Cross-Cultural Considerations in Consumer Behavior: the Case of the Consumer in the Soviet Union

Citation:

Thomas V. Greer (1972) ,"Cross-Cultural Considerations in Consumer Behavior: the Case of the Consumer in the Soviet Union", in SV - Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Consumer Research, eds. M. Venkatesan, Chicago, IL : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 830-839.

Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Consumer Research, 1972      Pages 830-839

CROSS-CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: THE CASE OF THE CONSUMER IN THE SOVIET UNION

Thomas V. Greer, University of Maryland

The purpose of this paper is to sketch the Soviet consumer in a context largely ignored in the West and largely ignored in Soviet information aimed at the West. The environment typically presented is that of Moscow, Leningrad, and three or four other large cities in the European portion of the U.S.S.R. However, the author is interested here in the other Soviet consumers: the rural Europeans; the Asian minorities; and the frontier settlers. It is hoped that this material will put into perspective much that is already known and understood about the Soviet urbanite.

Although the author has made trips to the U.S.S.R. and conducted research there, and had valuable assistance from the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., the methodology, to a considerable extent, consists of a careful analysis and synthesis of Russian-origin literature. Admittedly not ideal, this methodology is nevertheless standard practice among scholars interested in the Soviet Union in every academic discipline. The reasons for this are obvious.

THE RURAL EUROPEAN SOVIET UNION

According to the 1970 Census about 44 per cent of the Soviet population is rural, down from 52 per cent in 1959 and 68 per cent in 1939. However, the 44 per cent figure is misleading in that the definition of rural varies from republic to republic in the U.S.S.R. In addition, one must note that the population cutting points between the urban and rural categories in all republics are higher than in the United States. Furthermore some Soviet communities that are large enough to be classified urban are not so classified because they have a majority of agricultural workers. This is perhaps a good example of the potential danger in utilizing international data without extreme care. At any rate, the rural population remains large and significant. Reconciliation of the Soviet population data with those of the United States must wait for additional detail to be released by the Russians.

Russian farmers have always been a severe problem for the communist planners and leaders. It is not just the matter of productivity and meeting national needs for commodities. Just as important, if not more so, has been a philosophical difference in what the rural people aspired to and what the communist theorists felt the rural people should aspire to. What is more, communism was premised on the priority well-being of industrial workers, not farmers. Farmers were often considered petty bourgeoisie, along with merchants and individual artisans. Even in today's Soviet press, the workers and the peasants are normally referred to as "two different classes." Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, in his report to the 24th Communist Party Congress in March, 1971, referred to three classes in Soviet society: workers, peasants, and intelligentsia (Brezhnev, 1971). Rather than glorifying the agricultural sector, many government and party leaders and bureaucrats have tended to vilify it. Some westerners may recall that the Communist Manifesto of 1848 referred to the "idiocy of village life."

In Karl Marx's time and today the peasants are labeled reactionary in that they exhibit more individualism than do workers. (This is still less than what West European peasants show.) With a central thesis of large-scale production, Marx and his disciple Lenin had no basic sympathy for or empathy with the man of the soil or this characteristic. However, Lenin and his followers were pragmatic enough to appease the peasantry when setting up the bolshevik regime and for several years thereafter. Collectivization had to come much later. Joseph Stalin once told Winston Churchill that his struggle with the Russian peasants had been a more perilous and formidable undertaking than the battle for Stalingrad (Mitrany, 1961).

Paradoxically, Russian farmers traditionally exhibited some aspects that one is tempted to term early collectivism. Prior to 1917 many thousands of farms were owned by several peasant families jointly. Households generally performed their own work but sometimes shared work. But major decisions affecting the farm were jointly reached. This Russian institution influenced early Marxist thinkers to some extent, and had an effect on Mexico in the 1920's and 1930's,modern Israel over a long period of time, and India during the late 1940's and the 1950's.

The typical farm in the U.S.S.R. has 1,000 to 3,000 residents,and all able bodied persons above age 15 work. This work is physically hard and the economic results discouraging. Although growing,mechanization is spotty. The scythe and the ox are almost as common as the combine and the tractor. Living conditions and sanitation are primitive and much inferior to those of the city, while access to retailing facilities and services is extremely limited. Soviet economist A. Ilyin (1972) asserts that some of the most important problems in his country for the next few years are retention of young persons on the farm, improving the income of rural people, and providing skilled manpower in rural areas.

One can hardly think of the Soviet farmer without thinking also of the farmers' marketplace. Because of well known shortcomings of distribution channels, procurement, and general economic planning, this institution continues to flourish. There are 40 in Moscow alone. During the May to October period the farm is normally represented in marketplaces by one or more persons, often elderly and unable to perform hard labor. In addition, some other persons, also often elderly, are there selling their own products and perhaps those of several other households from the small private plots. Although the marketplace is also important as a social outlet, it is the economic that is overriding. Soviet economic historian N. Bromlei has concluded that "Profits from private plots constitute 30 to 50 per cent of the actual earnings of a collective farmer." (Bromlei, 1966)

THE ASIAN MINORITIES

The precise extent to which the Asian minorities exercise an effective demand for distinctive or at least modified goods and services is by no means clear. Neither is it clear to what extent they constitute a different target for economic communications. Nevertheless, it is clear that the extent is noteworthy.

Soviet Islam embraces the major portion of the many non-European minorities. Thus, the generalizations one can make about Moslems in the U.S.S.R. go a long way toward characterizing the minorities. The approximately 40 million Moslems are found principally in Soviet Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirgizia), Kazakhstan, Bashkiria, the Tatar area along the Volga, and parts of the Caucasus. The consumption differences should be approached cautiously and must be estimated rather grossly and indirectly by studying cultural phenomena.

Nevertheless, Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay (1966) state:

As a general rule . . . the Muslims, and above all those of Central Asia, appear to be more attached to their material way of life than they are to their religious traditions, and they only abandon it if it is incompatible with material progress. Most of the time, the Muslim does not resort to a Russian substitute unless it is more convenient, and even then he tries to effect a compromise between tradition and innovation (p. 200).

Such fundamental categories of goods and services as food, clothing, and shelter are revealing. Such things are slow to change. Cultural anthropologists have established that, in such categories, an innovation "must usually be immediately demonstrated as a superior substitute (Keesing, 1958, p. 411)." The dietary habits of the Moslems in the U.S.S.R. have shown strong resistance to massive change. They still consider pork unclean and seldom raise hogs on their collective farms. They often encounter pork in factory cafeterias and military mess halls, where there is seldom a substitute available. The great majority continue to avoid alcoholic beverages, although wine is gaining in favor, due in part to sizeable promotional efforts. The diet stresses heavy consumption of lamb, rice, unleavened bread, dairy products, and fresh and dried fruits. Pasta-type products are generally of logical origin rather than European. Nevertheless, there has been some very limited adoption of potatoes, European-type breads, and cabbage, an occurrence more common in urban than rural areas. The relative slowness with which dietary habits change is, of course, world-wide. It is all the more feasible in the Moslem regions of the Soviet Union because most of their food is grown and processed nearby. On the collective farms, too, Moslem dietary habits can be indulged fairly easily because such farms are usually all Moslem, except for one or two Russian technicians, or all European. In addition, the collective farmer has his private plot. The sovkhozes, or state farms, are somewhat less segregated.

The distinctiveness of clothing is showing a slight decline but is still extremely important. This is possible mainly because so much apparel is made at home or made to order by tailors. Textile factories turn out quite a lot of ethnically distinctive fabric, but apparel factories turn out relatively little ethnically distinctive merchandise. The traditional clothing of the minorities heavily predominates in the countryside and among women, whether urban or rural. The great majority of Moslem men strike a compromise, wearing some European clothing and some traditional and commonly mixing the two. There is extremely wide use of the knee-length outer robe, the ribbon sash, and countless variations of indigenous headgear. Urban teen-age boys demonstrate the greatest acceptance of European clothing, but even they often mix the styles. It is noteworthy that contemporary Soviet Central Asian art, especially painting, almost invariably depicts the subjects in traditional attire.

Shelter is a mixed set of phenomena. In the countryside newer housing normally uses .he neat configuration of the Russians, one street or two streets crossing at right angles, rather than the seeming randomness of Moslem tradition in these regions. Wood has gained in popularity as sun-dried home-made brick has declined. There may be no floor. Within the house the beds are often only ornamental and the members of the familY may sleeP on the floor. In both city and rural areas, it is common for one room to be furnished in a more or less European style for receiving European guests while the rest of the house or apartment is distinctively Asian. Of course, in the cities, many Moslems now live in apartment complexes, so that shelter differences are confined to the furnishings of the dwelling units. Nevertheless, some towns exhibit a "colonial" character. Although ethnic segregation of towns is not ubiquitous, it does occur. There may be a Moslem town and attached to it a Russian administrative town.

Consumption among Soviet Moslems is conditioned by several other factors of importance. Although there has been some decline, the family is still largely patriarchal. The wishes of the husband and father are paramount. They expect, and usually get, obedience from female members of the family. Equality of the sexes, taught so carefully in European districts of the U.S. S.R., has made little headway in these regions. The male members of the family tend to expect conservatism when they delegate authority to females or children. The practice of the father choosing his son's bride has begun to decrease only in recent years. The subordination of women is furthered by the practices of very early marriage for girls, a large number of children, and the expectation that girls will not complete even a secondary education. For example, one of the few sociological studies (Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, 1966) on Moslem education showed that in one major area, only two per cent of the Moslem girls finished high school. Moreover, the Minister of Education of the Uzbek Republic has reported (Shermukhamedov, 1972) that vocational training of Uzbek girls is "a very critical problem (p. 35)" and that officials are quite concerned about failures in recruiting such girls into agricultural work. In addition, among men who can afford it, it is not uncommon to have more than one wife simultaneously. Only the first goes through civil ceremonies. The others go through religious but not civil ceremonies so that charges of bigamy can be avoided. Another factor is the dearth of intermarriage between Russians and Soviet Moslems. The extent of this phenomenon is unknown but is extremely small. The intermarriage of Moslem men with Russian women is more common than Moslem women with Russian men, a manifestation chiefly of the control the Moslem family exercises over its daughters. Intermarriage is growing and Soviet sociologists and government officials are showing greater interest in it. (Aspaturian, 1968)

Very closely related is the factor of the extended family. Although still found sometimes in the purest form, its incidence has declined markedly under decades of attack by the Russians. Its significance among urban Moslems now shows generally in an unusually strong interest in genealogy. Its significance among rural Moslems lies in the extremely important fact that the brigade, currently the basic organizational unit of a collective farm, may well consist exclusively of a kinship group of 100 to several hundred persons. In such a case, decision-making authority and habits tend to be quite traditional. Personal, private income is sometimes re-allocated by the earner to a fund for the good of the kinship group. Three American behavioral scientists have noted the following (Medlin, Carpenter, and Cave, 1965):

Curiously enough, there are indications that practices carried out by the Soviets in the collectivization of farms tend to regroup the farm family in such a way as to reorganize it along traditional lines. . . . Generally, these are organized in such a way as to permit the elders to allocate work roles to members of the brigades who just happen to be members of the same extended family (On. 129-130).

Two detailed research projects of Soviet cultural anthropologists have been reported in scholarly publications (Korbe, 1951; Snesarev, 1957), both supporting the general thesis. In one of them, the investigator found that 100 of the 116 households on one kolkhoz belonged to one extended family (Snesarev, 1957).

The Buddhist cultures of the U.S.S.R. do not exhibit such a high profile and, indeed, are little analyzed. The Buryat Institute of Social Sciences, however, is conducting some field research and gives considerable attention to Buddhist art forms and medical behavior. Buddhist medicine differs drastically from the main stream of Soviet practice (Parfionovich, Seppi, Estrin, and Yevdokimova, 1970). Research on and knowledge of Buddhist cultural tradition are hampered by the poor relations between China and the Soviet Union, for the field work necessarily involves Tibet, Sinkiang, and the several thousand miles of border between the two nations.

The prevailing attitudes of Russians and other Soviet Europeans toward the Asians serve as an extremely important backdrop for behavior of all types, including consumption. It may be said without much trepidation that the Soviet Europeans feel superior in many ways. This is exemplified in one Soviet economist's statement that appeared in five Central Asian publications recently (Tursenov, 1971):

The Urbeks, Kazahks, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks, Turkmen, and Karakalpaks under the guidance of the Communist Party and with the aid of the fraternal Great Russian people and the rest of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. have made the great leap from backwardness to progress and from feudalism to socialism and have thus truly achieved equality in a short historical period.

THE NEW FRONTIERS

Settlement of frontier areas has meant attention to two regions: (1) the North including the northern portions of European Russia and the northern portions of Siberia; and (2) the desert and mountainous districts bordering the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, and Afghanistan. These areas have had to be treated as very special markets. Of these two areas and their planned settlement the well known Russian economic geographer V. V. Pokshishevesky (1969) has said:

. . . experience shows that as soon as we relax cur attention the slightest bit to the entire complex of economic, social and living conditions in regions where the national economy urgently requires a population influx, this influx, despite the efforts made in organized recruitment, the distribution of young specialists, etc., not only tapers off but actually changes to an outflow.

The North

Although the holding of northern areas was not an insignificant reason, the development of extractive industries was the more important reason for settling persons there. The settlement process has been a planned one ever since the 1917 Revolution. The settlers have come from three sources, but the number of persons obtained from each has not been announced, if indeed it is known. First, there has been forced re-location of some prisoners. Second, there has been a long-standing appeal to general idealism and specifically to the building up of the nation, except during World War II, of course, when re-settlement of males to the frontier was highly restricted. Third, a partial overlap of the second source, there has been a program of incentives to encourage people to relocate.

The incentives have been higher pay, longer vacations, better pensions, and some privileges in housing and access to education. Officials have divided the North into two regions ant graduate the incentives according to hardship ant relative difficulty of attracting people. Armstrong (1965) cites Russian authorities who admit that a typical construction worker in Noril'sk gets 2.4 times as much pay as he would get in central Russia. Moreover, a worker in Magadanskaya Oblast, an even more remote location, costs the state 3.5 times as much as in central Russia. Over half the workers in the north to not settle town but work awhile apparently for the high wages and subsequently leave for home.

Russian officials are hopeful that a higher fraction of people who go north will stay in the future ant, to that end, are working on the improvement of living conditions. This would also increase the number of women willing to live in the north ant thus encourage the formation or continuation of family life. Combinations of better living conditions with several different levels of premium pay, vacations, and pensions are possible and probably will be tried. Armstrong (1965) claims that ". . . the Soviet government has an easier task than the Canadian or United States Governments have, in so far as the trop in the standard of living which the Soviet northern settler must expect is relatively less, since his starting level is in many cases a good teal lower (p. 159)." Melnikov (1972) recently stated, however, that ". . . in the interests of speeding up the economic development of the eastern ant northern regions, where immense natural resources are being increasingly exploited, it is planned in 1972-75 to introduce supplementary privileges. . . (p. 2)."

Clothing, foot, ant shelter require special provision in the north. Problems of clothing design were easily conquered, but late ant incorrect shipments of clothing are bothersome. Despite extra efforts of officials, the inhabitants of the northern lands have a perpetual problem with diet. There is ample foot, but the variety makes for boredom and, more important, deficiencies of some nutritional properties. Arnol'di and Belousova (1961) report a malnutrition rate of 11.6 per cent and a vitamin C deficiency in 80 per cent of their sample of 3,060 school children. Fruits, vegetables, and dairy products are in short supply. Considerable use of local fishery resources ant minor use of reindeer for protein are developing, as are greenhouses for vegetables. In all of this, it must be remembered that the U.S.S.R. has only a tiny food canning industry and that frozen foods are still in the experimental stage there. More than anything else, the extent of settlement in the north will probably turn on the ability of local agriculture to adapt to the hostile environment ant on the marketing-physical distribution systems to bring in dependably ant at reasonable cost what cannot be supplied locally. Shelter has not proved to be such a formidable problem, in that the Russians early became the world's masters of permafrost construction. They routinely build adequate five-story structures on the permafrost. For the long run future they are thinking of bubble domes over communities, the same idea that has emerged in many parts of the world.

In early 1972 a highly placed Siberian public official asserted that the image of that vast area was becoming one of large industrial centers along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, but that one must not lose sight of the people living in the wilderness. (Melnikov, 1972) He stated:

When you ask people who are leaving northern places about their reasons, almost no one complains of the climate, earnings, or dissatisfaction with work, but most of them answer: "There's no place to go. Supplies are poor. It's the back country!"

It must be said in fairness that the attention paid recently to the remote regions of Siberia and the Far East has grown noticeably. Production forces have been developing at a rapid rate, the material and cultural level of the population has been rising, and trade and everyday services in regions difficult of access have been improving. . . .

But it must be admitted that supplies and services for the back country are still not so well organized.

There is a controversy between trade and transportation executives concerning the use of air freight in supplying the consumers in the north. Not enough planes are provided, many of the planes are unsuitable for perishables, and the freight rates are in dispute. The trade organizations have none of the famous Arctic adapted truck equipment for their use on the ground, although merchandise frequently must go as much as 500 miles by truck after going 500 miles on a summer-flowing river after leaving the railhead. Just as important, trade officials are unable to pay their store managers salaries comparable to those paid in other lines of work in the north and so suffer from high turnover of personnel. Also the local officials in the north do not give store managers all the privileges and fringe benefits that they give other persons, thus causing must unrest.

The Asian Borderlands

The Russian Tsars conquered much of the inner reaches of Asia, some of the current Asian borderlands, and what is known today as the Soviet Far East adjoining northeastern China and North Korea during the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. For the most part the areas were sparsely populated except for a very few fertile valleys, and many of the few inhabitants were nomadic. China and Russia formulated many agreements from about 1860 to the mid-1880's dividing up this vast interior region, some of which the Chinese reject now. Similarly the Chinese repudiate some of the treaties setting the boundary lines in the Far East, as the famous Ussuri River clashes of the late 1960's exhibited.

The borderlands of interior Asia are not far from the very center of the huge region that geographer Sir Halford Mackinder called the world's "Heartland" and the "pivot of history" (Halford, 1904). His research and thought on the subject excited Western Europe's intellectuals and statesmen very much in the early 1900's and caused much more attention to focus on Russia's frontier settlement process. According to geographers of today (Peltier and Pearcy, 1966), Mackinder "gave emphasis to the coherence of an area of potential internal, overland communications which gave a high degree of flexibility in direction of land movement (p. 146)." This process of assimilation of the heartland has been variously interpreted, but chiefly as either strategic or economic. Economic geographer David J. M. Hooson (1964) believes that the decisive contribution of the Soviet Heartland has been economic rather than strategic. He dismisses mysticism, romanticism, and the "charmed sanctuary" thinking, and relates the borderlands primarily to economic development.

The hope for profitable trade and the attendant control of passes and oases in this rough perimeter, more than the factor of mineral industries, help explain Russia's historical interest in incorporating it into the nation and peopling it with Slavs. However, it appears to the author that pure expansionism, national pride, and political intrigue were just as important factors. And , of course, another factor was the forestalling of thoughts of independence among the indigenous inhabitants. Since World War II some importance can be attached also to the maintenance of parity with or superiority over Chinese development in the borderlands ant some interest in mineral exploitation.

Both the tsars and the communist government have tried to re-settle Russians in the Asian borderlands, but in most places the population remains sparse. The Soviet Far East, adjoining northeastern China and North Korea, is resource poor. Its population is largely urbanized and the countryside quite underdeveloped. Most of the Soviet Far East population clings tenaciously to the Trans-Siberian Railroad, by which most of its supplies and output travel. One interesting aspect of this region's settlement was the experiment mainly identified with the 1930's of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. This attempt to create a Jewish homeland as part of the U.S.S.R., called Birobidzhan, to counteract Zionism's appeal, attracted only a few Jews and subsequently failed in that mission. To this day Jews in the Soviet Union are classified by the census authorities as a separate ethnic type.

The Mongolian sector of the border appears to be clearly defined, perhaps a reflection of the fact that that country is in no condition to assert itself (Murphy, 1966). The Russians annexed the independent republic of Tannu-Tuva on the Soviet-Mongolian border in 1944 and made it an integral part of the U.S.S.R. Slavs now slightly outnumber the Tuvinians there. The southern Siberian borderlands have undergone impressive industrialization since 1917, especially since 1945, and half a dozen sizeable cities have grown up. The number of persons living in the rural areas is not great.

In the middle of the continent Soviet population drives have brought settlement within a few miles of the border of the vast Chinese province of Sinkiang. Premier Khrushchev's virgin lands policy, although questionable from a scientific viewpoint, intensified the settlement process near the Chinese border. For example, the commercial and industrial city of Alma Ata, only about 170 miles from the Sinkiang border, contains 700,000 people. The virgin lands projects also brought tens of thousands of Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians to the border farms. Apparently, some few persons on both sides of the border remain nomadic. The famous Turkestan-Siberian Railroad parallels the border within the U.S.S.R. and has served not only as a transport facility to carry settlers and goods but as a spine from which vertebrae of development fan out. The Russians have built a rail line from Aktogay on the Turk-Sib to the Sinkiangese border at the fabled Dzhungarian Gate, but the Chinese refuse to link up (Kueishang, 1961). Until the late 1950's most of the population of Sinkiang was Moslem and dangerously neutral, but Peking has found it possible to resettle several million persons from main stream Chinese society to that region since that time.

Not far from the Afghan border, the valleys of the Pamir Range have been settled for many centuries, primarily by Tadzhiks, but the high plateaus remain almost uninhabited. It may be recalled that, although the Soviet Union and Pakistan have no common border, the two are only eight miles apart in the Wakhan Valley district. That panhandle was created by a joint Anglo-Russian commission in 1895 as a buffer between the British and Russian empires. The Soviet government is interested now in populating the plateaus of the Pamir.

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