Beryozka Shops: The Consumption Paradox in the Late USSR

Operations with foreign currencies were considered a criminal offence in the USSR; the cult of Western goods among the Soviet citizens was a constant object of criticism in the newspapers and the existence of privileged supplies was officially denied. Nevertheless, the state magazines called Beryozka, where certain groups of Soviet citizens could buy scarce imported goods for hard currency, and its substitutes (certificates and cheques) thrived throughout the Soviet Union. Moreover, they started to play an important role in late-Soviet everyday life. American jeans, Japanese tape recorders and Italian boots were bought in these magazines not only by diplomats and artists on tour, but also by members the of Soviet working class who provided “technical assistance” in third world countries, dissidents who received foreign exchange transfers from abroad and also common Soviet citizens who dared risk buying the currency substitutes on the black market. Beryozka magazines were perceived by Soviet society as a standard of consumption and as a symbol of social injustice at the same time. Hard-currency retail trade in the late USSR becomes for the first time an object of historical research in this book written by Anna Ivanova. The author analyses the reasons why Beryozka magazines appeared, describes the categories of the Soviet citizens who had access to the “private” hard-currency magazines and she also deals with the image of hard-currency trade in the official discourse among consumers. The book is based on documents from central archives and archives of individual republics, on material from the Soviet media, on memoirs, and personal interviews with both employees as well as clients of the hard-currency trade.

Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2017