‘Twenty Years Down the Drain’ -- Russians Furious at Return of Soviet-Style Beryozhka Shops

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – Russians have filled up social media with complaints about the decision of the Putin regime to reopen the hard-currency stores where only those with foreign passports and hard currencies can purchase deficit goods, viewing them as a sign that more closed access stores will appear along with associated phenomena in the near future.

            The authorities are promoting this move as a way to gather more hard currency, but Russians say that is hardly the real reason given that most senior officials have both multiple passports they can show and hard currency they can use (newizv.ru/news/society/04-08-2022/30-let-kotu-pod-hvost-set-obsudila-vozvraschenie-berezki).

            Thus, Russians are describing the reappearance of these institutions not only as a form of official “spitting in the face” of the population but also as an indication that their country is becoming stratified with class divisions far harder than they were. The last 20 years, one Russian says, “have gone down the drain” with this decision.

            Others see this as a sign that other Soviet institutions which divided the elite from the people will soon be returning, including the possibility of special “closed” departments for the elite in stores and the revival as well of Soviet phenomena like deficit, lines, ration cards, speculators, and so on.

            Moscow economist Denis Raksha says that there is no economic justification for this move and that it won’t earn the government extra dollars and euros (kp.ru/daily/27427/4627687/). What it will do and in fact is already doing is infuriating the Russian population and costing the regime popular support.

            Thus what may appear to be only a small part of Putin’s return to the past may cast a far larger shadow on the future than any of his superficially larger moves in that direction.