Ice skating rink outside the GUM Main Department Store (1893) at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia
GUM meaning "main universal store" is the name of the main department store in many cities of the former Soviet Union, known as State Department Store during the Soviet times. Similar-named stores were in some Soviet republics and post-Soviet states. The most famous GUM is a large store in the Kitai-gorod part of Moscow, facing Red Square. It is actually a shopping mall. Prior to the 1920s the place was known as the Upper Trading Rows. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the building contained some 1,200 stores. After the Revolution, the GUM was nationalized and continued to be used as a department store until Joseph Stalin converted it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his first Five Year Plan. After the suicide of Stalin's wife Nadezhda during 1932, the GUM was used briefly to display her body. After reopening as a department store during 1953, the GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that did not have shortages of consumer goods, and the queues of shoppers were long, often extending entirely across Red Square. At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially then fully privatized, and it had a number of owners before it ended owned by the supermarket company Perekryostok. During May 2005, a interest was sold to Bosco di Ciliegi, a Russian luxury-goods distributor and boutique operator. As a private shopping mall, it was renamed in such a fashion that it could maintain its old abbreviation and thus still be called GUM. However, the first word "state' has been replaced with 'main', so that GUM is now an abbreviation for "Main Universal Store". t is still open nowadays, and is a popular tourist destination for those visiting Moscow. Many of the stores feature fashionable brand names familiar in the West; locals refer to these as the "exhibitions of prices", the joke being that no one could afford actually to buy any of the items displayed. As of 2005, there were approximately 200 stores.
Size: 5616px × 3744px
Location: GUM Department Store, Red Square, Moscow, Moscow Region, Russia, Eastern Europe
Photo credit: © DE ROCKER / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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