The Problem of Understanding Trauma in Soviet Consumption in 1920s–1930s

The paper examines the problems of Soviet consumption in 1920–1930s in the context of its traumatic experience. The theoretical construction “traumatic experience” is used in order to reveal important and hidden aspects of everyday practices of the “new Soviet man”. With the help of the methodology of the history of emotions, the author makes an attempt to explore the negative emotions of individual in his/her consumption. Examples of traumatic experience in everyday practices include standing in queues, “getting” goods, and losing the time. The socio-economic conditions of Soviet modernization led to the emergence of a “forced assortment”, “commodity hunger”, which significantly complicated the process of the everyday needs satisfaction. The author argues that traumatic experience in consumption has led to the negative perception of Soviet society. She analyzes how the memoirs about 1920–1930s give us opportunity to reconstruct consumer insights concerning traumatic reflections of everyday life. Most of the authors use negative emotional regime in describing the routine problems of consuming things under the planned economy system. In fact, this allows us to construct an image of a consumer who became a victim of the Soviet experiments with the market. If in the 1920s the consumer was a hostage to the “elements of the market”, as claimed by Soviet propaganda, then in the 1930s, he was completely dependent on the system of planned distribution and supply and became a hostage to the state. The author alleges that consumption practices turned into a certain apparatus of coercion and survival of Soviet society. The loss of choice, standing in the queues, problems with commodity provision made various types of injuries common to all consumers. In fact, the traumatized consumption became an important factor that united a large imagined community of people within the entire Soviet space.