Books: Восстание потребителей (Revolt of the Consumers), by Valery Panyushkin. AST, Moscow, 2012.

The Great Russian Consumer Revolution

by Alexander Kolesnichenko

In a new book, journalist Valery Panyushkin argues that the Soviet Union fell to an emerging consumer society that is also beginning to undermine Vladimir Putin as frustration builds over Russia's abysmal public services.

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For all its talk of the Russian citizenry, Panyushkin’s book focuses on the rise of consumer awareness on the part of a minority. Social scientists often note that Russia is a divided country, with a rich, aware public in the capital and a few big cities and a mass of relatively poor, addicted to a more traditional lifestyle, in the industrial centers and the small towns and villages in the depressed provinces.

Panyushkin is writing about and for the first category. For the rest, Putin remains the king, and the regional governors are the landlords. For that reason, the revolt of the consumers might lead not to democratization but to a society where the shops are full, but the state still imposes high taxes and can behave as it wants. 

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