Fashion Meets Socialism: Fashion Industry in the Soviet Union after the Second World War by Jukka Gronow and Sergey Zhuravlev (review)

This book is the result of a collaboration between a Swedish sociologist and a Russian historian of Soviet fashion. Published originally in Moscow in 2013, this Finnish edition offers the work in English translation.¹ Although less readable than the Russian original, this edition is a valuable and important contribution to the growing literature on cultural consumption and fashion in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. To some extent, the book is a good sequel to Natalya Chernyshova’s excellent study of consumption during the Brezhnev era. Chernyshova demonstrates how urban Soviet consumers became more technologically savvy and more selective and autonomous in their decision-making, choosing not only the level of sophistication of their machines but also brands, just as one would expect a Western consumer to do. Focusing on the case of household gadgets Chernyshova argues that despite the ideological peculiarities of Soviet economic policies and the generally closed nature of Soviet society, late Soviet consumer culture developed in ways that had many parallels with Western consumer societies, raising interesting questions about the nature of consumerism as a global phenomenon.²

Although the book by Gronow and Zhuravlev lacks the sophistication and depth of analysis of Chernyshova’s study, it does provide an interesting view of the development of the fashion industry from late Stalinism to the Brezhnev era. Using mostly archival material from post-Soviet Russia and Estonia, as well as numerous oral history interviews, Gronow and Zhuravlev attempt to present “the first systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War” (34). The authors provide a history “of the numerous fashion houses, ateliers and institutes that existed in the USSR and their tasks, achievements and problems,” discussing “the place and role of fashion in the economic, ideological and aesthetic programs and disputes of the Soviet authorities and specialists as well as the changing goals and standards of aesthetic education and cultivation of taste” (34).

After an introductory chapter that explains the authors’ methodology and sources and analyzes the recent historiography of Soviet fashion, chapter 2 recounts the formation of the fashion industry in the young Soviet republic, from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the period of Stalin’s rule. The authors pay special attention to the 1930s, when the important models and cultural practices for the entire Soviet fashion industry were created (50–54). The problems of socialist consumption and the rise of the new Soviet fashion industries during Khrushchev’s rule (1953–1964) are discussed in chapter 3. A history of the first All-Union Soviet center of fashion, the Moscow House of Fashion Design of Clothes, which was founded in the beginning of 1944 under the People’s Commissariat of Light Industry, is the topic of chapter 4. Chapter 5 explores the institutionalization of the Soviet fashion system during 1960–1980 through four parallel organizations—the Ministry of Light Industry, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Everyday Services, and the Ministry of Local Industry. Chapter 6 is devoted to a history of another Soviet fashion institution—the State Department Store at Moscow (Gosudarstvennyi universal’nyi magazin—GUM), from the official opening of this shop in 1956 until the 1970s. The authors explore the role of GUM fashion collections in influencing the entire fashion culture of the Soviet Union during late socialism. Chapter 7 offers another institutional history, focusing on the Tallinn House of Fashion Design of the Estonian Ministry of Light Industry, from its opening in 1957 until the beginning of the 1970s and its role in promoting the new fashion trends, using various periodicals, especially the Estonian fashion magazine Siluett. The final chapter analyzes the “ideology of fashion” in the Soviet Union, using various Soviet periodicals devoted to problems of fashion and the “culture of dress,” mainly during the 1960s and the 1970s...