Hessler Julie. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. — 384 p. — ISBN-10 0691114927; ISBN-13 978-0691114927.In this sweeping study, Julie Hessler traces the invention and evolution of socialist trade, the progressive constriction of private trade, and the development of consumer habits from the 1917 revolution to Stalin's death in 1953. The book places trade and consumption in the context of debilitating economic crises. Although Soviet leaders, and above all, Stalin, identified socialism with the modernization of retailing and the elimination of most private transactions, these goals conflicted with the economic dynamics that produced shortages and with the government's bureaucratic, repressive, and socially discriminatory political culture.A Social History of Soviet Trade explores the relationship of trade--official and unofficial--to the cyclical pattern of crisis and normalization that resulted from these tensions. It also provides a singularly detailed look at private shops during the years of the New Economic Policy, and at the remnants of private trade, mostly concentrated at the outdoor bazaars, in subsequent years. Drawing on newly opened archives in Moscow and several provinces, this richly documented work offers a new perspective on the social, economic, and political history of the formative decades of the USSR.Two Modes of Soviet Socialism
Buyers, Sellers, and the Social History of TradeCrisis: RevolutionTrade and Consumption in Revolutionary RussiaRussian Retailing and Its Unraveling
Effects of the Anti-trade Policy
The Crisis Mode of ConsumptionThe Invention of SocialismThe Emergence of a Socialist Distribution Network, 1918-1921
Rationing, “Commodity Exchange, ” and Price Controls
The Antibureaucratic Backlash and Socialist Economic Culture
Public-Sector Shops in the Transition to the NEPShopkeepers and the StatePoverty, Capital, and the Commercial Revival
The Logic of Utilization and the Regulatory Context
Shopkeepers’ Stories: The NEP from BelowCrisis: RestructuringWar Communism ReduxThe NEP from Above: Trade Policy in the Shadow of the Goods Famine
Bureaucratism Ascendant: The Effects of Food Shortage on the Distribution System
Corporatism in the Service of the Plan
Crisis, Consumption, and the MarketToward a New ModelSocialist Modernization: “Cultured Soviet Trade”
Bureaucratism Restrained
Stalinism and the Consumer, I: Urban Attitudes and Trends
Stalinism and the Consumer, II: The Peasant Challenge to Cultured Trade ConclusionCrisis: WarThe Persistent Private SectorStalin-era Bazaars
Travel, Bagging, and the Survivalist Consensus
The Revitalization of the Private Sector
Private Trade as a Social Formation: Continuity and Change ConclusionPostwar Normalization and Its LimitsFrom Wartime “Abnormalities” to the Paradox of Growth Cadres Policy in Postwar Trade
Postwar “Cultured Trade”: A Balance Sheet