JEANS STORIES: CONSUMPTION OF WESTERN GOODS IN SOVIET KAZAKHSTAN DURING THE BREZHNEV ERA

Abstract

Jeans are often seen as one of the most iconic symbols representing the Westernization and growing consumerism of Soviet society during late socialism. While the existing studies on the role of Western culture’s consumption in the Soviet context have problematized this understanding, they focused primarily on the metropolitan or Western regions of the Soviet Union. The present thesis aims to fill in this research gap by adding a republican perspective from Soviet Kazakhstan. Using jeans as an object of analysis, this paper explores local practices of Western goods consumption and its meanings in relation to the global, Soviet, and local culture contexts. Based on the content analysis of local periodicals, Republican Communist Party archival data, memoirs and interviews, this thesis argues several things. Firstly, the influence of Western culture on local society was quite limited, much of it due to the provincial position of Soviet Kazakhstan in terms of geographical remoteness from the 'West', and its lower position within the hierarchy of the Soviet system of distribution. Secondly, instead of restricting the appeal of jeans to their Western identity, this research points out the Soviet-informed use and locally embedded value ascribed to jeans, which suggests not the Westernization, but rather, cultural hybridization of late Soviet society.