RUSSIA: Paradise by 1956

The big new slogan in Soviet Russia is “Bring On the Consumer Goods.” Ever since Premier Georgy Malenkov passed the word, with his talk of “smart clothes and elegant footwear” (TIME, Aug. 17), the vast engines of Soviet propaganda have been at work grinding out the tidings of a fuller and happier life for the citizens. Day after day, Pravda and Radio Moscow paint glittering pictures of a land of milk and honey, teeming with TV sets and People’s cars. The new day will dawn, says Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, some time in 1955—or 1956.

“Abundance.” as the Kremlin calls its new program, shows that Malenkov’s regime feels the need to work up popularity with Russia’s restless people. It promises them three years concentration on consumer goods, and in effect implies three years of peace. A dictator, of course, may renege overnight on his promises, but the extent and specific details of the current propaganda will make a sudden reversal difficult.

Goose Feet & Clumsy Bears. Last week, at an All-Union Conference of Trade Operatives in Moscow’s Hall of Columns, Consumer Goods Expert Mikoyan. who runs the Internal Trade Ministry, predicted that in three or four years’ time the Soviet masses will have twice as much clothing as they have today, eat twice as much fish and meat, cook in four times as many shiny new pots and pans. There will be more sausages for boiling, better meat cutlets, and, for the “little Soviet consumer,” a most splendid assortment of “well-wrapped candies: prozrachnaya (fruit drops), gusinye lapki (goose feet), mishka kosolapy (clumsy bear) with fruit and nut centers.”

Mikoyan gave some hard & fast statistics (instead of the usual vague percentages) of present and hoped-for Soviet industrial production. By 1956, he promised, Soviet consumers will benefit from a yearly output of:

¶ 330,000 refrigerators (one for every 600 citizens);

¶500,000 vacuum cleaners (one for every 400); ¶1,000,000 TV sets (one for every 200).

More Politeness, Comrade. But quantity is not enough, said the Deputy Premier. “The satisfaction of the Soviet consumer’s demand for high quality . . . must become a law.” Goods of “monotonous, dull, dark tints and bad designs . . . can no longer be tolerated. Fabrics must be bright, rich and of attractive hue . . .” Far too often, said Mikoyan, “the workers begin to argue: ‘We get no dye from the chemists, so what are we to do?’ “

He answered the question for them: “They must have a heart of stone, and put pressure on the chemical workers . . . Concessions are opportunist, and opportunism is fatal.”

One thing that worried Mikoyan is the “inattentive and rude attitude on the part of Soviet salesmen to the consumer.” “In the field of politeness,” he said, “we have much ground to cover . . . What is one to think if, in a Stalingrad department store, a woman shop assistant answers the question of a woman customer: ‘Where can one buy cheap cotton stuff?’ in this way: ‘I am not an inquiry office, citizen.’ “

Another big problem is the paralyzing inefficiency of Soviet salesmen. Take our advertising, said Mikoyan. “It is dull, stereotyped and inflexible . . . One can see such advertisements as Drink the Beer of the Breweries of Glavpivo.” As if in contrast, he quoted the “precise and memorable slogans of our great poet Mayakovsky,” who wrote for advertising:

There are no better dummy teats [nipples’] One could suck them till old age . . .

and

There is no place for doubt and thought GUM* sells all a woman needs.

Soviet workers, said Mikoyan, must learn that the customer is at least occasionally right. Then, in a grudging but oddly revealing statement, he solemnly admonished the comrades to study and learn from “capitalist sales methods.” Mikoyan’s conclusion: “It should be kept in view that under competitive conditions, because of growing sales difficulties, bourgeois countries have created good models of trade organization . . . cultured means of serving customers. It is impossible not to condemn those comrades who, under the pretext of fighting subservience before foreigners, ignore foreign experience, cease to interest themselves in it, to study it, and to utilize that which is useful to us.”

-Short for government universal store.