“Clandestine nouveaux riches” of the Leningrad economic region during the Khrushchev thaw

The article describes the shadow business activities of Khrushchev's era fly-by-night dealers of Leningrad and the Leningrad Region by analyzing various archival materials, which are being introduced into the scientific community for the first time. The circumstances that have led to the gradual establishment of the cult of “materialism” “profiteering” and the expansion of the Soviet-style luxurious lifestyle in Russian society are defined. The era of the Khrushchev Thaw is characterized by a change in the norms of consumer life in the form of a rejection of Stalinist daily asceticism and the spread of the desire for comfort, convenience, aestheticization of living conditions and improvement of the material condition among the population. It is shown that the spread of the emerging alternative economy in the form of clandestine traders in the mid-1950s and early 1960s was the result of a complex combination of socio-economic and ideological changes caused by the “Khrushchev reformation” of the country.