home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
011689
/
01168900.030
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-17
|
3KB
|
57 lines
WORLD, Page 36A Shopper's Day
Armed with a list of six items, TIME Moscow correspondent Ann
Blackman set out last week to see what Soviet consumers experience
when they try to buy even the most basic goods. On Blackman's list:
beef, apples, carrots, sugar, laundry soap and toothpaste.
12:30 p.m. I go into a two-counter shop near my apartment. One
bin holds small yellowish apples that have played host to a worm
or two. Ten minutes later I find better apples at a private stand.
I wait in line three minutes and buy a dozen at $1.88 per lb.
12:45 p.m. At a grocery store that will close in 15 minutes for
an hour-long lunch break, a saleslady tries to keep me from
entering. But others push past her, so I join the rush. A
refrigerated bin holds brown paper bags filled with ground meat,
half a dozen scrawny chickens and four packages of beef -- fatty,
mostly bone and covered in grimy cellophane -- priced at $1.60 per
lb. I stand in line for 14 minutes and buy a 2-lb. package of beef.
There had been some sugar that morning, an employee informs me, and
there may be some in the afternoon. I pass an outdoor state fruit
stand that will not open for nearly an hour. Seventeen people are
already in line, waiting for prized tangerines.
1:22 p.m. A good sign: a long queue just inside a hardware
store. Obviously, something scarce is available. It turns out to
be laundry soap, brown waxy bars that people must grate into
washing machines. I join the line, No. 68. "We never used to stand
in line for soap," says Alexandra Vasivna, a Moscow pensioner and
No. 69. "I don't know what's happened." I hold her place while she
sees how much is left. "Nine cartons," she reports. "I don't know
if we'll get any." A man in front grumbles, "We would if people
didn't hoard." At 1:48, I finally reach the soap counter. One bar,
36 cents.
1:50 p.m. I rush to a store about to close for lunch. No
toothpaste here. I head for the private farmers' market, where
prices are too high for most Soviets but the quality and selection
are far superior to that in state stores.
2:10 p.m. Usually the market is crowded, but today business is
as limp as the rotting persimmons on display. I buy carrots at
$1.64 per lb., three times the price of their frail cousins at the
state store but six times better looking.
3:15 p.m. Already exhausted, I walk four more blocks through
ankle-deep slush to another store for toothpaste. I select some,
proceed to a separate counter to a cashier with an abacus, pay the
bill, then go back to the toothpaste counter with a stamped ticket
to pick up my purchase.
3:40 p.m. Home at last. Elapsed shopping time: 3 hr. 10 min.
Total cost of purchases: $9.42. I never did find sugar. But that's
not unusual. What impresses one is the constant struggle the
Soviets must go through every day to buy those things that so many
Westerners take for granted.