Like many Americans, Teddy judged the USSR through a consumer lens. What could Soviets buy? How much? And what was up with those long lines and shortages? Teddy wasn’t very impressed. Yet, the “standard of living race” was a front in the Cold War like any other. And Soviet communism was losing. But things were never so simple. By the late 1960s, Soviet people were consuming more than ever. They were becoming consumers just like in the West. So, what was it like to shop in the USSR? And was buying stuff part of the Soviet dream?
Episode Resources
Soviet Shoppers
Mikoyan Discovers The Super Market, 1959
Festival Of Fashion, 1967
Moscow Shoppers, 1966
The Kitchen Debate, 1959
A. Raikin, "Shortage"
Reagan Tells Soviet Jokes
Soviet Lada Car Ad
Nixon and Brezhnev
Nixon and Brezhnev car scene from The Final Days.
Sources
Laura Belmonte, Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the Cold War, UPenn Press, 2010.
Natalia Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era, Routledge, 2015.
Dina Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines, John Hopkins University Press, 2021.
Donald Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile, Cornell University Press, 2011.
Credits
Voice Over:
Norman K. Winston voiced by Gabe Kramer.
Young Teddy voiced by Trevor Erlacher.
Music:
“Two in the Back,” “Levin and Harper,” “Bossa Boa,” and “Tango Rosino,” by Blue Dot Sessions.
“Hipcat Swagger” by Richie Everett.
Amazing Plan by Kevin MacLeod. License.
Viktor Ignatev, “Vesoloe taksi.”