Andor_Anna_A pénznem minden

The study analyses one of the controversial ‘inventions’ of socialist trade and commerce, the system of hard-currency stores that sold Western goods in socialist Hungary, accessible only for customers with convertible currency. The analysis sheds light on the social impact of these shops on Hungarian society. As is well known, compulsory substitutes and a shortage economy characterized by scarcity were defining traits of the socialist system. Shortage and its associated phenomena extended beyond the economic sphere, and encroached upon practices of everyday life, leisure, art, and consumption. Created in the 1960s as a commercial innovation of the softening socialist economic system, hard-currency stores (also known as diplomats’ shops, “dollar shops”), further reinforced the sense of deprivation felt by those segments of society that – in the absence of convertible currency and jobs abroad – could only afford to gaze at their shop windows. The existence of dollar shops thus divided the population: those who had Western currency and could benefit from such stores, and those who had only forints and were excluded. This study examines the impact of this unequal situation and its imprint upon society; in other words, what hard-currency stores may reveal about the social differences that pervaded socialist society. The brief overview of the customers eligible to shop in these stores, is followed by a discussion of shortage economy through a description of what was on offer there. It then focuses on the emergence of new practices aimed at reducing inequality and providing access to the much-coveted Western consumer goods, often in less than legal ways.