Consumers Come In From the Cold at New Moscow Malls

In a country with six-month winters, and rain or dust much of the rest of the year, the indoor shopping mall would seem a natural and welcome appearance among Russia’s long-frustrated consumers.

But as with most manifestations of strengthening capitalism here, the glitzy new shopping centers, traversed by polished steel escalators and faceted in glass and marble, are provoking as much grumbling about the overhead they add to prices as gratitude for a soothing escape from the elements.

Russian shoppers are now stratified along the class lines that polarize the country as a whole, with the opulent new malls patronized by a minuscule elite and the hoi polloi relegated to crude outdoor markets, where prices for clothing and housewares are spared all but the middleman’s modest markup.

Still, the emergence in recent months of high-end clusters of chic boutiques is hailed by their developers as a sign that Russian consumerism is maturing, providing posh new outlets for spending by the haves and cozy arenas for wishful window-shopping by the have-nots.

“I think the appearance of the mall concept of shopping is regarded positively by most people. It’s so much more pleasant to look around when it’s warm and soft music is playing in the background,” says Dmitri Yanin, head of the Moscow branch of the International Confederation of Consumer Unions. “The warmth and comfort are conducive to thoughtful spending decisions. And I think they provoke hostile feelings only among those who may be unemployed and in hard times, and those people are unlikely to drop in just to look around.”

The most lavish of half a dozen indoor shopping centers to open in Moscow this year is the underground Manezh Square complex at the doorstep of the Kremlin.

The middle of its three levels arrayed around an atrium opened earlier this month, but cost overruns were so considerable that the city owners are asking yearly rents of as much as $300,000 for floor space of 1,080 square feet, and they are finding too few takers.

“You have to sell a lot of merchandise to pay that kind of rent, so we won’t be seeing too many shops with affordable goods setting up there,” Yanin concedes. “But there’s nothing wrong with having a few places that cater to the elite.”

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At the new Actors’ Gallery complex at Pushkin Square, jewelers and designer clothing shops dominate the trilevel complex of black marble, but a Russkoye Bistro--Russian fast-food--offers even those who can afford only to window-shop a low-cost venue for the equally new practice of people-watching.

Even the old Government Department Store--GUM--where empty shelves and surly shop clerks once testified to the Soviet regime’s indifference toward the consumer, has undergone thorough renovation and now sports glistening windows and upscale boutiques.

“I like to call what we are doing in changing the shopping environment ‘progressive copying of the West,’ ” says Umar Dzhabrailov, the Moscow city official in charge of developing retail properties.

Indoor shopping malls are planned in 10 suburban regions of Moscow, says Dzhabrailov, and shoppers patronizing those already in operation celebrate the change.

“When they reopened Tishinsky Market, my shopping changed from drudgery to fun,” says Yulia Shaginurova, a 27-year-old homemaker and mother browsing at the old produce market transformed into a sleek, two-tiered mall offering both foodstuffs and fashion. “Here, I can stroll with my kid in a well-lighted, spacious and comfortable pavilion instead of having to elbow my way through coughing compatriots frantically picking over cheap carrots and potatoes.”

But pensioner Sergei Fishman effuses the resentment felt by the millions of Russians struggling through the new world of plenty without the means to enjoy it.

“For us pensioners, the interior of the complex is not as important as the prices,” says the 63-year-old who still occasionally shops at the mall, now called Tishinka, because it hosts the closest food store. “In here, you end up paying not for the food but for the atmosphere.”

Public opinion surveys suggest that about a third of the population shares such resentment of the new grandeur, says Yanin of the Consumers Union. That parallels the share of society on fixed low incomes--a segment that remains nostalgic for the equalized poverty of the Communist era.