Putting the “Spotlight” on an experimental three-hour line for Soviet luxury clothes

Beginning in August 1987, Prozhektor perestroiki (Perestroika’s Floodlight) was a regular 10-15 minute supplement to the Soviet Union’s daily evening news show, Vremia (Time). Intended as a key component of Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms, Prozhektor was a bold step toward social critique compared with the carefully controlled style of televised Soviet public discourse. That it was explicitly tethered to Vremia, the only show allowed to air live in the USSR, because of certainty that nothing in it could raise censors’ eyebrows, made clear that Prozhektor reflected the Party’s perestroika-era goals. Prozhektortypically shed light on economic hardships and failures of central planning, including goods shortages, industrial failures, and bureaucratic bottlenecks. It was thus consistent with the original purpose of glasnost—to make it possible for industrial whistleblowers to alert Soviet central planning authorities to the causes of the cascading economic failures that had plagued the Soviet economy since at least the early 1980s.

Although Prozhektor tried to invent workable solutions for the problems it uncovered, some episodes exhibit a palpable sense of deadlock. In the clip presented here, we visit Tsentr mody liuks (Luxe Fashion Center), a storefront of the USSR Ministry of Light Industry. Opened on Gorbachev’s orders in September 1987, this store was mandated to sell fashionable clothes in a new, “experimental” manner involving computers. The experimental technology, we are told, is supposed to tell shoppers “what is in the store and what is not,” theoretically saving them the trouble of standing in line for goods that are not there. Commenting on this arrangement, an economics PhD points out that “in a situation where there are more shoppers than goods, this system is unnecessary.” The man in charge of the computerization appears onscreen to say that, ultimately, the shop’s lines could be sped up. However, in this case, the line has not moved in several hours. Perhaps there are people trying on clothes and slowing down sales, as the manager suggests? No, both changing booths are empty. The on-site filming ends there, and viewers never learn the true reason for the delays. In all likelihood, the store’s managers were simply not letting the regular public in, while admitting preferred customers on the basis of private arrangements (blat).

As Prozhektor wraps up this report, the host again interviews the economist, who speculates about the source of the failure. At Tsentr mody liuks, he says, “two opposing technologies have run up against each other: one for mass service, and another for individual service.” Because many Muscovites can apparently afford to buy “individual-service” goods at Tsentr mody liuks, the store will continue to have long lines. The economist cagily suggests that prices might have to be raised to tamp down demand—which is another way of saying that the solution to the economic problem of Soviet deficits might be to create an inherently exclusionary, capitalist-style commerce in consumer goods. This suggestion reveals the paradox of Gorbachev’s reforms, which empowered a public sphere to shine a light on instances of Soviet mismanagement, only to reveal intractable problems. These revelations, in turn, compelled perestroika-era reformers to seek a radical deconstruction of Soviet socialism—the very system Gorbachev had originally set out to rejuvenate.