Description:
Consumption in Russia and the former USSR has been lately studied as regards the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period. The history of Soviet consumption and the Soviet variety of consumerism in the 1950s-1990s has hardly been studied at all. This book concentrates on the late Soviet period but it also considers pre-WWII and even pre-revolutionary times.The book consists of articles, which survey the longue durée of Russian and Soviet consumer attitudes, Soviet ideology of consumption as indicated in texts concerning fashion, the world of Soviet fashion planning and the survival strategies of the Soviet consumer complaining against sub-standard goods and services in a command economy. There's also a case study concerning the uses of concepts with anti-consumerist content.
Contributors include: Lena Bogdanova, Olga Gurova, Timo Vihavainen and Larissa Zakharova.
Brief description:
Timo Vihavainen, Ph.D. (1988) in History, University of Helsinki, is Professor of Russian Studies in that university. He has published several books and articles about the history of Russia, history of Finland and Russian-Finnish relations.
Elena Bogdanova, Ph.D. (2006) in Sociology, European University in St. Petersburg, is researcher at the Center for Independent Social Research (CISR) and visiting lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland.