Kathy

I think this interpretation is a little mistaken, SufiPoet. When people were waiting in line, it wasn't because food was rationed. Food was available, for the most part (but for certain regions at times). Rather, the lines were the result of the very ineffiecient manner in which foodstuffs, and everything else, in fact, were distributed. If one wanted to buy anything from the state which people generally needed or wanted, one waited in a line. Also, in the 1970's, there were no cash registers. Totals were counted by abacus.

In big cities, there were markets in every part of the city. My MIL, for example, who was retired, would get up to be at the market when it opened in the morning. She knew which market in her area was the best for fresh produce. It still took over an hour to complete her shopping, after she'd waited for milk, for cheese, for vegetables. But there usually were no lines at the bakery, and people bought fresh bread almost daily. The other foods were all available, but one had to wait in line for long periods to buy them. Smaller centers also had markets, but not as many.

I remember passing a line in Moscow in the mid 1980's that must have been over 3 hours long. The store had received a shipment of bananas, a rarity in the Slavic republics. With foodstuffs, people generally didn't know a shipment of a particular food would appear - you happen to walk past a shop and see that it has something you want. Women, in particular (but some men, as well) always carried mesh bags so that they could pick something up if they happened across something interesting. There were certain foods that Soviets didn't see which were common in the West because they weren't indigenous, but during the 1970's, there was a great deal of trade with India and Arab countries, and Soviets received all sorts of products which at that time, were pretty exotic in the West (such as halva and very fine teas which normally are not exported).


With certain products (at times during so called "perestroika" in Ukraine, toothpaste), the product disappeared, then would reappear. So, if one was a smart shopper, one would buy a year's supply, just so that you don't have to stand in that line again. That at times meant the product would be gone before the whole line was served.

The "shortages" in the last gasps of the USSR were, I have no doubt, artificially created in order to irritate the population. There were different shortages in different places. In Russia, there were shortages of tea and sugar; Russia has a "cult" of tea - far more than Ukraine. In Ukraine, tomato paste disappeared in late August, when people start making borshch for winter. In Ukraine, there was also a "shortage" of sugar, timed to coincide with the period homebrewing activities increase. There were tobacco shortages all over, but they rotated. In Lviv, cigarettes were in short supply, but available in Kyiv. A week later, they could not be purchased in Kyiv but were available in Moscow. All these things I witnessed. At about that time, Soviet news started glorifying Pinochet. The plan to crackdown and enforce a Pinochet-type regime (for its "economic gains") has since been disclosed by Bukovsky. So, nothing is as it seems.