Shopping in the Soviet Union - Cold War DOCUMENTARY 

One of my college professors lived in the USSR for a couple of months. Early on she went to a food market half-expecting to find a line out the door, but found none. She said to herself "There is NO line: that's just Western propaganda!" She walked up to the bakery counter to buy some bread. The man behind the counter said "The food has been sold out for hours: you need to to get on line at 6AM."

I think in a Bald and Bankrupt video, a babushka he interviewed said "we had money but no goods in the USSR and all the goods in the world and no money in the 90s".

I grew up in the communist Czechoslovakia. I remember that whoever travelled to the Soviet Union was telling stories about how low the standard of living was over there and how empty the shops were. There were massive differences among the countries of the Eastern Block. Czechoslovakia and East Germany were sort of rich kids of the (eastern) block. The Soviet Union and Romania were poor kids. Others somewhere in between. Basically, there was the same gap in the living standards between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia as was between Czechoslovakia and West Germany. We Czechs were bitterly complaining that there are only like 5 types of sausages(yoghurts, chocolates, TV sets...) in the shops compared to XY in the West Germany. The soviet tourists seeing those 5 types of sausages in Czech shops compared it to 0-1 type+queue in their home town:):) They often said they felt like in the consumer paradise:)

Here is a Soviet joke from the time of the shortages. A long lone is waiting for bread. The baker calls out: "Comrades, there isn't enough bread, so Jews can't get any!" All Jews leave the line, grumbling to themselves. The rest keeps waiting, when the baker calls out again: "Comrades, there still isn't enough, so only Party members can get bread!" Half of the crowd disperses, Party members keep waiting. The baker comes out again: "Comrades, there's very little bread, so only war veterans can get any!" Everybody leaves, save for a few old men, all of them wearing medals on their jackets. A little later the baker shouts: "Sorry, comrades, there's no bread at all! Everybody must leave!" One of the old veterans, annoyedly: "Once again the Jews got the best deal!"

I remember reading in a book about the last day of the Soviet Union a joke told by Gorbachev himself which went something like this: Two men were standing at a line to get vodka in Moscow. After an hour the first man get angry and desperate and starts yelling "I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" and leaves the line. The second man ask him "Where are you going?" The first man says "I'm going to kill Gorbachev" After an hour the first man comes back to the vodka line dejected. Second man asks him "What happened? I thought you were going to kill Gorbachev." To which the first man replies "I was but the line to kill Gorbachev was too long". I'm not even Russian and I loled hard Edit: I also want to mention that that book also mentions the story of Boris Yeltsin going to Houston to see the NASA facilities there but he seemed to be more fascinated by his visit to one of the local supermarkets, particularly for its big variety of cheeses.

I was born in the early 80's. There was a wooden kiosk in my town selling ice cream. There was no electricity, no freezers in that kiosk, because people would immediately buy out all the ice cream. A huge queue formed and swept everything away in an instant. The Soviets flew into space but failed to produce enough of that simple sweet

In Soviet Russia a woman angrily looks around a store & says to the shopkeeper “you are a disgrace! There’s not one loaf of bread on your shelves!” The shopkeeper replied “You are mistaken madame, this store has no meat. The store that has no bread is down the road.”

Soviet citizen goes to shop, only to find shelves empty. "What shop is this?" He asks. "Bread shop." Slightly annoyed he goes to second shop, only to find shelves there empty too. "What shop is this?" "Meat shop." Getting more frustrated, he goes to third shop. Only to find shelves empty. Actually there was no shelves at all. "What shop is this?" "Shelf shop."

You can make a whole episode about the Soviet Union's love of contractions and acronyms

I worked with a Russian woman, that moved to the US probably when she was around 30. She said grocery stores in the US were like magic. Having access to such a variety of produce, year round, was amazing to her. She said in Russia, you could get something like oranges once or twice a year, and you had to wait in huge lines to get some.

People in the USSR buying products from East Germany because of better quality, while people in East Germany were buying products from WEST Germany because they were of better quality.

This is very well researched and completely accurate. I'd like to add just one detail, which used to be a distinct feature of the socialist market experience. There is a couple of words in the Russian language that are key to understanding how the "market" worked. The first one is "дефицит". Translating it as "deficit", however, would be inaccurate. To most Russians it meant "a product which is extremely difficult to find, certainly not available in stores". The second word is "достать". In English it translates roughly as "to get", but its meaning goes well beyond that, and in a rather subtle way. When used about market goods, "to obtain", or "to acquire" (as in "by any means possible") would be much better translations. And so, markets in the USSR revolved around "deficits" (goods that were practically impossible to buy) and "acquiring" them by any means possible. For certain goods "acquisition" was the only option. Most notable among these were any kind of construction materials, such as cement, gypsum, bathroom tiles, etc. For regular folks who had no way of "acquiring" such "deficits", home projects of any kind were nigh impossible. But the hardest things of all to "acquire" were spare auto parts (or "запчасти"). If buying a car was hard enough in those days, getting into a traffic accident -- even a minor one -- was a true nightmare. Here's an example: back in the day foreigners visiting the USSR would immediately notice that cars on the streets had no windshield wipers. Drivers kept their wipers at home, and only put them on when it rained. Leaving the wipers on a parked car was an open invitation for them to be stolen. And if that happened -- God forbid! -- you knew you simply couldn't find replacement wipers anywhere. Your only choice was to walk the streets looking for a car whose owner had foolishly forgotten to remove his wipers, and then steal those. I could make a long list of such "deficits" -- things which, though legal to buy, were impossible to get in any other way, but "acquire". Moreover, one could never be sure from one day to the next which item would simply disappear from the market and wouldn't be seen again for 6 months or longer. As a result, the black economy had developed its own "supply lines". Namely, many people working in the production industry (from food to sawblades and anything in between) would simply steal from their factories and workshops. Theft was endemic. It didn't matter what you could steal; just "obtain" it, then go to the black market to try to sell it on the weekend. If you could get ceramic cups for high voltage power lines, or spare parts for industrial helicopters, just take it. You're bound to find someone who needs what you have. Even at the black markets, people peddled their wares not by advertising quality or price. They would simply let you have a quick peek at their "stock", and then say with an air of self importance, "Well, yes -- deficit!". All this had one final consequence: barter trade. Many a "deficit" item ended up being used as a sort of currency. Thus, if you worked in a factory producing kerosene lamps, well, then that's what you can "acquire" out the back door. Then try to sell the lamps, or if not, least to exchange them for something else. Let's say you exchange two lamps for ten empty glass jars -- a "deficit" crucial for the home production of canned vegetables. You don't need the jars, of course, but your neighbor does. And that neighbor has a nephew who works in a shoe factory. So, with a little bit of luck, maybe next week you could end up with a pair of new flip-flops. Ah, those were the days... A world of absurdities!

Visited the DDR and Poland in the mid-80s on school trip and was shocked to see farms being run with equipment that hadn't been used in our own country for 30+ years, and the grocery stores featured largely empty shelves. A most humbling experience and a realization of just how lucky we were to be born on our side of the iron curtain.

No Western person can understand the bleakness of life in the Soviet system. I grew up in Hungary in the 80s, the so-called 'happiest barrack'. Happiest my arse. I was holding on to toy catalogues that my mom brought back from West Germany, 'cos I could not imagine a shop that could have all those things in store. P.s. the people in the comments saying that there were no homeless and unemployed people in the Soviet bloc are grossly incorrect. There were both, they were just shunned, ostracised, and could not be talked about because 'officially' they did not exist. I remember that one of the first independent documentaries that came in with the regime's collapse was about homeless people living in the outskirts of Budapest. True, the problem got much worse in the 90s, but it existed before.

Khruschev did the first Perestroika, and many reforms were enacted. However, these reforms broke the stalinist Soviet economy. Since Khruschev believed that the communism in the USSR is going to be built by 1980, to get rid of the last capitalist vestiges in the economy, he abolished the "arteli" (semiprivate cooperative factories) that employed 2 million people and produced consumer goods based on the customer demand. All children toys were produced by these cooperatives, as well as first TV sets and thousands of other goods. These semiprivate factories were absorbed into the planned economy without any compensation for the cooperative owners and their efficiency dropped dramatically.

I made few trips to Soviet Union in mid 80s. Beryozhka was good place to shop. With 200 Finnish marks you could buy so much top quality food and drinks, that it would last you for a week. And at that time, 200 marks was average half days salary on Finland.

It was a nightmare. You can never get a thing you want, only a thing that they have in the stock. To get even basic things, like meat, you have to "know a guy". Bucher or a trader, that can reserve some for you. So you can buy meat, or eggs, or toilet paper. Everyone would steal from work, to barter it for something that they need. When I was a kid, I have to wake up at 4 o'clock, when the shop opened up, so I can stand in a queue to buy eggs and milk. There was no guarantee, that you are going to get what you need. You could stand in a queue and get nothing. There was never enough food for everyone. Imagine visiting the shop and there are only picked tomatoes and canned seaweed. I am talking about basics, not about chocolate or fruits. Oranges and mandarins were for holidays. Home goods were terrible. 1 of each type of good. 1 crappy fridge, 1 crappy tv set. Vacuum cleaner and a phone were a rarity. Buying a car? yeah, 10-year queue, good luck. When I was getting married, I had a complete quest to get a "bachelor package". I had to find shoes, a suit, food, and alcohol for the wedding, as well as rings. Some sort of "Initiation of a soviet man", to barter, to look, trade, to steal, and beg for stuff I needed.

By the end of the 80s, I remember visiting a Soviet shop in Czechoslovakia. It was mainly for occupying Soviet soldiers and their families. My parents wanted to buy some russian icecream. In school we were told how everything is the best in Soviet Union. The store was very ugly and looked uncared for even in comparison with grey czechoslovak stores. Also the cash registers in czechoslovak stores were already mechanical for a long time. Here the soviet cashiers were working with athing called “schchot”. Basicaly moving beads from one side to another. They did it awesomely fast though :) I was really confused by what I saw back then :)

My grandparents visited USSR, they took 10 pairs of levi's jeans with them and they came back with more money than they spent during the trip. Black market demand for jeans back then was huge.

One of my university professors visited the USSR in the 70s and he told us that his favorite Soviet product was their ice cream which he said was one of the few things the Soviets made that could rival their American counterpart. But there was one drawback. Vanilla was the only flavor available and this professor was more partial to strawberry!

Shortages we're not a western propaganda. I lived in the 80's decade in E Europe. Like me, millions had shortages on almost everything from food to gas on a daily basis.

The Soviet system was imposed on many other countries. I remember the empty shelves and long lines in early 1980s Poland. At one stage the local shop only had stale old bread and vinegar to sell. Shelf upon shelf of those two items. It was ridiculous. It was quite common for people to buy out any shoes they could in a store, and then walk outside and exchange between themselves the shoe sizes they actually needed. There was no time to try shoes on in store: you grabbed what you could ASAP.

As a person who lived in USSR I can tell: This video prepared well. Good job!

An ex-yugoslav kid from the 80-ties here! When nostalgia hits me I go to NAMA stores (Narodni Magazin aka the Peoples Store), there are two remaining here in Zagreb, both in the center of the city. Nowdays they do have all the usual western brands but a dash of old style socialism is definetly in the air. For example the staff never smiles and barely respond when you say hello. If you ask them something about an item you want to buy they usually ignore you. I'm not complaining, in a way it's charming, just not when you're in a hurry :)))

In Soviet Russia, consumer goods buy you

In US: Do you have yoghurt? Wallmart employee: Sure we do, we have fruit yoghurts, almond yoghurt, soy yoghurt, Greek yoghurt all types of them. In USSR: Do you have yoghurt? Store employee: Yes

I actually ended up in a roadside service station in Italy that practiced that three queue system. You had to queue to get a ticket for the the food item you wanted to purchase, then you went to the counter to pay for it, then you went back to where you'd got the ticket from in order to queue again to have your item heated and given to you.

I remember visiting the Soviet Union and East Germany in the 1980s as a high-school student from Canada. It was impossible to buy anything other than what was in the Beryoshka shops because guide (we had to have a guide and "monitor" to monitor the guide) would stop us if we tried to buy anything at a regular store. I just wanted to buy a t-shirt at a clothing store, but got in trouble with the guide.

That thing you said about joining a line not knowing whats being sold, good lord thats exactly how things were in venezuela, i remember whenever i was walking with my mom and she saw a line we stood there and asked whats being sold

A landlady I had in '79 shared a home-grown joke a Russian ex had told her: A Russian citizen hears on the radio how abundant the harvests have been. He opens his refrigerator to find it empty. What is he to do? He is told to connect his radio to his refrigerator.

My parents (and older siblings) lived in the USSR and moved to the states in the 90s. They’ve told us so many stories about how the food was rationed in such a way that if it wasn’t for my dads work, they would have most likely had been living on the streets with three starving young children. Dad worked for an American lady at the time that provided their family with a lot of staples and food basics. It’s crazy to me now having grown up in the US to know that this is what it’s still like in many other places in the world and the absolute privilege we have living here

You described a traditional shopping experience in chilean small shops. You first enter the shop, speak to a clerk, he gets your order, checks availability and gives you a check. You procede next to the cashier (who usually used to be the shop owner) and finally to a third stall called "empaque" (Packing station), where you receive your packed goods. It's actually quite efficient, queueing is pretty rare and overall a nice experience.

I can talk about it for hours but briefly: 1. Yes, there were tremendous shortages in the communist economies and that lead to poor consumption which is one of the reasons for the collapse of the system. 2. There was a TsUM (Central Universal Store) in Sofia too. These days there are about 10 shopping malls in the capital city of Bulgaria, which seems to satisfy the needs of the consumers...

Thanks for this video. The fact that I can search “daily life in Soviet Union” and find such a well made piece makes me grateful for RU-vid and the creators that make it happen. 🙂

I visited the mall in Moscow that you show when I was a kid. It's still around and ridiculously fancy looking. I remember they opened a Lego store there in like 1990 or something, it blew my young mind. From what I remember, there were stores for perishable goods, but most people went to the open air markets (rynki) for vegetables and meat, as well as random goods like clothes and electronics. Admittedly, we did live in a "provincial" area. I definitely remember the abacuses, they were a lot more common than registers or calculators. Weird detail, but it still stands out to me.

I remember a visit to Bucharest in the late 80’s. Walking around in the outskirts of town, some old ladies suddenly set up a booth, and immediately a queue formed. I joined the queue not knowing what was for sale, and after a good wait I was finally able to buy a cone with very low-quality ice cream :) As an earlier comment described, no refrigeration was needed, as the ice cream sold out immediately.

In Chile they still use the queue three times system to buy something in many stores.choose, pay, dispatch.

in czechoslovakia we had also our "beriozkas", they were called tuzex. same as in the USSR you could use western currency for purchases but also special currency called "bony", which was issued to foreign diplomats or our citizens working abroad. there was an exchange rate 1:5 ratio towards the czechoslovak crowns. "bony" were popular and demanded and this demand created a whole caste of illegal sellers (many also tolerated and backed by strong party "friends"), called "vekslaci". vekslaci became a vital part of our daily life (many became immensely rich) and of criminal popculture. there is a great movie from the 2nd decade of the 80ties called "bony a klid" (bony and peace) which very openly criticized the corrupt circumstances in the socialist czechoslovakia.

Realy great video! You make such interesting mini docs

A very interesting episode. Keep up the good work!

You can tell deep down Kruschiv was a fan boy of the US and our shopping habits

I like those retro buses, they look so round, smooth surface, and glamourous, and spacious, like a really nice and loving grandpa.

This is the first video I've seen from this channel. Very engaging and informative! I've subbed, can't wait to discover more! 👍

REALLY great video- great info & the footage from behind the Iron Curtain is fascinating!

Went on works trips often to Velikie Luki, south of Leningrad in 1989/90. On the first trip we were accompanied by an interpreter from Leninggrad and while having an a short time of our own we visited a camera and watch shop in town where the interpreter bought alarm clocks as they weren't available in Leningrad. I bought some watches and my first Soviet camera - a LOMO Kompakt Avtomat. When going home I visited a similar shop in Leningrad where I needed special certificats to buy that kind of items, but in a "gorodok" like Velikie Luki, there were no restrictions. Interesting video, though. Guess many of us who visited old SSSR, still suffer from nostalgia or OSTalgia. As a foreigner you were a king.

nice one. You get to learn wierd economic consequences in a non-capitalist society through channels like this.

You are a great educational source👍

I just found your channel in my recommendations. I’ll have to check out some of your other videos. And yes I subscribed. I appreciate your presentation. It is obviously well researched and it doesn’t seem that you have any particular ax to grind. So I must give you kudos.

This is something I heard both from my father and both of my grandfathers (I feel lucky that they are still alive): apparently due to the Soviet Union's trade deals with Finland after the end of the war reparations was based more in quantity over quality: Finnish-made boots and clothes shipped to the USSR were always second-rate or anything that would not pass Finnish quality control, meaning it was really cheap for Finnish companies to produce such items to the Soviet market, covering the cost of producing the better quality products meant for the domestic market and those sold to the Western nations. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Finland lost an easy market and suffered a really bad recession during the early 90's.

My step father hosted russians in the oil business in the 1980s at his home in Euless Tx. Groups of 20-30. They would all take pictures of the open refrigerator and themselves talking on the phones in the house. These were people that worked for companies buying seismographic technology from Core Lab. They were impressed with the swimming pool and they also wanted to take pictures of the grill with hot dogs, hamburgers and fajitas.

Another topic I had always wondered about, thanks

You guys are the best. Love this channel.

Great video and an important story! I do feel it's missing 2 things: 1. The "elite" and "duty-free" stores available to the Soviet party elites ("Beryezka" was just one example, meant for people working abroad. But there were others meant for local elites as well). 2. Soviet people working abroad had a much better deal than shopping in "Beryezka" stores once they got back. They had access to actual western/foreign goods, which they could bring/smuggle back into the USSR, either for personal use or sell on the black market. For example, a pair of American jeans, in 1980s, were sold for roughly 200 rubles in the black market, while the average worker's salary was roughly 120 rubles per month.

Bought a beautiful sable hat in the goom? by Red Square in 1972. Still have it.

Good one. I love this channel.

That was super interesting to watch. Thanks.

My mom still tell stories about how she had to wake up at ~5:30am and get in line to buy milk and watered down sour cream before going to school. It was in late 70s and early 80s in then Kiev, one of the biggest and richest cities of the Union.

I lived in Hungary during the early 90's right after the fall of the Soviet Union. I still remember shopping at the local ABC's which were the size of convivence store. There were limited items such as bread, milk, sausages, cheese. My inlaws raised pigs and chickens and kept a garden to supplement their food supply. The food was basic, but good. 👍

Great video! Very informative.

I love the background music near the end of your videos, epic and inspiring, very period-appropriate too.

Great video. Definitely in line with the experiences my family had. You do a good job explaining Soviet life as someone who I assume isn't ethnically Slavic/Caucasian.

My granddad was a truck driver in Yugoslavia. For a time he was driving to USSR and he made a nice profit on the side selling jeens.

An excellent presentation sir. Thank you.

I visited the USSR in 1981. The largest queue I saw was for large size bras. There were all sorts of men and women queuing around the block. I think it was Moscow, but it could have been Leningrad. There was a queue in a food market, for grapes, everyone waited for ages, then a small box was brought out and the excitement rose. A man, wearing a jacket with multiple medals, walked in off the street and straight to the front of the queue. A few words were exchanged with the person selling the grapes and the man was given them and walked out. Everyone just shrugged and the queue dissolved as they all walked off.

You are the closest thing to an actually neutral person speaking about otherwise sensitive and easily biased topics. Good job!

There is a 2019 book by Elena Osokina studying the early 30s “Torgsin” (foreign trade bureau) you mention at 10:59. In the study it is described as a brutal state enforced extortion situation rather than shopping opportunity.

You do good work, detailed and interesting.

Very interesting. Well done sir

Reason for lack of goods in Soviet stores: "poor and late harvests, the US embargo, hidden inflation, poor storage capability..." One major reason for the shortages he didn't mention: Communism. I visited Moscow and Leningrad in 1883. There was nothing on the shelves. I saw a meat market with no inventory. There actually weren't any grocery stores, with or without rationing. High rise buildings in downtown Moscow had windows repaired with cardboard. I stayed at a tourist hotel in Leningrad, the Cosmos. At a buffet dinner I was served Wienerschnitzel. It was impossible to chew it because it was 100% breaded and fried connective tissue. Years later I met a Soviet immigrant living in the US and told him about the poor quality food. His reply was: "you know, they were serving you their best." I also asked him what Soviet immigrants noticed the most when they came to the US, and he told me a story about his mother the first time she went into a US supermarket. She stood in the doorway and cried, having never seen so much food in her life. Under Communism, everyone is equally poor.

I worked in Moscow 88-89. Paid in rubles and lived mostly off the economy. New 'Co-op' semi private opened. Indeed more expensive but more stuff. Of the shortages I experienced, laundry detergent was one. I learned to get in a queue and bought the max 20 tiny boxes then shared with Soviet friends. The Berezkas would check passports in order to enter. So not just foreign currency was needed. I did get stopped at a book one of all places and sternly told this is only for foreigners. The Berezkas did take credit cards. I had limited USD so I used a cc and let the banks hash out exchange rates. There were many foreign (Scandinavian) products. Of Soviet stuff, the expensive Orenburg shawls and fur hats were what I wanted. Some very popular but hard to come by 'three bear' chocolates could be had. As treats, I would bring such to house parties. I lost a lot of weight there. If it were not for the kindness of friends, I would have starved. Bread, cheese, dairy is what I lived off of.

Just subbed. A most fascinating channel.

Stores in the rest of the world used to operate like the soviet ones (with the multiple lines). Items in the front were not for sale, they were display items only. You'd tell a sales person which one you wanted and they'd go to the back and get it (this is where the "ask if they have more in the back" saying comes from) and then you'd pay a 2nd person at the register. At a certain points stores realized they could just put labels on items, put the back in the front and pocket the difference from the reduced labor. Its happening again with self checkout in grocery stores.

A former Beriozka customer here... it was a necessary part of the tourist experience while visiting Soviet Union.

Customer: Do you have Dor Blu? Vendor: What's this? Customer: It's a cheese with mould. Vendor: Ah, no, we don't have cheese. But, we do have bread Dor Blu, sausages Dor Blu, pasta Dor Blu...

Thank you for explaining the bell button process.

This is why i love youtube, videos like this of the past.

Thats fairly good overview of soviet shopping. It does on most part add up. There are few details missing, but honestly, if those would be included, this might as well be hour long episode. For instance, deficit was indeed very common- it was constant of USSR shopping, that you always had deficit of some kind. Very basics like bread were mostly covered, but even that not always. Then the goods availability did range a lot from region to region- something i feel like this documentary focused bit too little of.

3:53, that process (asking the salesperson, going to the cashier and then picking up) is literally how wholesalers or specialists shops work in my country. i guess it made sense with large & complicated orders, but with personal small purchases it is indeed very inefficient

Extremely very interesting ‼️

I shopped in East Berlin during the Cold War on many occasions. Serving with the British military in West Berlin we had the opportunity to go to the East on day passes via Checkpoint Charlie. I use the term 'shop', loosely. There was so little available to buy and people absolutely clamoured for the most awful bits of rubbish. I can remember feeling so sorry that there was so little available, especially treats and toys for children. But the people I felt sorriest for were those who had been on a list for a Trabbant car for years and years, spent a fortune on it and then found themselves with a useless vehicle when the Berlin wall came down.

One event that illustrates the problems with Russian shopping was an impromptu Texas grocery store visit by Yeltsin in 1989 during his America visit. He walked around for 20 minutes, greeting shoppers and getting blown away the wide selection on offer. He was so taken by the experience, he thought it was staged facade to show off the wealth of the USA. In his autobiography the store visit is mentioned and how it "shattered his view of communism".

The economy of the ussr always reminded me of the Bronze Age kingdoms. Where the palace decided everything from what was planted to what was sold abroad. The main difference was the Bronze Age kingdoms lasted for centuries while the Soviet Union didn’t last even a human lifetime.

Excellent work .

I wonder if the founders of HH Gregg stores came from or were influenced by Soviet or other Eastern Bloc societies, because that 3-queue system is exactly how their stores worked. I went in to buy a simple point-and-shoot camera. There were many on the shelf. But the customer was not allowed to just take the camera to the front, pay for it, and leave. I had to ask a salesperson to write up a sales ticket. Then the salesperson took the camera up to the front of the store while I went to a cashier with the sales ticket and paid for the camera. Receipt in hand, I then went to a counter near the exit and showed my receipt to a third person who inspected and initialed the receipt before handing it to another person standing next to a bin full of products waiting to be picked up. That person rummaged around in the bin for my camera and finally handed it to me. This was not in the '70s in eastern Europe. This was in 2008 in Virginia Beach.

Very interesting documentary! Excellent presentation too! Thank you!

I visited the Soviet Union in 1989 and went to the Gum department store in Red Square. The shelves were mostly bare and the floors were bare timber with holes, especially around the walls. We did not purchase anything as the selection of souvenirs was meager. I did however buy a copy of Whitney Houston's album whilst in Leningrad. The record label is in English but the cover in Russian Cyrillic.

Great explanation! I was there in 1991 and the rye bread and ice cream sandwiches were great!

good content!

There was a cartoon in a Soviet newspaper of a button manufacturing factory which achieved its fiver year plan for button production by producing one giant button. I assume they had to produce a certain weight in buttons. The fact that it was printed in a newspaper tells you much of what was happening in Soviet Russia. The fact that the cartoonist could do this cartoon; and that it was printed by the newspaper; and that it got passed the censors, none of which should have happened. Even more interesting is that the authorities in these Eastern European countries never caught on the what was happening. There were a number of very popular cartoon series on TV in Eastern European countries which were very subversive but because of what seems to have been a total lack of a sense of humour amongst these authoritarian governments they rarely realised they were being mocked. Because western goods were so popular westerners in Soviet Russia were mugged for their jeans.

My mum told me how when she was young, she had to que up for a store very early in the morning before sunrise, long before the store opened, just to buy some toilet paper

18:51 the similar two-tier system also existed and expanded in China in the 1980s while the economy was transferring from central plan to market guide. It is also part of the reason for the 1989 riot in Beijing. Another fun fact is that in a planned economy, the supplier has better power. My father is a doctor. Nowadays in China, like in many other countries, many Pharmaceutical companies would try to bribe or even give commissions (illegal) to the doctors for better sales. But in a planned economy, doctors have to bribe the medicine suppliers for giving more medicine.

Ontario's Brewers Retail stores used the soviet retail system right up until we left in the early 2000s. Empty cans were displayed on a wall. You ordered from a person who called your order into a microphone with speakers in the rear warehouse. You stood in another line to pay. Your product would then wizz down a roller line and you would pick it up and leave. The lines on long weekends were epic.

I'm curious about the upside-down U.S. flags at around 10:09, at a point in the video where the narrator was talking about the USSR welcoming visitors. It doesn't seem possible that this would be by accident. Perhaps this was a delegation of young American Communists, having to use the flag to identify their group, but putting them upside to show their disapproval of the U.S. I don't know, but I'd love to find out.

I remember when a McDonalds opened in Moscow with lines stretching for blocks. I wonder what that must have been like?

Great video, really weird choice of background music, made it sound like a horror film!

Great vlog as always. I know jobs like sailors, air crews and performers was the jobs to have to be able to get out of the USSR. Then you could buy things that you was not able to get a hold of. Air hostesses wore a lot of make up. That was then a sign that, yes I can get a hold of things that you can not. I remember as late as the mid 90s SU (Aeroflot) ground crew ordred uplift with the local catering almost on all flights foreign vodka. In Oslo they ordred a LOT of Absolut vodka. IDK if they sold it back home or used it as bribes, or all of the above.

Fascinating Topic! Thank you

I remember visiting relatives in the DDR in the mid 80's. There always seemed to be food available but we always brought in sausage, chocolate and extra clothes. The one thing that still sticks out in my mind today was the quality of the toilet paper. I swear it was of the same consistency as construction paper!! Lol

Thanks

I was startled to find even tiny inaccuracies in this truly magnificent channel. of which I am an immense admirer. Just one example Kolkhoz markets were not illegal but tolerated. They were fully legal. This does not undermine the accurate general picture, so perhaps my concern is misplaced pedantry.