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Soviet Capital

Jill

The irony here is so sweet:

Empowered by an oil boom that pushed the country’s trade surplus past $94 billion this year, Russia has been flexing its muscles abroad. At home, meanwhile, young and trendy Muscovites are in the throes of nostalgia for the staples of Soviet childhoods, relics of a time when the U.S.S.R. was at the height of superpower status.

That may explain why one of the most popular fashion designers this fall is Denis Simachev, who is selling overcoats fastened with hammer-and-sickle buttons, gold jewelry minted to look like Soviet kopecks and shirts festooned with the Soviet coat of arms, complete with embroidered ears of wheat.

“People in their 30s see these kinds of symbols as reminders of happy memories, like going to pioneer camp where they lived together, ate breakfast together and played sports,” said Mr. Simachev, 33, who wears his hair in a Samurai-style ponytail. He insists he is no Communist — for one thing, his overcoats sell for about $2,100 and his T-shirts for about $600. His boutique is sandwiched between Hermès and Burberry stores on a pedestrian lane, Stoleshnikov, that is one of the capital’s most expensive shopping streets.

U.S.S.R. clothing selling for thousands of dollars on a Moscow street between Hermes and Burberry. Can you hear Stalin rolling in his grave?

26 thoughts on Soviet Capital

  1. I remember feeling that the death of communism was final when Taco Bell came out with its gorditas and used that chihuahua dressed up like Che Guevara in its commercials. Even the iconography of revolution was used to sell something.

  3. Of course, teachers in Moscow are only paid about $150 a month and doctors a little more, so perhaps not all nostalgic for the Soviet era are wandering around in superpower bling.

  4. “People in their 30s see these kinds of symbols as reminders of happy memories, like going to pioneer camp where they lived together, ate breakfast together and played sports,”

    Whereas those in their eighties might see them as symbols of happy memories like being imprisoned in the gulags for counterrevolutionary activities, starved and randomly beaten. Tre chic.

  5. Whereas those in their eighties might see them as symbols of happy memories like being imprisoned in the gulags for counterrevolutionary activities, starved and randomly beaten. Tre chic.

    Well, I think the whole thing is a pretty huge slap in the face to Stalinism and the economic policies for the former USSR (that’s why I posted on it — not to say, “OMG, this stuff is so cute!”). It’s kind of like the fact that the bunker where Hitler killed himself is now below an unmarked dirt parking lot — there’s no more fitting memorial to a murderous egomaniac than none at all. Stalin was a bloodthirsty tyrant who premised his horrendous acts on the promise of economic justice and anti-capitalism; now Soviet gear is being sold to some of the biggest capitalist pigs* on the planet. There’s something kind of fitting about that, no?

    *I don’t mean this as an insult.

  6. I can understand the nostalgia. For those of us born in the way later years of the USSR and who were too young at the time to understand the horrible economic and human rights conditions that went on, it did seem like a pretty good time. Only after moving to the U.S. and gaining a point of reference that I realized that holy crap, comparatively, I had a quite impoverished childhood and my parents’ and grandparents’ lives weren’t all peaches and roses.

    The irony is kind of awesome though. 😉

  7. When I was in Mainland China in the late 1990’s, there were a lot of touristy areas selling anything related to Mao Zedong ranging from his “Little Red Book” to buttons from the Cultural Revolution era. Truly enjoyed the irony involved in the commodification of Mao’s legacy. I am certain he is rolling in his grave over having his Red Books, buttons, and other memorabilia being hawked by “dirty capitalist” merchants he would not have hesitated to brutalize, imprison, and exile to the countryside to perform coerced labor work had he still been alive.

    Moreover, the level of nostalgia was determined by two things…one’s socio-economic status and whether you were old enough to remember the Tienanmen Massacre or not.

    Workers from inefficient State Owned Enterprises and rural peasants tended to have a strong desire to return to the Maoist period when their jobs, livelihoods, and a veneer of high social status were guaranteed. Very different from the current period when they were losing their jobs enmasse due to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms and where they were regarded as uncompetitive drains on company resources. This was because they were seen as too comfortable under the old worker/peasant collective system where everyone was paid the same regardless of the quality of work and where party loyalty, not proficiency counted. Those who were not part of those groups and those who suffered under such rule have no such wish to return to the past.

    As for the post-1989 generation of Chinese youth too young to remember Tiennamen, it is much more complex. Those who were college classmates tended to regard Mao Zedong with some respect….while acknowledging problems with past and current Chinese Communist Party(CCP). When they got to know me better, they admitted that they also felt the upper-class/upper-middle class American Maoists at our college were a bunch of overromanticizing sheltered fools who had little to no understanding of life under Mao’s reign.

    With the increasing emphasis of Chinese nationalism as the CCP’s ideological substitute for the discredited Maoism, however, I’ve noticed that the younger generations of Mainland Chinese students attending American Universities tend to , with few exceptions, be much more nationalistic and more uncritically loyal to the CCP and Mao than their older counterparts.

    This is both due to government mandates to teach how the CCP is the exemplar of Chinese nationalism in schools sometime after Tienanmen and the fact these students view the CCP as responsible for the Chinese economic boom from which they derive great benefit.

  8. capitalist pigs

    Jill,

    The upper/upper-middle class American Marxists/Maoists classmates regularly applied that epithet towards me and other students who disagreed with their ideological views.

    Coming from them, I usually interpreted it as as a badge of high honor….especially when that tag would be more apt if it was applied to their families. 🙂

  9. When they got to know me better, they admitted that they also felt the upper-class/upper-middle class American Maoists at our college were a bunch of overromanticizing sheltered fools who had little to no understanding of life under Mao’s reign.

    I’ve never been to China, but we had some folks like this on our college campus who published such funny papers like MIM Notes. I sometimes wondered if that paper was parody from the same folks who did The Onion.

    As obnoxious as these bourgeois Maoists were, I have to say it took a few years and some education on my part to realize that our own secular theology of capitalism has a few holes in it…

  10. The upper/upper-middle class American Marxists/Maoists classmates regularly applied that epithet towards me and other students who disagreed with their ideological views.

    Coming from them, I usually interpreted it as as a badge of high honor….especially when that tag would be more apt if it was applied to their families. 🙂

    Ha. Well, you know I meant it in a tongue-in-cheek way, right? And not as an epithet?

  11. As obnoxious as these bourgeois Maoists were, I have to say it took a few years and some education on my part to realize that our own secular theology of capitalism has a few holes in it…

    But… but… capitalism is Jesus’s religion!

  12. The Chicago Tribune recently ran a feature about some Germans who opened a hotel done up in East German style (if that’s the right word). They scoured the area for authentic furniture, electronics, portraits of Lenin, etc., to make a suitably grim ambience for what they call an Ostel (ost=East + hostel, get it?).

    Apparently it’s considered a great joke, kitsch, whatever. Ironically, the biggest complainers apparently are Russians, who are attracted by the low rates but then arrive and start yelling that it’s not funny.

  13. Ha. Well, you know I meant it in a tongue-in-cheek way, right? And not as an epithet?

    Jill,

    Don’t worry…got the tongue-in-cheek loud and clear. 🙂

    Moreover, the fact you’ve made ironic and witty remarks about Stalin rolling in his grave would be more than sufficient to arouse the ire of the old school Marxists/Maoists at my college…or a few Stalin apologist acquaintances I knew through college/grad school classmates.

    Heck, by the politically radical standards of the Marxist/Maoist classmates, you would be considered a right-leaning centrist.

    I’ve never been to China, but we had some folks like this on our college campus who published such funny papers like MIM Notes.

    Yep….some of them published MIM…..though the most obnoxious ones I’ve encountered in my Chinese history and politics courses felt that even MIM was “not radical enough” and “too bourgeois” for their tastes.

    This degree of radicalism combined with their severe intolerance of any challenges to their ideological beliefs made discussions in and out of class an amusing and laughably sad affair. Did I also mention that most of them are now either working for “capitalist pigs”….if they have not become ones themselves.

    In buying Mao’s Little Red Book and Mao button in China during the late ’90s, I hope I’m doing my little part to mock his political legacy.

  14. Even the iconography of revolution was used to sell something.

    When I worked at the TiVo call center, I had this poster hanging in my cubicle.

    Eventually some corporate muckymucks toured the facilities and I had to take it down.

  15. that is kind of grimly awesome. well–one thing that’s never been lacking in that part of the world has been black humor…

    Linnaeus: MIM notes, oh my GOD. those people make the Margins look like an oasis of sanity and sweet reason. I think my favorite bit was where they were trying to explain how Catherine MacKinnon and some Satanist dude they met on the Intranets had some theories in common, and that was a GOOD thing, really…

  16. ….hahaha, and, by coincidence, we were just talking about them elsewhere, MIM, and a pal directed my (serious, clear-eyed lesbian*) gaze to this: MIM fanvideos! Rebel Grrl with…well, see for yourself. they are just so, so…fucked up it’s EXCELLENT.

    *see here and here for an explanation. Now tell me: do -you- think this person seems any less probable than the MIM folks? As in real, REALLY real? We’re having this little debate, some of us, see…

  17. But… but… capitalism is Jesus’s religion!

    Jill: Oh, yes, I forgot. Great wealth is a mark of his favor.

    Linnaeus: MIM notes, oh my GOD. those people make the Margins look like an oasis of sanity and sweet reason. I think my favorite bit was where they were trying to explain how Catherine MacKinnon and some Satanist dude they met on the Intranets had some theories in common, and that was a GOOD thing, really…

    belledame: I think we enjoyed the movie reviews the best. Their strain to find something relevant to Maoism in a Disney cartoon was typical.

  18. I sometimes wondered if that paper was parody from the same folks who did The Onion.

    Linnaeus,

    Unless MIM Notes drastically changed from the mid-late ’90s, the commonplace elementary spelling mistakes, inexplicably cut-off sentences, and the incoherence of the articles made it hard for me to take it seriously as a publication.

    In comparison, The Onion is a professional publication with none of the MIM Notes slapdash sloppiness and borderline illiteracy.

    I think you’re really doing The Onion a serious injustice by comparing it to MIM Notes. 🙂

  19. True, exholt. I just couldn’t think of anyone else who could pull of a parody that doesn’t look like a parody even though you know it’s one and it’s funny.

  20. I wonder how long will it be before this “Soviet Chic” goes in an extremely absurd direction….such as Russian or foreign “Capitalist Pigs” hoping to go above and beyond in indulging their Soviet nostalgia chic by actually bidding on Stalin’s or Lenin’s embalmed bodies at auction? Wouldn’t that be supremely ironic…albeit disgusting on multiple levels?*

    I just couldn’t think of anyone else who could pull of a parody that doesn’t look like a parody even though you know it’s one and it’s funny.

    In MIM Notes’ case, the poor quality of the writing and editing was such that it became a pathetically unintentional parody of itself and the Maoist ideology it espoused. What better way to underscore how one’s ideological purity as the MIM Notes collective envisions it is the sole criterion for acceptance as a writer and/or editor…..sloppiness, incoherence, and borderline illiteracy be damned! 😀

    * Posed as ironic questions…not as an endorsement or approval of such actions.

  21. ….hahaha, and, by coincidence, we were just talking about them elsewhere, MIM, and a pal directed my (serious, clear-eyed lesbian*) gaze to this: MIM fanvideos! Rebel Grrl with…well, see for yourself. they are just so, so…fucked up it’s EXCELLENT.

    belledame222,

    That video underscores the MIM’s effective, but unintended parody of Maoist ideology. Rebel Grrl rock music?!! How decadently bourgeois…a state of consciousness which most probably matches most of MIM’s socio-economic backgrounds. Pardon me while I rotflol. 😀

    Moreover, I have a strong feeling Mao Zedong and his Red Guards would have seen that video as a most severe insult to the CCP’s song and dance troupe’s tireless efforts to raise proletarian and peasant consciousness, especially among us “Capitalist pigs/roaders”.* 🙂

    On the other hand, I wouldn’t take his probable outrage too seriously. It is now well known that Mao Zedong treated female members of the CCP song and dance troupe as his personal harem…notwithstanding his frequent criticisms of sexual promiscuity as cultural contamination from corrupt decadent Capitalist societies like the U.S.**

    * The dubiously honorific title of “Capitalist Roader” had been bestowed on many people…including some relatives and famous CCP officials like Deng Xiaoping.

    ** Hypocrisy underscored by how Mao’s personal lifestyle was more like the emperors of old rather than the “man of the proletarian and peasant classes” as portrayed in official CCP propaganda. In short…not much different from your latter day Jimmy Swaggart or Larry Craig.

  22. I wonder how long will it be before this “Soviet Chic” goes in an extremely absurd direction….such as Russian or foreign “Capitalist Pigs” …actually bidding on Stalin’s or Lenin’s embalmed bodies at auction?

    There was a “Dilbert” sequence where Dogbert buys Lenin’s embalmed body from a Russian on the street for $10 (talking him down from $20) and uses it as a coffee table. The punchline: “Hey, if I flip him over I can use his nostrils as pencil holders!”

  24. Stalinism was and is (see: North Korea) atrocious. But the USSR in 1987 was far different, and the human rights situation was not as bad as it is today.

    Also, there is a smug Western tendency to denigrate the the FSU (and ex-Yugoslavia, though to a much lesser extent because it was very different) without having an understanding of what those societies were actually like, or why, as is the case in many of the countries that composed those two, people look back wistfully on the days they lived under communism. This is a point that can be brought up without excusing the inexcusable and massive human rights abuses perpetrated (more in the USSR than Yugoslavia, but I digress.)

    Rapid economic liberalisation and hasty, half-ass democratisation (most of it pushed, or at the very least heartily cheered on by the US) threw hundreds of millions of lives into utter chaos in the 1990s. Wars broke out. People died horribly by the thousands. Today, the human rights and democracy outlooks in Central Asia are bleak, but hey! the market is doing super! Economic growth is through the roof! Oil exports are booming! And, you know, dissidents are being tortured and “disappeared” left and right, women have lost many of the rights they had under communism, inequality and racist nationalism have bloomed, but…but…exports! Trade! Kids in Tashkent wearing Nike sneakers and listening to Linkin Park! The End of History!

    Caugh.

    And I’m not even going to get into Russia.

    And look at the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Talk to ordinary people on the streets of Belgrade or Sarajevo and they’ll smile sadly and tell you things were better when they were in their twenties. And that’s something we should try to better understand.

    Our view of history needs an injection of nuance, and a quite few of humility.

    Ok, maybe I am getting fired up by this more than I should because I am at a conference where I just had to listen to hours of civil servants talking about the amazingly bad policy recommendations they got from the World Bank and “foreign” (see: UChicago) consultants.

    Sorry, Jill …ranting again. : \

  25. Miss S, I think that “smug Western tendency” is part and parcel with the continued illusion that Capitalism and Democracy are synonymous. Certainly many in the U.S. tie them closely together, despite the many examples of unfree societies which have embraced market Capitalism and done well…I would mention Singapore, Imperial Germany (which did quite well economically and industrially despite having a quasi-democratic system based on oligarchic power distribution; it took a disastrous war to unseat the Imperial German regime, no matter what instabilities were inherent in its structure.) It’s instructive to note that in many cases of the development of Capitalist/Democratic systems that the “Democratic” part came first – a review of the development of the English Parliamentary system is a good start, or in fact a close look at the basically agrarian nature of the new United States in the early 19th Century would also be enlightening.

    So…can the ex-Communist countries become economically Capitalist and yet unfree? Of course. Furthermore, it’s another fallacy for the West to think that similar economic or political systems will naturally bring ex-Communist nations into agreement with Western goals and ideals. Russia, in particular, has always had a very strong undercurrent of nationalistic self-identification as being the most “ideal” people – much like the semi-messianic point of view many Americans share – as being a unique combination of Eastern spiritualism and Western rationalism.

    In short – the people of these nations look back to a time when they were part of something powerful and important, and cling to the symbolism of that power and importance. Just because they aren’t Communist doesn’t mean they are going to be our best friends.

  26. Also, there is a smug Western tendency to denigrate the the FSU (and ex-Yugoslavia, though to a much lesser extent because it was very different) without having an understanding of what those societies were actually like, or why, as is the case in many of the countries that composed those two, people look back wistfully on the days they lived under communism.

    While most of this smugness is as you described, that is not the only reason for the triumphalism mentality.

    In the case of immigrants who fled Communist regimes like the Soviet Union or Mainland China during the reigns of Mao and Deng, it is not smugness, but a feeling that long overdue justice had arrived when the old system/ideology was toppled and that some former persecutors are now getting their just desserts (i.e. Laid off former worker/peasant Red Guards who have been undergoing economic hardships or former Soviet military officers suffering unemployment and poverty due to political and economic reforms in their respective societies.).

    Granted, this view is grossly oversimplistic and revenge is not a healthy or morally just emotion…but it is a very human reaction to being subjected to long periods of officially sanctioned abuse before having the chance to leave.

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