When Buying Blue Jeans Was A Serious Crime

Jeans Were Created As Durable Work Pants For Laborers

Since the 1970s or earlier jeans - pants made of canvas or canvas like material - have been increasingly popular with both men and women. With few exceptions jeans are found in almost everyone’s closet.

Jeans had been around for close to a century prior to the 1960s and 70s but they were originally worn mainly by laborers in industries like mining, farming, factories and other very physical jobs that were had on clothes.

It was a Bavarian immigrant and dry goods merchant, named Levi Strauss, who came to San Francisco during the1850 California Gold Rush and began encountering miners who were having a difficult time finding pants durable enought to survive their tough working environment.

Jeans Became Standard Attire For the 1960's Counterculture Movement

However, in the late 1960s and early '70’s jeans increasingly became the clothing of choice for teenagers and young adults The new jeans purchasers were generally not involved in hard physical labor, instead they saw jeans as a way of dressing down which upset many of their elders which was part of the attraction. These young people were the post World War II baby boom generation which during the 1960s and 70s was reaching adulthood in North America, Western Europe, Australia and other parts of the developed western world.

Jeans also became popular with the baby boomers reaching adulthood in Russia and its East European satellite states. Like their western counterparts these teenagers and young adults were following the same fashion trends that those in the west were following. Like their counterparts in the west, jeans, along with rock music, were a mainstay of the youthful rebellion.

My Wife’s Story About The Dangerous Crime She Commited In Her Youth

Having traveled to the socialist former Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellite states, I was familiar with that area’s illegal black market. During my first visit on a college study tour in 1969, my classmates and I were regularly approached by young men in the streets offering to exchange money (the Russian ruble was practically worthless outside of Russia where it was worth about twelve or fourteen cents versus the official legal rate in Russia which was $1.10 to the rubble.- exchanging this way was illegal and carried severe penalties if caught but was a very tempting deal; buy an icon (a type of religious painting which could not be taken out of the country legally); or sell some of our clothes which also was an illegal transaction.

On a recent trip with our daughter and son-in-law my wife, daughter and I decided to do some hiking in the Valley of Fire State Park outside of Las Vegas where we were vacationing while our son-in-law decided to hang out at the Flamingo Hotel and Resort where we were staying.

We stopped for breakfast on the way out and during breakfast something came up about clothes, a thing that both my wife and daughter are very passionate about.

My Russian born wife made some comment about how difficult it was to dress well when she was young because clothing was scarce and what was available was poorly made. I agreed with her saying that when I first visited all the clothes, including new ones in stores were very shoddy. Our daughter (actually her daughter and my step-daughter) expressed some surprise which was natural as she was only 9 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed and the ruling communists thrown out of power. The socialism of the communist regime was replaced by a free market system.

My Wife’s Foolish And Dangerous Decision As A Young Adult

My wife had recently graduated from college and was enjoying her independence and job as a teacher. She was living in Ryazan, Russia and her parents were in Poland where her Father was a Soviet Air Force officer flying MiG fighter aircraft.

Jeans were very popular among teenagers and young adults in what was then the Soviet Union and its East European satellite states. While jeans were as popular in Russia and its East European satellite states as in the United States and Western Europe they were not available in the Soviet Union or its communist satellite states (NOTE: I am using Russia and the Soviet Union interchangeably here as Russia is the name commonly used when referring to that country, however, from the Communist overthrow in 1917 to 1999 the country was known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - USSR - or Soviet Union for short) However, some young people had them and my wife learned that to get them a person in her town had to first take a 2 hour train ride to Moscow (other than a few people, mostly government officials, cars were not generally available in Russia in those days).

The town, Ryazan, where my wife lived was home to some defense industries and for national security reasons residents had a special notation on their internal passports (national identity card different from a passport for foreign travel) which allowed them to travel outside the city and return. All others, except high level government and military personnel were denied entry to the city. The city also didn’t appear on maps which caused economic planners to overlook it with the result that in order to shop for groceries and other goods, including illegal goods, residents had to travel to Moscow.

She desperately wanted to have a fashionable pair of jeans, but was told she would have to go to Moscow, wait until dark and then walk alone down a deserted street. This was scary enough but it it worse since the dealers selling jeans were black market criminals and, instead of selling jeans, could decide to rob the buyer or worse. Worse had occurred a couple of earlier when two girls from Ryazan had gone to Moscow to buy jeans and disappeared. She was familiar with one from college or work - she wasn’t friends with the girl just recognized her from having passed her in the hall occasionally. The dismembered bodies of the two girls had recently been found in a series of trash cans in a back alley in Moscow.

Her Desire For A Pair Of Jeans Was Greater Than Her Fears

The lure of the jeans was such that she was willing to risk her life to obtain a coveted pair. She went to Moscow, started walking down a dark street when, after a few minutes, headlights appeared behind her. Pulling alongside her the car stopped and, after rolling down the window the driver said “Dzhins?”(Jeans?) To which she replied “Da” (yes).

He directed her to get into the car and started to drive off. He drove a little way just to make sure no police were following and when satisfied they weren't he stopped the car and pointed to the jeans in the back seat.

She selected a pair but he told her no, adding that they were the wrong size for her and handed her a different pair. She paid him the 200 ruble going price which was two months wages (her salary was 100 rubles a month which was the going wage for most people.

Leaving the car with her jeans, she returned to the railroad station and returned home where she tried the jeans on and found that they fit perfectly.

Despite the outrageous price for a pair of second hand jeans (which some European or American college student had brought with them for the purpose of selling to a black market dealer to finance their vacation in the USSR (many sold enough to cover the cost of hotels, liquor and meals while they were visiting the country).

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That He May Increase….

Having seen the collection side of this trade while visiting during the years the country was engaged in what turned out to be a failed socialist experiment, Having visited the country I was familiar with being approached by young men seeking to change money for me or buy my clothes. However, I found the tale of what it was like to be a buyer fascinating but scary as I realized that I could have lost my wonderful wife decades before we met.

As to our daughter she was totally surprised by the fact that buying a pair of jeans required meeting on a dark street and fearing that instead of obtaining the jeans you could be murdered or arrested. Finally the idea of having to pay two months wages for the the jeans was unbelievable..

Why Weren’t Jeans Available In Stores In Russia?

The answer to this question is that owning as well as buying or selling jeans per se was not illegal provided they were purchased in a store and not on the blackmarket. However, Russia was unable to either manufacture jeans themselves nor produce anything else that could be sold abroad to get the foreign currency needed to pay for foreign imports.

The problem was socialism which, whenever it has been tried, has resulted in economic inefficiency which ultimately leads to the collapse of a nation’s productive capacity. In addition to expanding poverty it also leads to a moral decay in the population.

A core tenant of economic theory is that people are rational and, depending upon their tolerance for risk, will go to great lengths to satisfy their wants and needs.

While my wife took a great risk in buying her jeans she was young, and, like other young people believed that death was something that happened to other people.

My wife half heartedly admitted to our daughter and me that her action was foolish and very risky. She would now be horrified if her daughter did something like this, but her desire to have jeans like other young people her age, was so strong that she felt the risk was worth it. The fact that there were many young people could be seen on the streets wearing foreign made jeans meant that not everyone who brought jeans was murdered or arrested.

Why Jeans Were Legally Unavailable In The Old Soviet Union

Unlike the physical sciences which involve the use of experiments to test theories, such experiments are rare in the social sciences like economics, for ethical and other reasons. However, in the case of socialism we do have the results of Russia’s 75 year experiment in socialism which shows how socialism destroys a nation’s economy .

Unlike the free market in which information about what to produce, what resources are used in production and where the final product is wanted is provided by prices in the market, socialism relies on professional government planners to make these decisions.

When Levi Strauss, the inventor of blue jeans, saw the need for a more durable type of pants for miners during the California Gold Rush he invested time and money in researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing of what came to be known as blue jeans. Once he became aware of the need he took the risk that the pants he sought to develop would either be rejected as unnecessary by the miners or not be as durable as he envisioned. His gamble not only paid off well for him but also resulted in a company that has continued to thrive producing and selling jeans for over 100 years.

This risk / reward process is in contrast to the socialist model which stresses fairness rather than efficiency which is the hallmark of the free market system. Socialism, on the other hand, stresses fairness and equlity. The goal of socialism is to replace the free market’s reliance on rewarding risk takers whose ideas succeed by giving them profits and punishing those whose ideas fail with financial loss. Instead of efficiency and economic growth socialism seeks to create a society in which everyone shares equally in its economic output.

Instead of using the free market’s price system socialist economies rely on professional planners to determine what and how to produce as well as where the final product is distributed. The planners are government bureaucrats trained in economic planning. All productive property - factories, mines, farms, railroads, air transport, etc are owned by the government and every worker is basically a government employee.

Despite their training, the job of managing a modern economy of any size, even with the aid of computers is impossible due to its complexity. The USSR (which was basically Russia and the pre-World War I Russian Empire all of which was ruled from Moscow.

In 1980 the USSR or Russia was a nation of 270 million diverse people with different histories and cultures, living in a nation that stretched from the Arctic Ocean on the north to the Black Sea on the south and eastward across Asia to the Pacific Ocean. It covered 22,400,000 square kilometres (8,600,000 sq. miles) or almost one-sixth of the Earth’s landmass. A Time Magazine article in the 1970s estimated that planners would need the assistance of a computer the size of planet Earth to handle all of the calculations needed to effectively manage a modern economy.

Russia’s economy at that time was horribly inefficient with shortages of all types of goods produced. In addition to shortages in what they did produce, ther were many products available in the West that Russia lacked the capability to produce as well as the fact that what they did produce was usually of very poor quality.

Difference Between Socialism And Free Market Production

The December 1958 issue of The Freeman, a free market publication, contained an essay by Leonard Edward Read titled I, Pencil in which the author explains that despite its simplicity and few parts, it is impossible for any single individual to know how to, much less actually make, a pencil despite the fact that millions of pencils are produced and sold every year.

The author’s point is that the division of labor and specialization which involve dividing up the manufacture of a product into smaller segments with each worker producing just one part of the final product rather than having each worker build the product individually.enables more of the product to be produced overall. This is known as the division of labor.

Socialism in the Soviet Union used the division of labor in the actual production process however, it was still up to the central planners to plot the entire complex process from beginning to end. Just as in the case of the pencil or smartphone examples above the manufacture of the final product requires an untold number of processes required to be completed prior to the actual production of the product and then additional processes needed to get the product to consumers.

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Planning Wa Not The Only Problem

One of the main attractions of socialism is its focus on reducing or eliminating the unequal distribution of income in society. Income inequality results in those with higher incomes being able to consume more of society’s economic output than those with lower incomes. While this is a noble idea it runs counter to human nature in that humans tend to act out of self interest - that is doing what they feel will benefit them or those whom they are responsible for such as their children or other family or friends.

In theory, most people agree that income equality is a good thing. However, in practice, except for a few unique exceptions, it has almost always failed.

Socialism in Russia included income equality with little if any difference among people’s incomes. Except for those in prison or asylums or those too old or ill to work all adults had jobs. With all jobs paying basically the same the only way to reward good work was things like certificates, pins, etc.

Working hard resulted in little if any increase in pay due to the need to maintain income inequality. Poor work, absenteeism, arriving at work drunk and other things that would result in being fired in other economies was tolerated as everyone was entitled to a job and firing was generally not an option for managers. Over time this resulted in a decline in both the quantity and quality of the output in production of both products and services.

Even after planners spent years of work trying to plan the process for making jeans and then incorporating this into the next five year national economic plan the jeans that Russia began producing new for consumers were of such poor quality that people continued to prefer second hand jeans from the West despite the danger and high cost involved in buying the second hand jeans of the black market.

Why Didn’t The Authorities Enforce The Jeans Law Or Repeal It?

As mentioned above, jeans themselves were not illegal, it was the selling and buying of them on the black market that was illegal. Jeans just happened to be available only on the black market.

The black market in Russia at that time was a vast underground economy in which almost any type of product or service could be purchased. In addition to jeans people could buy food, clothing, furniture and other scarce products. Services available included things like getting an apartment or receiving healthcare in a few days or weeks rather than a few months or years (expect to see services like these appear in the U.S. if Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren or any of the other left wing candidates seeking the Democratic nomination get elected and succeed in passing their Medicare for All plans.

The black market did add a degree of efficiency into the system which helped to reduce people’s frustration as well as avoid economic collapse

As far as not repealing the law making the black market illegal this was not an option as the black market was basically a free market guided by the price system which would have driven the socialist model out due to its better response to consumer wants. Keeping the law in place served to both help keep the black market in check as well as remain as a tool that those in power could quickly use to crush the black market any time they wished.

Black Market Ended With The Fall Of Communism And End of Socialist Planning

Immediately following the December 25, 1991 fall of communist rule in the Soviet Union a free market replaced socialist planning. All types of business and other property became private property. Individuals were free to buy or sell anything and many became entrepreneurs.

People could move and change jobs as they wished while newly privatized businesses were free to pay market wages as well as hold employees accountable and fire those who didn’t perform. Working hard and earning a higher wage or starting a business and becoming wealthier by making profits as well as failing and losing money.

The black market emerged from the shadows and operated legally while black marketeers who had secretly, and illegally, stored up wealth from their black market activities were now able to legally invest those riches in starting or buying businesses and potentially making more money.

However, after three generations of operating illegally operating in the shadows without access to the rule of law for protection many former black marketeers found themselves unable to change and continued operating as in the past relying on violence, theft, bribery and other criminal activities. This was the part of the legacy of three quarters of a century of socialism.

A Couple Of Links For Further Reading.

This Hub is based upon my wife's experience buying jeans in the communist ruled Soviet Union as well as my experience from visiting Russia and Ukraine (both of which were major parts of the otd Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR for short as well as a trip through Soviet controlled Eastern Europe a decade later.

For more reading on this here are two good articles from the web relating to jeans and the old USSR:

Black Markets Bloom in Eastern Europe Behind Facade of Strait-Laced Marxism, by Malcolm W. Browne which appeared in the September 9, 1975 edition of the New York Times newspaper.

Soviet Denim Smuggling - The History of Jeans Behind the Iron Curtain, by Katherine Damm which appeared on the clothing site Heddles.com on September 14, 2014.

Both of these links provide additional insight into this unique aspect of Cold War history.

© 2019 Chuck Nugent

Comments

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on May 02, 2020:

Marlene Bertrand - thank you for your comments. When I was young blue jeans were work clothes for men who worked outdoors and as outdoor play attire for young boys. Some guys started wearing blue jeans in high school but my mother never let my brothers and I wear them other than for outdoor play activities. It wasn't until I was in college that blue jeans became regular attire for young men and started becoming popular with both young men and young women. As for my wife, she admits that her action was crazy and was glad her daughter never had to do anything like that. However, her daughter was just entering her teens when communism ended and a free market came into being in Russia. So she never experienced a shortage of blue jeans or any other types of clothing. Her daughter was not aware of black markets let alone shopping for things in a black market When we married and they came to the U.S. they found plenty of everything available legally and at reasonable prices. Thanks again for your comments.

Marlene Bertrand from USA on April 30, 2020:

I remember when women could not wear pants at all. I remember my brothers having to change into their jeans after school. I remember when jeans started out to be an inexpensive clothing item and how they eventually became so expensive I could not afford to buy a pair.

Chuck, your wife is a brave woman. Thank you for sharing her fascinating story.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on February 25, 2020:

MG Singh - Thanks for your comments. I apologize for not replying sooner but it didn't show up as a comment until now. Your story is interesting but it doesn't surprise me as this was life in the old USSR. What type of aircraft did you fly in the IAF? I was a navigator on an air refueling tanker and had 3 temporary deployments to the USAF Rhein-Main AFB in Frankfurt Germany. While I never flew to the USSR Frankfurt was relatively close to the Czechoslovakian border (at that time Czechoslovakia was a Soviet client state and member of the Warsaw Pact) and one of my responsibilities was to make sure our pilot stayed well clear of that border. Years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, I met and married my wife who was born in the USSR and had never been outside of the old Soviet sphere until she married me. It was after I met my father-in-law that I learned that he was a retired Soviet AF major who had been stationed in Poland about 200 miles east of Frankfurt and was flying MiGs when I was flying out of Rhein-Main AFB during the same years. He is a great fellow but I am glad we never met while we were both flying missions in Europe in the 1970s.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on February 25, 2020:

Peggy - thanks for your comments. Surprisingly, shopping in the black market in the USSR was a common occurrence as most goods and services were scarce and what was available legally was very poor quality. Traveling to Moscow (a 2 hour train ride) was common for my wife and most of the other million people living in Ryazan during that time. The city was a home to some defense industries which meant that it was not only off limits to most non-residents but also didn't appear on many maps (I'm sure the U.S. military knew its location and probably had it as a target for our bombers and missiles in the event of war) or other public information. As a result the economic central planners in Moscow were unaware of the city and didn't include it as a place to deliver consumer goods. Residents thus had to travel to Moscow to shop legally as well as illegally.

Peggy Woods from Houston, Texas on February 24, 2020:

This is a fascinating story of buying blue jeans in Russia when your wife, as a young person, foolishly risked her life in getting a pair. The expense of two months' salary, along with the risk, would have kept a majority of people from doing that, I would think.

MG Singh emge from Singapore on December 19, 2019:

Very interesting and informative article. I am aware of the craze and unavailability of jeans in Russia. As a IAF pilot I visited the Soviet Union many times. My friends told me take a few jeans there with you and then sleep with your pick of Russian girls free and give the jean. I am a bit sorry for it now but I used to buy cheap jeans from Palika bazaar in Delhi and the rest is memory.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on December 19, 2019:

I agree that was an insensitive and stupid thing to do. When we were in Kiev our guides took us to a couple of monuments memorializing those murdered by the Nazis during World War II. In Leningrad guides and people told us how they suffered 25 years earlier during the horrible Nazi siege of Leningrad. However, the requirement that they stick to the official Communist Party line when telling their stories to us in 1969. However, horrible as the tales of the siege they told us they weren't half as bad at the post-communist accounts told in Anna Reid's book "Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II" which I reviewed in my 2013 Hub "World War II siege of Leningrad". So it is easy to understand why the people of Kiev got upset with the Hitler tee shirt. Thanks fo sharing.

Liz Westwood from UK on December 17, 2019:

I think it was the guy who thought it was a good idea to walk around wearing a t-shirt with Hitler's world tour on it that messed up our trip. Kiev suffered a lot in World War 2 and it rates as an incredibly insensitive act to trivialise the atrocities of the Nazis. He was lucky they didn't lock him up and throw away the key. In comparison handing out a few Bibles was minor.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on December 17, 2019:

Apparently the Bibles didn't have any pictures that identified them as Bibles.

Liz Westwood from UK on December 16, 2019:

We had a grilling when we got back from the head of Slavonic Studies at our university. That's a funny story about your Time magazine. I was reading a Christian biography on the plane, which caught the eye of someone from another university. She recognised it and invited me along to drop off Bibles with a contact at the Baptist Church in Kiev. I think it was watching too many James Bond movies that made me go for it. It was an interesting experience and no harm became us fortunately.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on December 15, 2019:

Liz - Thanks for your comment. We had a number of briefing meetings before the trip and were warned against things like that and the list of things not to bring were books and other printed materials that were anti-soviet or dealt with things like Nazism. When our bus stopped at the border we had to go into a small building with our passports and luggage. Soldiers looked through our luggage and confiscated books from a couple of students - the books were about World War II but the offending content was the picture of Hitler of the cover of one and a swastika on the other. I thought my copy of Time Magazine would be taken because on the inside it had an unflattering article about the Soviet Union but the guard overlooked it, probably because he was holding the magazine upside down while scanning the pages - in addition to obviously not knowing English he was probably also illiterate since, despite the difference between the English and Russian alphabets, he didn't realize that he holding the magazine up side down.

Liz Westwood from UK on December 13, 2019:

Our time in Kiev was made memorable for all the wrong reasons. One of our party, who unfortunately came from the same university as me, decided that it would be s good idea to wear a very politically insulting t-shirt. He and the girl with him were picled up by the police and given a grilling. After that our whole party was under tighter control.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on December 13, 2019:

I totally agree as the change has been huge. We flew to Helsinki and then took a bus to Leningrad (St. Petersburg). When we crossed into the USSR we could see the barbed wire fence and guard towers separating Finland from the USSR. We visited Leningrad, Novgorod, Kiev (we frew from Leningrad to Kiev) and Moscow (we flew there also). Except for busses and an occasional car the streets were empty but the sidewalks full of people during the day. One of the girls on our trip (a tall blonde from California with very stylish clothes) dressed in a very nice bright orange skirt with matching jacket on one of our days in Kiev when we had some free time to wander around alone. Everyone on the crowded downtown main street, from toddlers to old people, turned to stare at her. Even when a couple of my friends and I were blocks away at one end of the street and she was at the other end we could spot the bright orange dress in the sea of people dressed in the locally available dull brown and black clothes. That would never happen today.

Liz Westwood from UK on December 13, 2019:

It's amazing to see how much Russia has changed since we first visited in the old days of the USSR. Our group travelled overnight by train to and from Kiev. We were told not to look outside, but we all did. It was a very different scene to what we were used to in the UK. I was privileged to be introduced to a couple who attended a Baptist Church in Kiev. The church was overflowing, which was all the more remarkable when they told us about the persecution they were subjected to at the time.

Chuck Nugent (author) from Tucson, Arizona on December 12, 2019:

Liz - thanks for your comments. On my 1969 college trip we were also warned not accept offers to change money, buy icons or sell clothing and most of us followed the advice although a couple in our group met some European students who told them how they were financing their holiday by selling their old clothes. I do remember one evening when I took a stroll across Red Square in Moscow and was approached by a young fellow wanting to exchange money, etc. After I declined and he started to walk away I asked him to wait a minute and then asked what he would do with dollars if i did exchange money with him. I was curious since locals supposedly couldn't use the Balalaikas (stores selling western goods in exchange for western currencies). He panicked and started walking away rapidly while swearing he didn't speak English and fearing that I was an undercover policeman. Our tour guide who spoke flawless English with the common midwestern accent which the majority of Americans have. Her slang was about a decade out of date, but she could easily pass herself off as an American. As to the Balalaikas some of my friends and I visited them a couple of times and one time I paid for my drink with a $10 bill and received change in about 5 different western currencies.

Liz Westwood from UK on December 11, 2019:

I have read your article with great interest. I remember travelling to the USSR in 1984 with a group of students. We were warned not to change money when approached, but I recall most of us did on hotel corridors. It was an enlightening trip as was your article.