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The USSR never learned to make high-quality jeans. Source: Created with the help of AI
Ordinary and even everyday jeans for us now were a real cult item in the USSR. People paid fabulous amounts of money for them and even risked their freedom.
But this only applied to imported jeans. The Soviet government made attempts to bring this obsession with denim under control but failed to establish the production of decent denim clothing. OBOZ.UA explains why.
Jeans became popular in the Soviet Union after the Festival of Youth and Students in 1957. That was the first time Soviet citizens saw spectacular denim clothes on foreigners visiting the country. But the popularity of jeans reached its true peak in the seventies when it became possible to buy them for yourself, albeit from dealers for fabulous prices.
The iconic piece of clothing was available only in big cities. The price for a pair reached 150 and even 200 rubles, even though the average salary in the USSR ranged from 120-150 rubles.
People who sold smuggled denim clothing and other goods from the Western world were called fartsovschiki. They had a special status in Soviet society but were persecuted. A fartsovschik named Yan Rokotov was even shot for his entrepreneurial activities. There is a legend that in his last words at the trial he said that jeans were the best clothes. However, there is no reliable evidence for this legend.
To ease the tension in society because of the worship of jeans, the Soviet government tried to launch its production of such clothing. It was produced under the Vereya and Tver brands. However, these "jeans" were not made of denim, but of plain thick cotton, so the pants were not of the quality expected by buyers.
The first thing that people who decided to buy Soviet products did was to send their purchases to be boiled. Only prolonged boiling, sometimes with additional substances or objects, allowed the pants to acquire a look that approximated the original jeans. But this treatment, of course, had a bad effect on the condition of the fabric. That's why Soviet jeans, even those that were made to look like real jeans, quickly deteriorated. And this discouraged people from buying them.
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