Wares Found Overpriced; Many Items Not Available : Soviet Exhibit Fails to Sell Consumers

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has given high priority to improving the quality and availability of consumer goods so that workers will increase their output, earn more and buy more.

But judging by comments recorded at an exhibit of the latest Soviet wares, there is a long way to go.

Nearly 12,000 items were on display at the exhibit, ranging from cold-weather clothing to a new-model pickup truck. About a third of them are not yet in production, and the others, viewers complained, are either too scarce or too costly.

Mink jackets priced at 4,000 rubles, about 20 months’ pay for the average worker, were on display, along with a stereo system, old-fashioned in appearance, for 1,070 rubles. A large color television set was priced at 755 rubles.

At the official rate of exchange, the ruble is worth about $1.60, and according to Soviet statistics, the average pay is almost 200 rubles a month.

The people who organized the exhibit set out an open book and invited visitors to comment on what they saw. One wrote:

“With prices like these, whom did the organizers have in mind? Certainly not ordinary honest workers, but rather all those underground millionaires the press is writing about.”

Many pairs of women’s shoes, a commodity always in short supply here, were exhibited without price or production figures, indicating that there was no prospect of finding them in any shop.

Most men’s shoes were priced at 54 rubles (about $86), and a few pairs of high-heeled women’s dancing shoes had the same price tag.

Crude-looking kitchen furniture was priced at 929 rubles, but a sign indicated that only 200 sets would be manufactured under the present five-year plan.

A standard Soviet refrigerator, about half the size of an American model, was priced at 390 rubles; a larger model cost 750 rubles. Microwave ovens, with a quarter of a million scheduled for production, cost 350 rubles.

Electronic goods were also expensive. A portable stereo carried a price tag of 351 rubles, and a tape player was listed at 170 rubles.

The new pickup, with a removable roof, had a “conditional price” of 8,000 rubles, but is not expected to be produced until next year.

“The impression is that the prices grow faster than quality, service and affluence,” the newspaper Socialist Industry said in a caustic review of the exhibit.

But a poster over the entrance to the exhibit advised visitors:

“In contemporary conditions, a radical increase in the quality of products is one of the leading economic and political facts in carrying out the course set by the 27th (Communist Party) Congress toward acceleration of scientific-economic development of the country.”

There were no personal computers on view, nor any videotape recorders, a hot item on the black market. Basically, as one Muscovite put it, the exhibit consisted of items that either cannot be bought or that few people want to buy for reasons of price or quality.

One person noted in the visitors’ book: “Great, great thanks for this dazzling display. We were touched almost to tears when we discovered one item we already have at home--a plastic tub for washing diapers. We are so glad for our industry.”