Consumer Solidarity and Environmental Justice across Socialism and Capitalism: Transnational Connections of the Soviet Consumer Rights Movement in the Late 1980s

Perestroika of the 1980s was a chance for the Soviet Union to join global consumer and environmental movements. While the state reformers contemplated the possibilities of market socialism and political democratization, the Soviet people were reconsidering a social contract between the citizens and the state, demanding more consumer and environmental rights. Drawing on publications in the perestroika-era press and later memoirs, this poster presentation will explore the history of the Soviet consumer rights movement with a particular focus on its transnational connections with fellow activists from other countries.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet consumer rights movement mobilized social scientists, journalists, lawyers, and concerned citizens through newspaper discussions and consumer-initiated lawsuits. Consumer activists, the mass media, and the courts took the lead in diversifying the notion of consumerism, which to them meant not so much the preoccupation with the acquisition of consumer goods or the advent of the free market but rather strong legal protections for consumer interests. Encouraged by an avalanche of media exposés, Soviet activists emphasized the importance of human health, ecological safety, and environmental protection for consumer satisfaction. They effectively combined consumer rights with environmental rights and advocated for a new consumer law, which the state eventually adopted in May 1991. Consumerism therefore did not necessarily pave the way for free market and neoliberal-style economic reforms but, according to perestroika activists, supported social equality and environmental justice. This dream of new consumerism came true only to exist for a few years and then crumble together with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Global consumer solidarity across capitalist and socialist countries constituted an important aspect of the Soviet consumer crusaders’ agenda. The movement participants imagined themselves a part of the transnational network of activism that transcended national borders, ideological regimes, and economic systems. The Soviet mass media disseminated ideas about consumption, law, and the environment borrowed from the experiences of consumer organizations in the United States, France, Portugal, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, China, Poland, and other countries. Some foreign activists personally visited the Soviet Union during perestroika to establish connections with Soviet counterparts. The poster presentation will highlight the contribution of two such visitors: Małgorzata Niepokulczycka, the head of the All-Polish Council of the Consumer Federation, and Ralph Nader, an American attorney, environmental activist, and founder of numerous consumer advocacy groups in the United States. The Soviet Union’s participation in global consumer and environmental movements, as many champions for consumer solidarity hoped, would prove the vitality of citizen internationalism.

To organize the presentation visually, the poster will use a schematic world map. I will then draw links between the Soviet Union and other partnering countries to demonstrate transnational connections and a flow of ideas. Information in text boxes, attached to each country, will spotlight major consumer groups, their activities, and ties with the Soviet Union.