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Most off topic: Back in 1989, we did a week long high school trip from Belgium to Leningrad and Moscow. This was during the Gorbachev time, right before the fa
by tverbeure 4y ago
Most off topic:
Back in 1989, we did a week long high school trip from Belgium to Leningrad and Moscow. This was during the Gorbachev time, right before the fall of the wall.
Jeans and sneakers from the West were a big thing on the Russian black market back then. So all the kids brought along their most worn down jeans and sneakers, and use them to fund local purchases of vodka and other fun stuff. (Belgian teachers are much more forgiving than American ones!) To sell them, all you had to do was to walk around on the major streets. Your western clothes made you stand out like a sore thumb so within minutes you'd be swarmed by local wanting to trade.
Good times!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jamesdwilson 4y agodid you just carry spare pants also or did they trade their pants along with the contraband?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y agoI had a professor who said he used to travel to Russia and the only thing he would pack were suitcases of jeans to sell.
- hilbert42 4y agoI've heard many variations on that story before, but it was way back in the days of the Cold War and USSR. Apparently when the few Western tourists who ventured to travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway would alight for a temporary stop at a train station somewhere in the middle of no-man's-land they would be mobbed by Russians who would do almost anything to get hold of their jeans (seems many of these tourists left the country with a change of pants). Bank then, the USSR establishment considered jeans a decadent Western culture and thus they weren't available behind the Iron Curtain except as contraband.
- tverbeure 4y agoI carried spare pants and sneakers that would otherwise have been trashed.