I well remember the time before the “fall of the Soviet Union”. I was reading an article in one of my wife’s home decorating magazines. Anyway it was about how Muscovites tried to spruce up their apartments. A couple of gallons of paint to brighten up a room were virtually impossible to obtain, unless you knew someone who might lift some from a government project.
There was one place to buy a kitchen table in Moscow and it required a long waiting time and you had to take what you could get. My small town—about 30,000 had at least a dozen stores where one could get a kitchen table and have it delivered the same day. I can’t see being nostalgic for that kind of life.
Ikea’s troubled history in Russia:
http://www.alaco.com/our-insight/intelligence/ikeas-troubled-history-in-russia
I’ve heard that Russians are shocked and dismayed at how society has gotten more dangerous, what with rampant street crime and mafia style companies with such big places in Russia today.
I heard somebody from Russia once say, that while they are happy at the end of communism, that back in the day, you could take a walk at midnight without fear in major cities. They feel that Russian life has fundamentally transformed, but not all the changes have been good.
“” “” I well remember the time before the “fall of the Soviet Union”. I was reading an article in one of my wife’s home decorating magazines. Anyway it was about how Muscovites tried to spruce up their apartments. A couple of gallons of paint to brighten up a room were virtually impossible to obtain, unless you knew someone who might lift some from a government project.
There was one place to buy a kitchen table in Moscow and it required a long waiting time and you had to take what you could get. My small town—about 30,000 had at least a dozen stores where one could get a kitchen table and have it delivered the same day. I can’t see being nostalgic for that kind of life.”” “”
First of all Russians mostly aren’t using paint to renovate apartments and didn’t use it before. Floors were usually extremely durable birch parquet which required some polishing once in a few years to look just like new, ceilings were covered in lime and on the walls they had British-style wallpapers.
The unavailability of consumer products in USSR is mostly a myth. The problem was a variety of choices and overall low build quality of such. Let’s say there were like ten patterns of wallpapers, two types of kitchen tables and four types of chandeliers available nationwide. The same was true for the furniture, appliances and so on.
In that sense it was extraordinary boring. People who had money went to the black market for imports which was of higher quality and simply looked original.
Moscow certainly had more than one place to buy a kitchen table and these were readily available.
There were shortages of some specific items. For example if you wanted a front-loader washing machine or a better stereo or a foreign TV you had to tour related shops frequently or go to the black market.
Even new automobiles weren’t that much a problem unless you wanted more desirable ones. Lada or Volga required to be on a waiting list, some more popular models for years.
You you was ok with Moskvich it was months and you could go straight to a dealership for Zaporozhets.