I bought these younger (and poorer) students some hamburgers and these young Russians introduced me to cognac.
That’s right—not vodka but cognac!!
You see, these young people were not interested in things of Russia--or its great past.
They were only focused on the West.
I had to admit that French cognac had much more to it than either whiskey or vodka—even after eating a few tiny western hamburgers cooked a la Muscova.
Similarly, I had to admit not being impressed by what the giant people’s department store GUM (across from the Kremlin) had to offer either its citizens or foreign visiting consumers. Click here.
GUM stands for the “State Department Store” in Russian, and the neo-Russian building had been constructed to be window to the West in terms of both Russian--and then later-- Soviet opulence.
Alas, by the late 1980s, what GUM had to offer was little more than a bad joke full of anachronism and low quality. It had much less to offer than a market in Tiajuana. (Admittedly babushkas were still cheap.)
You see, just like in East Berlin and in all the other Eastern European communist bloc, Muscovites had to spend a lot of time in long lines just to get basic necessities—and twice that much time in line to obtain the occasional non-essential gifts or curiosities.
For example, bananas were almost non-existent in Soviet and East German stores. These kind of fruits grew only in warm climates and thus required hard currency generally for their purchase.
CONSUMPTION DRIVE WOULD DRIVE CHANGE FOR THE YOUTH
The products in the East were usually substandard (and at-best-clunky) as compared to what people in the West could afford—or could find in the market place.
Even people in poorer developing lands, like Peru or Indonesia, often had better quality goods (and more of them) than was often found in Soviet- and communist-dictated planned economies.
The only way Soviet citizens could buy Western products was generally through using western currency or gold.
In East Germany, the stores to go to for these Western goods was called “Intershop”. The name “Intershop” mixes English and Latin to convey a foreign concept of trade for goods and service. Incidentally, these stores were run by the state itself, i.e. in order for the communist state to acquire as much Western currency as possible.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
