ABSTRACT
In the 1930s, the Stalinist regime promoted a campaign to establish 'Soviet trade', a non-capitalist system of distribution and retailing. In doing so, the authorities recognized the Soviet people as consumers, not merely workers, and legitimized their desires for greater material comfort. Historian Lizabeth Cohen has argued that the concept of the citizen-consumer emerged in the 1930s in the United States as policy-makers and consumer activists promoted the centrality of consumers to political and economic affairs, including national health and recovery, a process that 'increasingly identified' the 'consumer in the economic realm [with] the citizen in the political realm'. The inter-war idea that consumers had distinct interests and 'rights' had its roots in the era of mass industrialization and urbanization. Major economic and political turmoil in the inter-war era served to politicize consumption even more. In the United States and many European countries, this was particularly true in the 1930s as economies collapsed due to the Great Depression.
