Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I was born in USSR and it collapsed when I was seven so my memories of it were at the very end when things were tough and scarce. I remember school books that were still about Lenin and Stalin, and we would write essays about Labor day parades and red hammer-and-sickle flags during our English classes, it sounded funny even for us first graders.
Yet, whatever little was available was cheap, we would have deficit problems but not financial ones unless you were trying to buy something that was smuggled into the country, like jeans.
We would take flights to Kazakhstan where my grandma lived, no borders no visas obviously. They lived on their own land there and were much better off in terms of food availability (Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).
Then we reached the point when food stamps had to be distributed and it was outright scary. I remember standing by our front door crying, because my mom gave me a bread stamp and sent me to get some bread, and I lost the stamp on the way and couldn't bring myself to go back home. Eventually I was absent long enough for her to start worrying and she opened the door to go out and found me there sobbing.
... Not sure what to say, but kids shouldn't cry about bread.
jesus, that reletively makes the Cuban food scarcity look like a charity.
Interesting, thanks for sharing! Those pictures of the barren grocery stores look terrible. I went to Russia in the mid 90s, and while consumer goods were not as abundant as in the US, the stores did not look as bad as in those pictures. However, I remember that meat was a bit scarce. We mostly had soup, eggs, bread, and potatoes. In fact, one time we went for an extravagant night out to a restaurant, and I was told that I was really lucky to have some sort of meat entree (like a steak or similar, can't remember exactly).