Do It Yourself Monopoly in the Late Soviet Period

The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review. 2020. Vol. 47. No. 2. P. 185–204.

Abramov R.

This article examines the role of the monetary world inclusion in the world of children’s
games in the late Soviet period by opening a previously unknown page of board
games’ social history in the USSR and describes the practices of playing Do It Yourself
(DIY) Monopoly by Soviet children in the 1980s. Soviet teenagers used friendly relationships
to exchange tacit knowledge about the basic rules of the board business game.
They made playing fields and developed the rules of the game, using school knowledge
about the principles of the capitalist economy. The article shows the game rules’
evolution of the DIY Soviet Monopoly versions and shows the creativity of the Soviet
teenagers in the re-invention of the rules of the board business game. DIY Monopoly
versions were a form of adaptation of western goods to socialist conditions, which
were common practice in the Soviet Union since its inception.

Keywords: глобализация, игра, globalisation, позднесоветское общество, board games, latesoviet society