Word: mikoyan
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...Mikoyan gave some hard & fast statistics (instead of the usual vague percentages) of present and hoped-for Soviet industrial production. By 1956, he promised, Soviet consumers will benefit from a yearly output...
...enough, said the Deputy Premier. "The satisfaction of the Soviet consumer's demand for high quality . . . must become a law." Goods of "monotonous, dull, dark tints and bad designs . . . can no longer be tolerated. Fabrics must be bright, rich and of attractive hue . . ." Far too often, said Mikoyan, "the workers begin to argue: 'We get no dye from the chemists, so what...
...thing that worried Mikoyan is the "inattentive and rude attitude on the part of Soviet salesmen to the consumer." "In the field of politeness," he said, "we have much ground to cover . . . What is one to think if, in a Stalingrad department store, a woman shop assistant answers the question of a woman customer: 'Where can one buy cheap cotton stuff?' in this way: 'I am not an inquiry office, citizen...
Another big problem is the paralyzing inefficiency of Soviet salesmen. Take our advertising, said Mikoyan. "It is dull, stereotyped and inflexible . . . One can see such advertisements as Drink the Beer of the Breweries of Glavpivo." As if in contrast, he quoted the "precise and memorable slogans of our great poet Mayakovsky," who wrote for advertising...
Soviet workers, said Mikoyan, must learn that the customer is at least occasionally right. Then, in a grudging but oddly revealing statement, he solemnly admonished the comrades to study and learn from "capitalist sales methods." Mikoyan's conclusion: "It should be kept in view that under competitive conditions, because of growing sales difficulties, bourgeois countries have created good models of trade organization . . . cultured means of serving customers. It is impossible not to condemn those comrades who, under the pretext of fighting subservience before foreigners, ignore foreign experience, cease to interest themselves in it, to study it, and to utilize...