SOVIET CONSUMER GOODS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27169, 13 October 1953, Page 11

SOVIET CONSUMER GOODS

DRIVE TO IMPROVE OUTPUT GREATER EMPHASIS ON QUALITY (From a Reuter Correspondent) MOSCOW. Russia has launched a major drive to boost production of consumer goods and to give the Soviet people a bigger and more fashionable wardrobe. Targets set by the Prime Minister (Mr Georgi Malenkov) aim at a sharp increase in the output of consumer goods within two or three years. Throughout the Soviet Union, the call has been taken up enthusiastically by newspapers and Communist Party, trade union and youth groups. By exhortation and example, the Soviet worker is being urged to produce more and better commodities for the personal needs of his fellow-workers.

Mr Malenkov has called for increased production of a wide range of consumer goods, food, fabrics, clothing, footwear, utensils, furniture and household rtbeessaries. His call, taken up by the press in one of the most concentrated propaganda campaigns of recent years, is a significant development and reflects an increasing demand and a rapidly developing discrimination on the part of Russia’s workers.

Mr Malenkov has hit the nail on the head by stating bluntly that many Soviet consumer goods, though solidly made, leave much to be desired in finish and appearance. “We are able to produce good quality and beautiful fabrics, good quality and stylish clothing, hard-wearing and elegant footwear,” he said. ‘‘We finish all goods well.” Almost every day recently there have been long articles in the newspapers criticising production methods and quality in consumer industries. Vociferous demands for radical improvement echo throughout the Communist Party framework of the nation. There can be no doubt that this is one of the most popular current themes in Russia, where a series of price cuts has put surplus money into the workers’ pockets. In Moscow, sloops are, crowded with jostling women, and their husbands, looking not so much for bargains as for good quality goods. Mr Malenkov admitted in his speech to the last session of the Supreme Soviet that consumers often preferred foreign-made goods because they had a a PP earan ce. The consumer goods . campaign appears to be the answer to a minor revolt against the solid but rough clothing with which the Soviet worker has had to make do for so long. His wife now seems to want gay, well-cut dresses and coats instead of the dull clothes which seem to be the rule rather than the exception in Moscow. A visitor from Britain, France, or the United States cannot fail to be struck by the drabness of dress in Russia, and the visitor will find that his own suit or* his shoes are the object of keen interest from passersby as we walks in the streets here.

Summer dresses, worn in Moscow this season, are of mainly dull stereotyped patterns. So now the call has gone out for variety. From the Ukraine comes a report of work on 500 different styles, with one in every three articles adorned with trimmings of Ukrainian, Russian, and Hungarian origin.