Consumption was one of the most powerful tools of social change within Soviet society, and relevant statistics have since been used as an indicator of social inequality in that era. The 1920s and 1930s were a crucial period, marked by challenging social and economic transformations and the emergence of Soviet consumption as a specific category unto itself. This lecture will reveal the diverse faces of Kharkiv consumers as seen through gender and age dimensions. Analyzing the common practices of procuring everyday commodities, old and new consumer spaces, and the controversies of state consumer policies, it will address the specific features of consumer culture in Soviet Ukraine.
Dr. Iryna Skubii is a Tompkins Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta and an associate professor at the Kharkiv National Technical University of Agriculture. Her research interests include the history of trade, consumption, and materiality in early Soviet Ukraine. She has held visiting fellowships at the Ludvig-Maximillian University in Munich and the University of Toronto. She is the author of Torhivlia v Kharkovi v roky NEPu (1921-1929): ekonomika ta povsiakdennist' [Trade in Kharkiv in the years of the NEP (1921-1929): Economy and everyday life] (2017).