NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Consumer goods in the Soviet Union

Soviet industry was usually divided into two major The word category (plural categories; from Greek κατηγορια meaning assertion or accusation, hence categorical denial) has several meanings: it is used informally to mean a class of things, as in the category of all living things. See categorization. in philosophy: notably, Aristotle... categories. Group A was "heavy industry," which included all goods that serve as an input required for the See also: record producer. In microeconomics, production is the act of making things, in particular the act of making products that will be traded or sold commercially. Production decisions concentrate on what goods to produce, how to produce them, the costs of producing them, and optimizing the mix of resource... production of some other, final good. Group B was "Soviet consumer goods" (final goods used for Consumption is also an archaic name for the disease tuberculosis, presumably because, prior to the age of modern antibiotics, often it would seem that the disease was consuming patients from within as they coughed up blood. Consumption is the using up of a resource. Discussions of human consumption of resources... consumption), including Food from plant sources Food is any substance normally eaten or drunk by living organisms. The term food also includes liquid drinks. Food is the main source of energy and of nutrition for animals, and is usually of animal or plant origin. The study of food is called food science... foods, (See also List of types of clothing) Contents // 1 Introduction 2 Clothing materials 3 Clothing maintenance 4 Early 21st-century clothing styles 4.1 Mainstream Western or international styles 4.2 Regional styles 4.3 Religious habits and special religious clothing 5 History of clothing 6 Future trends 7 External... clothing and shoe for right foot A shoe is a piece of footwear for humans, less than a boot and more than a slipper. This footwear is shaped to fit the foot (or the area below the ankle) with a flexible upper part of leather (or plastic) usually and a sole and... shoes, Houses in Fishpool Street, St Albans, England For other meanings of the word house, see House (disambiguation). A house in its most general sense is a human-built dwelling with enclosing walls and a roof. It provides shelter against precipitation, wind, heat, cold and intruding humans and animals. When occupied... housing, and such heavy-industry products as appliances and fuels that are used by individual consumers. From the early days of the History of Russia series Early East Slavs Kievan Rus Volga Bulgaria Khazaria Mongol invasion Golden Horde Muscovy Imperial Russia Revolution of 1905 Revolution of 1917 Civil War Soviet Union - 1927-1953 - 1953-1985 - 1985-1991 Russian Federation Contents // 1 Stalinist development 1.1 Planning 1.2 Industrialization in practice 1... Stalin era, Group A received top priority in economic planning and allocation.

The consumer industry and Soviet economic development

From a notably backward position at the time of the For other uses, see October Revolution (disambiguation). The October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was the second phase of the Russian Revolution, the first having been instigated by the events around the February Revolution. It was led by Vladimir Lenin and marked the first officially communist revolution of... October Revolution of 1917, the The economy of the Soviet Union was based on a system of state ownership and administrative planning. The Soviet redirects here. For other uses, see Soviet (disambiguation). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) .( Russian (русский язык) Spoken in: Russia and... economy of the Soviet Union developed into the most powerful in the world after that of the For other uses, see United States (disambiguation) and US (disambiguation). The United States of America, also referred to as the United States, U.S.A., U.S., US, America¹, or the States, is a federal republic of fifty states, mostly in central North America. The U.S. has three land... United States. From Years: 1925 1926 1927 - 1928 - 1929 1930 1931 Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1928 in topic: Arts Architecture - Art - Film - Literature - Music Science and technology Aviation - Rail transport - Science - Television Other topics Canada - Sport Lists of leaders: State leaders - Religious... 1928 to 1991 is a This is the calendar for a common year starting on Tuesday (dominical letter F), e.g. 2002, 1991, 1985, 1974, 1963... (A common year is a year with 365 days -- in other words, not a leap year.) January Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1... 1991 the entire course of the economy was guided by series of ambitious Five-Year Plans or Piatiletkas (пятилетка) were a series of nation-wide centralized exercises in rapid economic development in the Soviet Union. Fulfilling the plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy. (See Overview of the Soviet economic planning process) Several five-year... five-year plans. (see The economy of the Soviet Union was based on a system of state ownership and administrative planning. The Soviet redirects here. For other uses, see Soviet (disambiguation). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) .( Russian (русский язык) Spoken in: Russia and... Economic planning in the Soviet Union) The nation was among the world's three top manufacturers of a large number of basic and heavy industrial products, but—as a result of historical factors that made emphasis on consumer industries a development only roughly since the Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Contents // 1 Events and trends 1.1 Technology 1.2 Science 1.3 War, peace and politics 1.4... 1960s—it tended to lag behind in the output of light industrial production and consumer durables. One result of this was that consumer demand was only partially satisfied.

The Demand is an Indicator of the Quality!, a Soviet propaganda poster from about 1971. According to the laws of the Soviet Union, all works published before May 27, 1973 were not protected by copyright and were thus in the public domain. File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current...

A Soviet poster reading "The Demand is an Indicator of the Quality!"

Although there was an effort to emphasize public consumption over private consumption in the Soviet Union, nevertheless households earned incomes that they could use for the purchase of consumer goods or for In common usage, saving generally means putting money aside, for example, by putting money in the bank or investing in a pension plan. Outside of economics, saving is typically used to refer to economizing, cutting costs, or to rescuing someone or something. In economics, personal saving has been defined as... savings. If households were unable to convert income into goods, a variety of incentives could arise. For example, in the event of excess demand for consumer goods, one would expect households to react by working less and/or accumulating savings. From the planners' viewpoint, it was necessary to balance the output of consumer goods and services with the flow of income to the population.

Soviet planners fought a constant battle for the consumer goods balance throughout the Soviet era. In the early years, A wage is the amount of money paid for some specified quantity of labour. When expressed with respect to time (usually per hour), it is typically called the wage rate, and is specified in pre-tax amounts. It is often the main monetary item upon which the worker and the... wages were rising and priorities were shifting from consumer to producer goods. The result was both open and repressed This page is on the topic of price inflation in economics. For alternative meanings see inflation (disambiguation). In economics, inflation is an increase in the general level of prices of a given kind. General inflation is a fall in the market value or purchasing power of money within an economy... inflation. After German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The German invasion... World War II, Soviet planners kept wages under better control, and increased the output of consumer goods. By the end of the Soviet era, however, Soviet planners were plagued by what they perceived as a substantial and growing monetary overhang, which took the form of supply shortages.

After the industrial stagnation in the Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s Years: 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Contents // 1 Events and trends 1.1 Computers, technology 1.2 Science 1... 1970s and early These pages contain the trends of millennia and centuries. The individual century pages contain lists of decades and years. See history for different organizations of historical events. See Calendar and List of calendars for other groupings of years. For earlier time periods see cosmological timeline, geologic timescale, evolutionary timeline, pleistocene... 1980s (see Soviet economic development), planners expected that consumer industries would assume a more prominent role in Soviet production beginning with the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. But despite a greater emphasis on light industry and efforts to restructure the entire planning and production systems, very little upturn was visible in any sector of industry in 1989 is a This is the calendar for any common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A). (A common year is a year with 365 days -- in other words, not a leap year.) January February March Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa... 1989. High production quotas, particularly for some heavy industries, appeared increasingly unrealistic by the end of that plan. Although most Soviet officials agreed that Perestroika This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Please see its description page there. To play the audio file do not click on the -image. Look for a Listen-link near this icon. Click on the back button of your browser to go back to the article and try... perestroika was necessary and overdue, reforming the intricate industrial system had proved difficult.

The processes and goals of consumer production

Increased availability of consumer goods was an important goal of perestroika. A premise of that program was that workers would raise their productivity in response to incentive wages only if their money could buy a greater variety of consumer products. This idea arose when the early use of incentive wages did not have the anticipated effect on labor productivity because purchasing power had not improved. According to the theory, all Soviet industry would benefit from diversification from Group A into Group B because incentives would have real meaning. Therefore, the Twelfth Five-Year Plan called for a 5.4 percent rise in nonfood consumer goods and a 5.4 to 7 percent rise in consumer services. Both figures were well above rates in the overall economic plan.

Consumer goods targeted included Radio transmition diagram and electromagnetic waves For other uses see: radio (disambiguation) Radio is a technology that allows the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of light. Contents // 1 Radio waves 2 Discovery 3 Invention and history 4 Uses of radio 5 See also... radios, See TV (disambiguation) for other uses and Television (band) for the rock band European networks National In much of Europe television broadcasting has historically been state dominated, rather than commercially organised, although commercial stations have grown in number recently. In the United Kingdom, the major national broadcaster is the BBC... televisions, A sewing machine is a mechanical (or electrical) device that joins fabric using thread, in a manner similar to manual sewing. Sewing machines make a stitch, called a sewing-machine stitch, usually using two threads although machines exist that stitch using one, three, four or more threads. Sewing machines can... sewing machines, Front-loading washing machine. A washing machine is a machine designed to clean laundry, i.e. clothing and other household textile such as towels and sheets. It is generally restricted to machines that use water as the primary cleaning solution, as opposed to dry cleaning which uses alternative cleaning fluids... washing machines, Domestic refrigerators (usually shortened to fridge) are amongst the most common electric applicances in the world, for instance being present in 99.5% of American homes. They use refrigeration to help preserve food. They invariably work using phase change heat pumps operating in a refrigeration cycle. They may consist of... refrigerators, Piece of paper Paper is a thin, flat material produced by the compression of fibres. The fibers used are usually natural and based upon cellulose. The most common material is wood pulp from pulpwood (largely softwood) trees such as spruces, but other vegetable fiber materials including cotton, linen, and hemp... paper, and Knit hat, yarn, and knitting needles A woman knitting at a coffee shop Knitting is one of several ways to turn thread or yarn into cloth (cf weaving, crochet). Unlike woven fabric, knitted fabric consists entirely of horizontal parallel courses of yarn. The courses are joined to each other by... knitwear. The highest quotas were set for the first three categories. Although in 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. Years: 1984 1985 1986 - 1987 - 1988 1989 1990 Decades: 1950s 1960s 1970s - 1980s - 1990s 2000s 2010s Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1987 in topic: Arts Architecture - Art - Film - Literature - Music Science and technology Aviation - Rail transport... 1987 refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, In general, a tape recorder, tape deck, or tape machine is any device that records a fluctuating signal by moving a strip of magnetic tape across a tape head, which is a strong electromagnet. Current flowing in the coils of the electromagnet cause the magnetic material on the tape to... tape recorders, and Furniture is the collective term for the movable objects which support the human body (seating furniture and beds), provide storage, and hold objects on horizontal surfaces above the ground. Storage furniture is used to hold or contain smaller objects such as tools, books, and household goods. Furniture can be a... furniture were the consumer categories making the greatest production gains compared with the previous year, only furniture met its yearly quota. Furthermore, industrial planners had tried to use light industries to raise the industrial contributions of such economic regions as the The Transcaucasus is a region covering the majority of Caucasus mountain range. Traditionally it includes the Southern slope of Caucasus, the Colchis Lowland, Kura Lowland, Talysh Mountains, Lenkoran Lowland, Caucasus Minor, Javakheti-Armenian Uplands. The majority of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan falls within this area. Categories: Caucasus geography stubs | Caucasus... Transcaucasus and Central Asia is a region of Asia. Various definitions of its exact composition exist. Contents // 1 Definitions 2 History 3 Geography 4 Demographics 5 External links Definitions Under one definition, Central Asia covers about 9,029,000 km2, or 21% of the continent. Under this definition Central Asia includes the... Central Asia, which had large populations but lacked the raw materials for heavy Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, or intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of semi-manufactures. It is a large branch of industry and of secondary production. Some industries, like semiconductor and steel manufactureres use the term fabrication. Although handicraft production has been... manufacturing.

Consumer supply in the 1980s

This work is copyrighted. The individual who uploaded this work and first used it in an article, and subsequent persons who place it into articles assert that this qualifies as fair use of the material under United States copyright law. Taken from [1] (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art...

Moscow workers line up outside a store to buy shoes.

In the 1980s shortages continued in basic consumer items, even in major population centers. Such goods occasionally were rationed in major cities well into the 1980s. Besides the built-in shortages caused by planning priorities, shoddy production of consumer goods limited actual supply.

When analyzing shortages in Soviet Union, one needs to realize that not everything could have been taken at its face value. For example, both Moscow and Leningrad, which were heavily visited by foreigners, were supplied much better than the rest of the country and did not have rationing until the late 1980s. Similarly, presense of goods on the shelves in a state store in a minor city often could simply mean that these goods were rationed and could not be bought at will. But in most cases shortages simply meant either empty shelves or long waiting lines. There were also some hidden channels of good distribution; for example, in many cases goods were directly distributed/sold at places of work totally bypassing the store shelves.

While it was often possible to buy meat, milk and most kinds of produce on farmers markets (kolhoznyj rynok), the prices there were typically 2-4 times higher than in state stores and the availability was highly seasonal.

During the 1980s, the wide availability of consumer electronics products in the West demonstrated a new phase of the Soviet Union's inability to compete, especially because Soviet consumers were becoming more aware of what they were missing. In the mid-1980s, up to 70 percent of the televisions manufactured by Ekran, a major household Electronics is the study and use of electrical devices that operate by controlling the flow of electrons or other electrically charged particles in devices such as thermionic valves and semiconductors. The pure study of such devices is considered as a branch of physics, while the design and construction of electronic... electronics manufacturer, were rejected by quality control inspection. The television industry received special attention, and a strong drive for quality control was a response to published figures of very high rates of breakdown and repair. To improve the industry, a major cooperative color television venture was planned for the Warsaw Television Plant in 1989.

Western specialists regarded the quality of goods available to be poor when judged by their standards. However, when judged by Russia's own past, the Soviet record was more mixed. The economies of the Western capitalist nations developed from a far more advanced position at the time of the Soviet Union's founding; and the Soviet Union did see rapid growth in industrial investment and economic development—a process carried out against a hardly favorable internal and external background throughout the Soviet years.

By the end of 1980s, shortages became worse. By the time of Soviet Union's collapse at the end of 1991, nearly every kind of food was rationed. Non-rationed foods and non-food consumer goods had virtually disappeared from state owned stores. While the gap was partially filled by non-state stores which started to appear in mid 1980s, the prices in non-state stores were often 5-10 times higher than in state stores and were often out of reach of general population.

The consumer industry and Soviet economic development

The processes and goals of consumer production

Consumer supply in the 1980s

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The processes and goals of consumer production

Consumer supply in the 1980s

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The consumer industry and Soviet economic development