How the USSR was strangled with American jeans

On both sides of the ocean, “the rivalry of who can destroy whom how many times” was ridiculed, but it turned out that we were not the last to laugh. Going through other “unknown” parameters of the “cold war” equation, in one book I fixed my attention on the Race of Consumption, hopelessly lost. He criticized the well-known simplification, the primitive slogan: “the arms race has exhausted the USSR.” It can be interpreted in such a way that the USSR and the USA made a million “guns” each, but the USA, moreover, still had “oil”, while the USSR did not. The word “exhausted” is usually followed by newsreel footage, besieged Leningraders, Auschwitz sufferers, obscuring an important fact: losing the Consumption Race is not at all like dying of hunger or cold!

Yes, in the era of late perestroika, there was already real malnutrition. But the USSR lost the Consumption Race much earlier, somewhere at the turn of the 1950s and 60s. Just when our scientists and workers were preparing a “car” that would soon overtake the American one in the unofficial Formula 1 weapons. And geologists, as if poking a magic wand into the map of the USSR, discovered new and new richest deposits.

A sign, the first signal. December 1956, plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Khrushchev smashes the shortcomings: “Our men walk like shaggy doves, their trousers hang down at the bottom. The whole West wears pants already shorter than ours!”

I would be glad if someone finds an earlier example, so that the head of the country spoke in the Central Committee according to a specific fashion taken separately, the style of trousers, but hardly. Then our industry managed to react, launched the production of tight trousers. The conflict is settled… for a couple of years. And then suddenly other styles became intolerable. A schoolboy in the 1970s remembers what a nightmare it was – pipe trousers. Without flares, it is simply impossible to go to dances, etc. Here is a photo of John F. Kennedy meeting with Khrushchev: our fashion specialist in a very baggy (or one might say loose) pair, John in a tight-fitting one … But then a poster turned up: megastar Phil Collins and the supergroup Genesis: absolutely Khrushchev suits. Fashion 80s! Then the fitted John F. Kennedy would have looked like a backward provincial, a sucker, even though the husband of Jacqueline herself! And today, in the spring of 2023, after probably a dozen global fashion rounds, the very trousers that Khrushchev rebelled against are swaying on girls. “Shaggy doves”.

Of course, he is a special universalist, a master of Crimean studies, who knew from whom to take the peninsula, to whom to give it … but he absolutely did not enter the essence of the Race of Consumption. The industry, the press of fashion is not narrow and wide trousers, not round and not sharp toes of boots. This is a carousel, a constant opportunity to dictate: what, how, with what, in what strip.

It’s interesting to take a look. In the 1930s, the USSR kept up with the fashion trends. And not because he was more deftly reconfiguring light industry. Fashion then was not a means of pressure of the rich world and remained, in general, cheap. Trends came to the USSR and Europe (!) from poor regions: Basques, Mediterraneans, Latin Americans, southerners. The rich did not reign in mass tastes. Their overalls, tuxedos, bowlers, were anything but style icons.

The cult clothing of that time, the Apache shirt (French Apache) from the Apache Indians came to Europe, moreover, through the French poor, street gang … And caps, including party ones, from the proletarian quarters of Paris. White shoes are also from poor regions.

And then fashion became more and more perishable, dear. The USSR, winning the arms race, managed to feed, clothe and put on the population, but to the fact that suddenly it is necessary to urgently replace 50 million pairs of shoes that have not yet been worn down with the same ones, but with sharp toes, and then, on the contrary, with rounded ones … Here the balance is not converged. In growing public irritation, even the most loyal citizens, passing by tapestries of unfashionable products, grumbled: “How much wool (cotton, leather) they ruined!” You have to be Brodsky to allow yourself to wear what is coming back into fashion.

The historical turning point and attendant problems illustrate jeans. Initial practicality, durability, crease resistance gave a turn of 180 degrees. Everything turned upside down: the cheapest (in the 19th century!), But low-quality, faded “indigo” was replaced by synthetic, aniline paints. They fit better on the fabric, last longer and are ten times cheaper than those obtained using ancient technologies from Indian petals. But the new rich fashion, having taken from the poor woman her overalls, imperiously ordered precisely those faded indigo stripes to be considered a sign of style. Later, sewn on rhinestones and torn legs completed the metamorphosis.

Imagine all the absurdity that confronts the eyes of a Soviet business executive.

Cotton, even at the cost of the Aral Sea, but there is. Chemistry, dyes – the world level. And what to spend precious currency on: Indian tea or this idiotic lint dye? Perhaps (I fantasize), he even dreamed of a meeting in the camp of the enemy:

“Sir, the Russians take a long time to coordinate, approve the sketches, readjust blocks, patterns. I propose once a year to change the fashion for lapels and a line of trousers! Let’s beat their wool and cotton!

— OK! Hey Bill! Are you responsible for these couturier faggots? Send them a directive!”

Although there were no such meetings of the Arizona wise men, there was definitely a global bet on the American Way of Life, there was the phrase “Jeans defeated the USSR.” True, rock and roll was also included in the parade of winners, but the roots of the problem, we will make sure, are common.

The resettlement of communal apartments, barracks, household appliances, cars – the USSR ensured a continuous rise in the Standard of Living. But (an underestimated fracture of consciousness) – for the first time in our history, citizens began to compare it not with the level of their compatriots (of other eras), but with the level of their contemporaries (other countries). Strictly speaking, instead of comparisons along the time axis, we went along the axes of space. And it turned out not “we are better than our fathers, grandfathers”, but “we are worse than the Americans”.

So, between the two “trouser legs” of Khrushchev’s 1956 speech, for the first time, the argument flashed: “The whole West wears.”

But what did our subsequent leaders, let’s call them delicately “business executives”, talk about? About “further, more and more complete satisfaction of the needs of citizens.” That phrase of several congresses crawled from report to report, from the five-year plan to the plan for the next five-year plan. The dissidents who showed up, pointing to Western standards, scolded the party for poor satisfaction. The Party made up for it, built it up, objected to the critics: “No, we are getting better and better at satisfying!” And no one thought about the fact that needs must not only be satisfied, but also formed.

I tried to draw attention to this in my recent “History of Russian Civilization” and, not being a Stalinist, I recalled that the well-known “fight against cringing before the West” was almost the last ideological act just before the series of throwing “business executives”. And in the program “DNA of Russia”, which, it seems, will turn into a new course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood”, I hope to find signs of ideology, an Archimedean fulcrum.