‘In Case of Fire Emergency’

This article argues that the study of Russian rituals and patterns of consumption reveals the intricate ways in which post-socialist actors deal with economic and political uncertainty, creating and symbolically affirming their identities in a rapidly transforming environment. Far more culturally specific than a simple globalization argument would suggest, and far more creative than simple reproduction of ‘Soviet’ attitudes, post-Soviet practices of consumption represent a complex fusion of global trends and local cultural patterns. As such, they may tell us just as much about the post-socialist condition as about the attitudes that preceded it. This article addresses these issues by exploring the consumption of household durables, the popularity of which can be explained by the fact that they came to embody some of the most profound cultural trends, expectations and fears in a contemporary post-Soviet setting. Decoding the symbolic significance of these objects may thus yield valuable insights into the cultural processes unfolding in the post-Soviet milieu, but also help us raise more general questions of formation and affirmation of identities, groups and coping strategies through consumption.