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Yawn. When I was growing up in USSR of 1980s, Pepsi was _everywhere_, for the cost 0.35 of a rouble for 0.33L. Soviet soda was .25 for .5 liter. Nor our family
by IWeldMelons 9y ago
Yawn. When I was growing up in USSR of 1980s, Pepsi was _everywhere_, for the cost 0.35 of a rouble for 0.33L. Soviet soda was .25 for .5 liter. Nor our family (teachers) was "subsistent" in any way. I remember having meat everyday, every once in a while my parents would buy a chocolate cake. It was much poorer than US, true, but waaay more affluent than China, India, Africa and rather capitalist Latin America.
- da02 9y agoWhat part of the USSR did you grow up in? Was it a major city?
- IWeldMelons 9y agoA big city in Central Asia.
- da02 9y agoWhat was the name of it? Or do you have to keep it a secret?
- jacquesm 9y agoWhen I was living in Poland in the mid 1980's you were very lucky to be able to buy toilet paper, lightbulbs, bread, meat, fruit and a ton of other everyday stuff. Though lots of people knew someone who knew someone that had just slaughtered a pig which could get you some meat. Hard currency bought you stuff from those stores the GP mentions, called Pewex, something like Pepsi was not seen in regular stores not operated by the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex
- disordinary 9y agoThe eastern block was obviously huge, some parts like the Baltic countries were relatively well off, others less so. The same as anywhere else in the world.
- IWeldMelons 9y agoTP had always been a problem in the USSR. But light bulbs and bread were not a problem even in the very late 1980s. Can't say much about the other countries of the Eastern Bloc.
- ch4ck 9y agoThere was no problem whatsoever with buying such things like bread or local fruit. Why? Because a great share of those was produced by private entrepreneurs and had the price set by an almost free market. Actually you can have a look at the statistical data and you will see that there were more pigs, cows, milk etc. then than now. The problem was with many products manufactured by the collectively/state owned enterprises, because the prices were set artificially low centrally. That caused lack of balance in the market. Of course you could buy those products paying market prices to the private entrepreneurs (called speculators by the government) in the free market (called gray or black market by the government). And I can assure you that Pepsi was sold in regular (not Pewex or Baltona) stores and those stores were state owned or controlled by the state (cooperatives) because private stores were almost nonexistent.
- mirimir 9y agoTrue, but it sucked that Coke was so hard to find.
- euos 9y agoGrew up in Kyiv. Pepsi was rare. I was probably 14 when I got a .33 bottle to myself, and not split 4 ways with my parents and brother.
- qbaqbaqba 9y agoPerhaps that's why people of Central and Eastern Europe don't miss Communism as Russians do. Comecon basically was a colonial system.