ABSTRACT
In the middle of the 1930s the Politburo initiated a propaganda campaign that signaled its decision to release the state economy from the “burden” of the rationing system and reap the benefits of free trade. A new image of a model Soviet citizen emerged. Things that Soviet propaganda had earlier despised as bourgeois luxuries became desirable and even necessary: jewelry, cosmetics, pretty clothes, permanent waves, manicures, and patent-leather shoes. Only a few years earlier a Komsomolka wearing lipstick would have provoked anger and horror and would have been excluded from the Komsomol for moral degradation. Now things changed.
