Shaping Socialist Consumers: Shopping, Sovietization, and the Cuban State in the 1970s

• In Event: Filling the Void: Perspectives on Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

The failure to achieve the much-hyped Ten Million Ton Harvest in 1970 revealed the flimsiness of the economic strategy pursued by the revolutionary state since 1964, which promised eventual industrialization to be built on the profits garnered by a sugar-centric economy. As a result, in the early 1970s the state was forced to pursue a new economic strategy. Cuba’s official integration into the Soviet bloc in 1972 opened up new economic horizons: commercial integration and Soviet subsidies eased access to imported foods and goods, heralding in a new era of Cuban consumption. While advancements in consumption were welcomed by Cuban consumers exhausted by the sacrifices required first in the transition to socialism and later in the push for the ten million tons, government officials worried that consumption also increased the risk of ideological diversionism, class inequality, and black market activity. This paper examines consumer culture in Cuba in the 1970s, and focuses on government efforts to mold the right kind of socialist consumers through the establishment of state agencies designed to study, shape, and improve consumption. Ultimately, the work of agencies like the Instituto cubano de investigaciones y orientación de la demanda interna (ICIODI) was a constant balancing act between state goals focused on educating the population on how and what to consume and popular demands that required adjusting the rigid economic structure to ease and increase consumption.

Author

• Alexis Baldacci, University of Florida