Scarce goods as the topic of the day": on consumer goods supply of Kurgan residents in the 1920s-1930s

The article studies the conception of the Soviet supply system of the provincial urban population on the example of the city of Kurgan in the 1920s-1930s. Based on the analysis of archive materials, periodicals data and oral sources, the issue of providing Kurgan city residents with consumer goods is discussed, the range of goods and services available for the residents of Kurgan is demonstrated, the mechanisms of people's adaptation to the conditions of severe shortage of goods are characterized. The trade recovery in the country during the NEP period was also noticed in Kurgan. In the middle of the 1920s Kurgan province still traditionally produced handicraft consumer goods. A third of the Kurgan handicraftsmen was represented by needlewomen and shoemakers. In the early 1920s, the consumers' main demand in Kurgan and rural areas was textile and shoe goods. But in the second part of the 1920s, the deficit of consumer goods became a problem of current interest. Private trade turned to be illegal or "half-legal", it is referred to as "profiteering" and acquires a new meaning in these circumstances. In the conditions of the severe shortage of goods personal "relations" or "acquaintances" in trade started to play a significant role. Ready-made textile and shoe goods (dresses, suits, coats, half-length fur coats, padded jackets, leather, rubber, cloth and felt footwear) were sold in small batches. The deficit was worse due to the irrational distribution of goods among the districts. For example, in some cases face powder and perfume appeared in small shops at sawmills, but not in towns. The lack of ready-made clothes promoted the development of sewing workshops all over the country. People often used them to repair their clothes and shoes or to turn the worn-out clothes. In Kurgan, professional tailors united in cooperatives and had narrow specializations - there were different workshops for sewing and repairing the outwear, dresses and hats. Workshops for making and repairing shoes worked separately. For many years every Soviet woman dreamed about buying a sewing machine. At the verge of the 1920s-1930s Kurgan housewives got an opportunity to master needlecraft at special courses and to buy sewing machines which had already become an object of strong demand at that time. The government tried to solve the problem of deficit in different ways using rationing or closed distribution whereas, because of the great lack of essential goods, the Soviet society developed new specific mechanisms for solving this problem that reflected not only in the behavior but also in people's minds and tastes.

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