The Soviet economy and the organisation of Soviet advertising

Abstract

In recent years, and particularly since the early 1960s, there has been a sudden increase in interest in commercial advertising in the USSR. A great many advertising organisations have been created: according to a recent Soviet press report, ‘nobody even knows’ how many advertising organisations exist in the country; another speaks of forty such organisations in the Ukraine alone.¹ The most developed Soviet advertising, understandably, is in foreign trade, where Soviet suppliers have to operate in Western and some other Comecon markets which are less ‘planned’ and more competitive than the Soviet home market. But apart from Vneshtorgreklama, the foreign trade advertising organisation set up in its present form in 1965 but originating considerably earlier, there is now a whole host of domestic advertising institutions. These include an Inter-departmental Advertising Council linking several ministries, organisations attached to the domestic trade ministries at all-union level and in the Russian and Ukranian republics, advertising departments in the trade administrations of city councils and some advertising sections in production enterprises and other organisations.