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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:
There are no better dummy teats [nipples'] One could suck them till old age . . .
and
There is no place for doubt and thought GUM* sells all a woman needs.
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 that which is useful to us."
-Short for government universal store.