GUM stands for the “State Department Store” in Russian, and the neo-Russian building had been constructed to be window to the West in terms of both Russian--and then later-- Soviet opulence.
Alas, by the late 1980s, what GUM had to offer was little more than a bad joke full of anachronism and low quality. It had much less to offer than a market in Tiajuana. (Admittedly babushkas were still cheap.)
You see, just like in East Berlin and in all the other Eastern European communist bloc, Muscovites had to spend a lot of time in long lines just to get basic necessities—and twice that much time in line to obtain the occasional non-essential gifts or curiosities.
For example, bananas were almost non-existent in Soviet and East German stores. These kind of fruits grew only in warm climates and thus required hard currency generally for their purchase.
CONSUMPTION DRIVE WOULD DRIVE CHANGE FOR THE YOUTH
The products in the East were usually substandard (and at-best-clunky) as compared to what people in the West could afford—or could find in the market place.
Even people in poorer developing lands, like Peru or Indonesia, often had better quality goods (and more of them) than was often found in Soviet- and communist-dictated planned economies.
The only way Soviet citizens could buy Western products was generally through using western currency or gold.
In East Germany, the stores to go to for these Western goods was called “Intershop”. The name “Intershop” mixes English and Latin to convey a foreign concept of trade for goods and service. Incidentally, these stores were run by the state itself, i.e. in order for the communist state to acquire as much Western currency as possible.
Not too far from where the GUM, the Kremlin and St. Basile’s Church (from which the word basilica comes into Western vernacular) is a bridge of the Mokba River.
At the far end of the bridge, one could easily exchange Western currency illegally for Soviet rubels.
This was large bridge was one of several well-known places to exchange such currency well-below the official Soviet rate.
In retrospect, one has to suspect that this sort of exchange of currencies with dark plain-clothed figures on a bridge in obvious sight of the Kremlin was continuously allowed to occur because (1) it was good for someone with connections at the Kremlin or (2) it was at least good for the police-, military- and/or the KGB as a simple conduit for gaining western currency for their own operations.
As I left Moscow in January 1989 to return to West Germany, I had an inkling that the Evil Empire (and supposedly formidable imperial Soviet Union) and its citizens were ready to cut-and-run from its past.
One month later the Soviet Union would begin its pull out from Afghanistan, i.e. in February 1989. Click here.
EPILOGUE 1
