman, “Otmena kartochek, razvertyvanie tovarooborota i ukreplenia rublia,” PE 1 (1935): 72–3
N. Shinkarevskii, “Sostoianie i zadachi spetsializirovannoi seti ‘Gastronom’ i‘Bakaleia,”’ ST 3 (1936): 37.
RGAE 7971/1/367: 9; I. Serebrennikov, “Peredvizhnye formy torgovli v Moskve,” ST 3 (1937): 48–50.
G. A. Dikhtiar, Sovetskaia torgovlia v period postroeniia sotsializma (Moscow, 1961), 427.
Leonard Hubbard, Soviet Trade and Distribution (London, 1938), 89; V. Dekanozov, “’Gastronom’ i ‘Bakaleia’ v Tiflise,” ST, May 22 1936, 2; RGASPI 17/3/975: 40–1.
V. A. Arkhipov and L. F. Morozov, Bor’ba protiv kapitalisticheskikh elementov v promyshlennosti i torgovle: dvadtsatye-nachalo tridtsatykh godov (Moscow, 1978), 218–20.
Peredovaia, “Vyshe massovuiu politiko-vospitatel’nuiu rabotu,” ST 2 (1937): 9.
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© 2008 Amy E. Randall
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Randall, A.E. (2008). The “Perestroika” of Retail Trade. In: The Soviet Dream World of Retail Trade and Consumption in the 1930s. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584327_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584327_3
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