Theme Week Moscow – GUM department store on the Red Square

2 July 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time:  8 minutes

© Otets/cc-by-sa-3.0-lu

© Otets/cc-by-sa-3.0-lu

GUM (an abbreviation of the Russian Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin; literally “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. Similarly named stores were found in some Soviet republics and post-Soviet states. The most famous GUM is the large store in the Kitay-gorod part of Moscow facing Red Square, opposite of the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin. It is currently a shopping mall. Prior to the 1920s, the location was known as the Upper Trading Rows. Nearby, also facing Red Square, is a building very similar to GUM, known formerly as the Middle Trading Rows. It is about the same size as a large North American shopping mall.   read more…

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