The price policy just created shortages, so yes the item was stamped with a price, but unless you knew someone who owed you a favor or slipped the clerk somethi

The price policy just created shortages, so yes the item was stamped with a price, but unless you knew someone who owed you a favor or slipped the clerk something extra under the table, it would be hard for you to purchase it for that price. This also led to endless queueing, where standing in line was a full time job. It would not be uncommon to wait in line for a few hours when rumors spread that a particular store got some bread in, or that a butcher finally had some meat. This job was then assigned to grandmothers and others who did not have to show up to work -- to basically spend all day standing in line in front of various stores, hoping to come back with some groceries. That created an entire black market economy of side payments and private goods which were not stamped with a price, but the government tolerated this economy because they knew that without it, many household essentials could not be obtained. That normalization of bribes meant that if you had to go a doctor and wanted to be treated decently, a side payment was required. If your car broke down (although most people learned to fix most issues on their own) a side payment was required. If some apples became available and you wanted to get one, a little money or barter was needed. Maybe you had an uncle in the country who made some sausage, that could be exchanged for a dental visit in which anesthetic was provided. So the economy began to devolve to barter. If you were not good at politics and you had nothing to barter, life was pretty hard. I once traded a pack of sunflower seeds for private access to a UNESCO world heritage site. The friend of my uncle who was running the restoration (one of those eternal ongoing projects started in the 50s) unlocked the doors for me and let me crawl around the scaffolding. I was able to touch the frescos! But, you see, I had the desired sunflower seeds. This is portrayed beautifully in many underground books and even some mainstream books like Master and Margarita, where the main objective of everyone in the novel was obtaining an apartment in Moscow. Yes, those apartments were cheap, but available only to insiders or members of the nomenklatura. Hence the endless jockeying, politicking, and finagling to get onto various secret waiting lists or catch the favor of a government official who might in their beneficence put you on the right list.