Shopping as a way of life

‘Shortages are a powerful engine of special social relations’, opined the hero of one of the most famous monologues in Soviet stand-up comedy during the 1970s. This sketch, titled ‘Shortage Goods’ (Defitsit), made a case for shortages. Written by Mikhail Zhvanetskii and performed by the phenomenally popular comedian Arkadii Raikin on Soviet television and elsewhere, it is well remembered today. In just a few strokes the monologue paints an accurate picture of the perverse role that shortages of consumer goods played in late Soviet society. But what is often overlooked is its suggestion of what shortage goods meant in the 1970s. ‘Imagine’, Raikin tells his audience, ‘through the shop director, through the warehouse chief, through the shop's stock manager, you have obtained … defitsit [a shortage item].’ What it is exactly we never learn, but we are told it is something that ‘melts in the mouth’, has ‘special taste’ and that ‘no one else has it’. ¹ Such a description is telling. In the 1930s, scarce goods had meant bread, meat, milk, butter and vegetables, as well as shoes, clothes, pottery, baskets, thread, needles and even buttons — to name just a few. ² In the 1970s, according to Raikin and Zhvanetskii, scarce goods implied delicacies, something that Western advertising would probably call ‘exclusive’.