ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the re-enchantment' of consumption in contemporary Russia, and more specifically the re-enchantment of retailing. In November 2013, Muscovites awoke to find a bizarre and unfamiliar structure, the size of a small block of flats, installed in the middle of Red Square. The French brand's choice of Red Square is itself highly significant. In recent years, it has been the site of open-air equestrian shows, live opera performances, music festivals and since November 2011 Soviet-style military parades. One of the immediate attractions of the kiosks was that they tended to sell much sought-after foreign goods. Russian consumer's attitudes towards foreign goods and brands went through a number of 180 degree turns during the 1990s. Domestic industry was given a boost however in 1998, when the devaluation of the rouble and the subsequent financial crisis rendered foreign imports prohibitively expensive for Russian consumers, thereby making local produce that much more attractive.
