Citizen K.'s "Kitchen Diary" in "Komsomolskaya Pravda"

When Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985, he inherited an economy that was still growing, albeit very slowly. His signature policy of perestroika, which he began promoting soon after assuming his post, aimed to improve Soviet economic capacity, but inadvertently created tougher economic times than citizens had faced in the years immediately preceding it. The only way out of the difficulties, Gorbachev’s team came to think, was to accept yet more economic challenges—which, though acute, would hopefully be short-lived. In the fall of 1990, Gorbachev’s administration accordingly planned to implement economist Stanislav Shatalin’s (1934-1997) “500 Days” plan, which would hybridize the Soviet economy by introducing some market elements while retaining the overall framework of central planning. Ahead of implementing these changes, which proponents hoped would render the economy more robust, select Soviet press outlets worked in step with reformers to engage citizens in the process of economic hardship and transformation. In September 1990, a month before Shatalin’s plan was to be introduced, the editors of the Soviet daily Komsomolskaya pravda, which then enjoyed the largest readership in the country—that year, it set a new Guinness World Record for circulation—invited readers to document shortages and prices in their corner of the USSR through so-called “kitchen diaries,” which they were then encouraged to share as letters to the paper. Editors published this call alongside an account by one “Citizen K.”, an example meant to provide guidance on how to keep a “kitchen diary.” K. noted how long she had to wait in line for sausage, the price of potatoes, and when bread disappeared and returned to the shelves. It is unclear if Citizen K. was a real person or if editors fabricated her diary for instructive purposes. Regardless, kitchen diaries and shortage letters became a veritable late-Soviet phenomenon, building on decades of similar letters from Soviet citizens to the state dating back at least to 1917. Perestroika-era calls for kitchen diaries, however, put a distinct spin on these citizen reports. Komsomolskaya pravda’s 29 September call for submissions termed these diaries “the thermometer under the armpit of reform,” underscoring the editors’ (and the state’s) desire for citizens to participate in the process of reform—in this case, by documenting the steep price austerity exacted for the government’s new economic initiatives.