My grandma was telling me a story about visiting Russia in the mid 70' and remembered that in GUM (the main shopping mall in Moscow) tracksuits cost more than confectionary suits. Even more that they visited a spa and that they would wear them there too. She hypothesised that it could have been the price of man amde materials, but couldn't say for sure.
Have they been a status symbol? And how did they stay popular till today?
I have Russian origin, my parents lived through that time, and I'm deeply interested in different topics of history, but I'm not a professional historian by any means. I hope the quality of my answer and my sources will satisfy the standards of this subreddit.
When we talk about clothing and consumer goods in the Soviet Union in general, two things are important to understand: everything "Western", starting from simple blue jeans, was automatically a status symbol and getting nice clothes was a challenge because the planned economy rarely produced what the customers wanted. It led to the emergence of "the second economy", a huge black market the size of a country. A fairly detailed description of this phenomenon is provided in this paper. Although it was written in the mid-80s, the phenomenon it describes had been evolving, I'd say, since at least the early 70s.
Now let's get to tracksuits in general and Adidas tracksuits in particular. Adidas was one of the very first "Western" brands the Soviet citizens learned about: already in the 1960s they saw athletes from the friendly German Democratic Republic wearing Adidas tracksuits during the events that were shown on TV. Don't forget that back then the USSR had a sizeable military presence in East Germany, and while contacts between the soldiers and the locals were limited, it was absolutely possible to buy German consumer goods, bring them to the Soviet Union and re-sell with a huge margin.
Love for Adidas increased tenfold right after the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. For many Soviet citizens, the Olympics were a window to the West that opened in an instant and introduced many consumer goods (still a "deficit") previously unheard of - for example, Coca Cola (see here, not an academic source) and Pepsi (here - its production started earlier but by anecdotal evidence it was completely out of reach for the average Soviet citizen).
For the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Adidas manufactured the sportswear for the Soviet team. However, the USSR Communist party leaders forbid to put the labels of the capitalist company on tracksuits of Soviet athletes. Traditional three stripes were limited to one red. The dress shoes preserved its stripes, since the stripes resembled the letter “M”, stressing that the Olympics were taking place in Moscow. Although the company name did not appear on clothing, sneakers and tracksuits Adidas become wildly popular in USSR. Since then, it became THE sports wear label. According to some sources, Adidas even started production in the Soviet Union in 1979. Some more info can be found in this article from Sueddeutsche Zeitung and there is even a book on the subject. "Western" clothes, famous German quality and no alternatives - comfortable Adidas tracksuits were bound to succeed.
Now, how did Adidas tracksuits stay popular until 2000? (They are still popular today, I'll just omit the last 20 years not to break the subreddit rules). To answer this question, let's take a look at what happened right after the collapse of the Soviet union. With the economy in shambles and underfunded police, organized crime took hold. Being in a gang was the fastest way to get rich, and the newly rich almost always had some ties to the organized crime. Gangs actively recruited former police officers, veterans and athletes. This paper provides more info on the phenomenon: although it's focused on one Russian region, the situation was the same throughout the country. (There are quite a lot of academic sources on the subject, this was the one with its full text freely available without registration). Tracksuits became the uniform of the mob because they still were the status symbol from the Soviet times and because this is what so many former athletes, now in the mob, used to wear. I didn't have enough time to find good sources on the role of "romance of prison" in Russia in the 90s but I'm sure there are plenty. The younger generation, fascinated by the mob and the prison culture, followed suit (no pun intended) - that's how the gopnik culture was born and Adidas tracksuits gained popularity among them.
These are several different questions.
I’ll try to answer them as best as possible but I hope there is someone with the better knowledge.
a. This tracksuit was made in Finland/Germany, and the suit was made in the USSR (exported goods were much more expensive than the real ones).
b. This tracksuit was made from expensive materials, and the suit was made from the cheap ones.
Or something like that. I want to add that in 1970-1980 buying the conventional suit in store was a relatively cheap (and not the best) way to get a suit. The good way was to order this suit from a tailor but it was more expensive, of course.
Anyway, what we can say for sure both suits were quite expensive. According to Kommersant (Russian business newspaper; something like FT or WSJ) shoes in the USSR were 2-3,5 times more expensive than in the USA, fabrics were 2-5 times more expensive, and women underwear were 4 times more expensive. Kommersant doesn’t show any data on tracksuits/suits but, you know, they usually made of fabrics.
I don’t know really why it was this way, but the food was cheap, and almost everything else was quite expensive. Maybe it was thought that food is very important and should be more or less accessible for all, and tracksuits — honestly, you can live without that. But that’s just my speculation.
Oh yes. At least some of them.
I can be mistaken here, but I believe it all started not with tracksuits, but with shoes. During the Olympic Games 1980 the soviet team was sponsored by the German company Adidas. They provided shoes (Adidas gazelle) and, of course, tracksuits.
If you ever saw classic shoes by Adidas you knew where these white stripes were coming from.
But Adidas is a West German company, and the USSR didn’t want to just use their shoes during the Olympics. These shoes had to be produced in the USSR. So, Adidas built some production lines in the USSR for that, and left them after the Olympics. These lines continued producing Adidas shoes during the 1980-s (without logo, but white stripes were here).
I have to mention that for average soviet citizen exposure to western life was severely limited. There were a lot of newspaper articles about how bad this western life was, but almost no pictures and video. And one of the main sources about what these western people were wearing was sports translations (including some popular German sports shows — with participants in Adidas shoes).
At the same time, it was very hard for the soviet citizen to show off, to show your elite status, to show that you are trendy and with money and not going to jail after that. You couldn’t buy a really expensive car (because you couldn’t explain where did you get the money), you couldn’t buy several houses or something like that. It was too risky.
So, it was only logical to use shoes as a status symbol, and soviet people already knew what these status shoes were. It was Adidas and its soviet replicas (not so cool, but still hard to get and, because of that, worthy).
There were even some proverbs about that, like ‘кто носит кеды адидас, тому любая баба даст’ (if you are wearing Adidas shoes, any girl is yours).
I believe that tracksuits with white stripes is the prolongation of this trend. Their peak of popularity was at the 1990-s (after the collapse of the USSR). They seemed cool, they were practical, and they were loved by ex-athletes who tried to build their criminal careers at the time.
So, wearing such tracksuit meant that you had some money, or you had some connections, or you were somewhat dangerous and cool.
Another one (and much more mysterious to me) status symbol was a crimson suit that was appropriated by so-called new Russians (Russian nouveau riches), but it’s a different story.
Of course, once this trend was established there were replicas, and replicas of replicas and so on, and now wearing a tracksuit outside of gym is a sign of a gopnik culture, it’s not really cool anymore (with some exceptions).
Long story short, yes, it was a status symbol during the late USSR years and the first ten years after that. The main reason for that — soviet people were quite poor and they didn’t have a lot of possibilities to show off their wealth or status.
Sorry for any possible mistakes, English is not my first language. Also I understand that my answer is not ideal, but I’m not sure there a lot of historians of soviet love for tracksuits.
Wow, longtime lurker and I can finally answer something! Fingers crossed I cited enough for the mods.
As is often the case with fashion, how a particular trend came to be a cornerstone relies on several reinforcements over time. Although I'm certain there are even more reinforcements I'm not aware of, let's focus on how the 70s, 80s, and 90s reinforced tracksuit love in different ways.
First let's take a stroll down memory lane with general clothing production issues in the 1970s:
Although the USSR had subsidies for children's clothes, adult clothes were largely difficult and expensive to buy^(1) due to limitations of in-state producers and artisans coupled with the obvious ban on imported consumer goods. Two-thirds of an average worker's wages would have been devoted to food and clothing with the latter being scarce as the USSR focused on investment over production. The USSR tried to confront the issue several times after the population failed to make their own clothing as initially recommended. In a decade's time (mid-1960s to mid-1970s) clothing production had increased by 2.5x, however the demand was still far higher than the production.^(2)
Just because you lived in the USSR did not mean brand name was meaningless to you. We can see this with the incredibly popular Levi jeans which would have cost you about 200 rubles ($270 USD).^(3) Despite this price point and difficulty in buying an American brand, Levis were seen in the USSR fashion especially that of youths. Any foreign brand name you wanted would be very expensive if you could get it. Even if you don't care about brands another thing to consider is that most of the USSR is quite cold meaning you would need heavy (expensive) winter clothes. So how do people keep their expensive and hard to find clothes nice? The way that many societies have throughout time - house clothes. At home women would have changed into an outfit consisting of a simple dress and for men it would have been what we think of as track clothes today (a sweatshirt and loose pants).
Oh, how I love old memories, but if we were to pop in a tv-recorded VHS from 1980 we might see a fraction of a big event many countries boycotted: The 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Clothing was still in high demand and production was not at a pre-soviet level, but obviously the home team needed to look sharp. You would have to recognize it by its iconic stripes because the USSR's team stripped the logos right off the German-made Adidas tracksuits they donned.^(4) These Olympic tracksuits had a clear impact on Soviet fashion trends, but only insomuch as any Olympic event would have on the host country.
Ring, ring, ring... what's that? The 90s just called and let me know that jogging is cool now. That's right - up until the late 80s/early 90s jogging for exercise was not that common. As it became popular as a hobby so did fashion surrounding jogging which of course included tracksuits. This new style of athletic clothes for the average person became popular worldwide and just like with denim in the 70s - Soviets wanted it. Similar to the example of Levis in the 70s, name brand athletic clothes also would have been incredibly expensive. So expensive, in fact, they become a status symbol and who loves status more than gangsters?
Although the USSR had "fallen," the black market created by rising demand and stifling production lived on giving plenty of opportunities for a gopnik to make a dime. And what does a gopnik wear you might ask? Only the finest brand name clothes which naturally includes the coveted adidas tracksuit.^(5)
So now we have a fashion that grew from the necessity of comfy and cheap house clothes and then became mainstream through athletics. Many soviets would have grown up wearing house clothes and associating them with comfort and home, once that fashion became a status symbol all bets were off. Who doesn't want to be comfortable and look expensive?