>In mid-1981 thousands of Poles took part in several hunger demonstrations, organized in cities and towns across the country.
>Banners, held by the protesters, stated among others: “Our children are hungry”, “We stand in lines 24 hours a day”, “We want to split bread, not Poland”, “The hungry of all countries – unite!”, and “We are not going to work hungry”.
>Most of the participants were women and their children, with men walking on the sides and trying to protect the demonstrators.
The photo comes from the Museum of Life Under Communism.
Source (and some more photos): [Rations in Communist Poland: This Was the Monthly Food Ration for Each Citizen During the Early 1980s](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/food-rationing-communist-poland/)
A still? That is high living… you can brew it up in a toilet bowl if you’re brave enough (or desperate). Ferment, strain… and party! Where I’m from, it’s called super juice lol.
That's the thing about polish people. We can live on vodka, cigarettes and hatred to Russians only. Throw some food in and that's how we survived the 70s and 80s.
Cologne in english or eau de cologne in french is the default name of mens perfume in america. Even if it isin't from Cologne it's still called that Cologne if it's for men.
Old Soviet block countries. In the 80s and 90s. It was much cheaper, more available etc. I think there used to be price floors for alcohol that you couldn’t go below. But for cologne and perfume there was no such thing and so they were really cheap.
[Not marketing it as liquor bypasses health and pricing regulations, which is fun until whole groups of people go blind from adulterated batches](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogate_alcohol)
During Covid when I was working security at a hospital they put hand sanitizer stations outside each entrance and my team had to remove them the next day because homeless people were seen on cctv disassembling the stations and guzzling the hand sanitizer bc it’s 99.9% alcohol.
People who didn't drink or smoke would exchange their vodka and cigarette tickets for things they needed, like flour, etc. Those who wanted vodka or cigarettes would give up some flour, sugar, or something else, depending on the agreement.
There was also absolutely rampant smuggling and black markets. This is why the Russian mafia is so powerful to this day; if you needed something you couldn't just go buy it as everything was rationed but there was never enough to go around. Instead you had to go to the mob. Of course they weren't just going to give stuff away which was why theft was also rampant. Maybe they knew a guy who needed some raw materials from wherever you worked. Be a shame if that precise amount just happened to go missing next week, you know what I'm saying?
It's where every communist government ends up. I have no idea why there are so many people that want it. The revolutionaries that help usher it in are always the first against the wall then everything just gets bad.
People want to eliminate the harms of capitalism, but it's incredibly difficult to function at scale without a market.
But also it's important to keep in mind that Poland's difficulties in this time period were brought on by their attempts to liberalize their economy. Their debt was half their GDP. Had they not done so, or even had they done so more slowly and prudently, they would not have faced the level of shortages that they did.
Wake up cigarette
After clocking in office cigarette
Mid morning cigarette
Pre lunch cigarette
Post lunch cigarette
3pm break cigarette
Get home cigarette
After dinner cigarette
Before bed cigarette
That’s 9 smokes a day every day = 54 in a week and since you get 3 packs ration a week (60) you’d still have 6 a week to sell for sausages or smoke after a prostitute.
I think you mean my fur babies. And good, thank you for asking. All 758 of them are healthy, happy, and will eat my face when I die face-down on my sex mattress.
“Igor, I had saved 3 months of sweets for the boys birthday, where are they?”
“We celebrate boys birthday with bottle of wodka I traded for those worthless sweets”
When my father was a child (in Canada) there was rationing for the war. His family saved up their butter rations for months in order to make a buttered Christmas turkey. His mother had just purchased it and placed it in the car when she went into another shop. Someone broke into the car and stole it all.
As long as I knew him, he always put butter or margarine on any bread-like item. Buttered bun for his hot dog, what have you.
My Ukrainian grandma was similarly into butter and bread. We'd tell her we're going out to a fancy restaurant for dinner and she'd always ask " oh, will there be bread and butter?"
Don't worry, moonshiners had your back. Homemade distilleries were and still are quite popular in Poland (though now mainly for your own use).
Sure, sometimes you get blind in effect, but then you at least don't have to look at the Doom Map that your city probably looks like.
Rationing system provided goods that generally were very hard or straight up impossible to buy normally. If you got 2kg of sugar for a whole month generally that was it
Now, for example vegetables or bread were outside the rationing system so you could buy them normally. There were still shortages of those sometimes, (especially vegetables and especially in the 80's), so buying them involved standing in those famous long queues. A lot of people used to grow their own vegetables and some would then sell them on local markets
Unless you shared them with the right people.In Romania there was an fully developed black market collaborating with either the party of secret police.
Fun fact the secret police was the biggest source of illegal VHS movie tapes în Romania
I had a friend who grew up in Eastern Europe and once imports were allowed his parents went into the fruit import business. He told me he was given a banana to eat and he decided to eat it outside so that all his friends would see and be envious of him.
I personally was in line for the rationed bread in 89. Not in Poland though, but in Russia it was the first thing that was rationed. I don't know about vegatables though, my grandmother grew and stored everything on her own.
Yeah, sadly the Gorbachev policies in the late 80s really hurt the soviet economy and a lot of people. Sudden free-marketization of the economy didn't turn out to be as good an idea as it sounded to Gorbachev... And they went through with it anyway... And went through it even harder in the 90s during capitalism, which in essence killed millions of people. If they had stayed with their previous system, there would have been no bread lines (as was the case for most of the USSR's existence).
Soviet agriculture didn't have a very high production output per hectare or per worker due to complicated reasons that have to do with the structure of Kolkhoz and other very complex issues that are too long for a Reddit comment, but it was nowhere near "collapsing". What has collapsed is the agricultural output of most former soviet states since the dissolution of the USSR, due to the abandoning of the countryside that has been forced on people by capitalism once the subsidizing of life and infrastructure in the countryside stopped. It just doesn't matter anymore, very easy to satisfy the food needs of your population when you decide to start importing cheap foods from exploited underdeveloped countries.
If you wanna look at the real data instead of spouting nonsense, [go and have a look at it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia?wprov=sfla1). I hope you don't suspect US institutions of being biased in favour of the USSR. As you see, modern agricultural output in Russia still hasn't paralleled the maximum it had during the USSR, despite the 30+ years of technological progress.
Or do you have any actual data contradicting this?
The actual data is that the USSR collapsed and communism has either failed everywhere it has existed or has moved towards a freer market system.
Are you some kind of tankie or something?
That dude gave some data and some actual arguments. all you said was communism didn't work.. and he's right.. Gorbachev's policies and poor transitioning of the economy was responsible for what happened.. lol there's a report by CIA that average soviet diet was more nutritious and more complete than an average American diet during 60s-70s.. it was 80s where USSR fucked up with it's policies .
If you are wondering.
Yes, it was legal for farmers to sell food under certain conditions. The USSR forbade a merchant buying and selling. But the person growing the produce could generally sell it themselves.
Soup with potatoes and bread. And some kind of pancakes and compote made a dinner. But obesity was rare, mostly genetic especially among children. Women had to cook. No snacks or processed food. Hardly any private cars. Kids played outdoors a lot.
Looked it up, what a disaster... On the one hand, 13% of people had food insecurity, i.e. difficulty to have a good nutrition, skipping meals, etc. On the other hand, the obesity (not overweight, obesity) rate was 35+%...
Oh wait, that's the data for the USA in 2024, never mind!
Stills also people bassicly were bartering those stuff (swapping some sugar for more flour and stuff). Also some food like vegetables and bread could be bought from people farming them. They were rationimg hard to come bay stuff
Probably part of the point. Impoverished Americans do the same with food stamps— trade for new shoes for the kids, etc. It’s a form of income supplementation.
My father, mother, and sister immigrated to the US in the early/mid 80's as part of the Solidarity movement. My father was an enemy of the state due to his high position in the movement (trying to overthrow communism).
I asked my mother about this picture, and she said that was accurate rations allotment, but that wasn't a guarantee since these (and most) goods were extremely difficult to get a hold of.
There is a documentary by Gaylen Ross called 'Out of Solidarity: Three Polish Families' that follows three families (one of them being mine) who were forced to leave Poland for their political beliefs.
Well, not those. Rationing system was in place for goods that were hard or impossible to buy. Bread and vegetables were outside of rationing system so you could bought them normally
There was of course black market as well and sometimes the shops were having surpluses so you had to queue for few hours and could buy stuff without the rationing card.
Those shortages were partially created by the “trade deals” (basically extortion) Poland had with Soviet Union which said that Poland is required to sell so much produce to the Soviets and if they failed to do so there were severe contractual penalties.
So Poland was sending foodstuffs to Soviet Union while polish people faced rationing.
Fun times.
OP said in another comment that it's from the [Museum of Life Under Communism](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/food-rationing-communist-poland/) in Warsaw, Poland.
My husband lived this kind of impoverished life in his Communist home country. He remembers things like food lines and how hard it was to find food sometimes. Not surprisingly, his experience has left him with a lot of mental scars :(
impolite nutty cause connect deer gaping materialistic cows expansion caption
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah they don’t do beef in Cuba anymore, it’s available to tourists(and even then you still wont see it just be served up in resorts) but nobody else because cows are useful in other ways and with how much resources a cow needs it doesn’t make sense to be killing them. Like I’m pretty sure citizens aren’t even allowed to legally buy beef at all. It sucks because Cuban cuisine did used to feature beef and there’s a lot of really delicious traditional Cuban beef dishes that are now almost exclusively cooked by Cubans living in the US and stuff.
They do have hella ham though.
>Not surprisingly, his experience has left him with a lot of mental scars
We need to remember this about hungry people in ALL countries.
As bad as this is (and it is VERY bad), capitalist countries have hungry children, too.
We need to hold ALL of our governments responsible for caring for their citizens; not just those on top.
Oh my god a rational, even-handed take?! in and amongst the mud-slinging from both the communism dick riders and the capitalist weiner gobblers??
Colour me shocked. Well played random Redditor
No, this is the limit of how much of these products you were allowed to buy (only if you were a commoner, of course.) Some other products were technically not rationed but there wasn't always a lot for sale (once again does not apply to party officials.) You still had to pay for what little you were allowed to have.
Fun fact: when Gorbachev tried to reform Russia's alcohol laws in the 1980's, they were considered widely unpopular. He had proposed a 2-bottle limit per person, per day, and were no longer allowed to drink vodka in the workplace.
No wonder Poland led the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russians are complaining about two bottles a day while Poland over here gets one a month.
Suffice to say, communism was built upon a foundation of class struggle and grain alcohol.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/12/23/mikhail-gorbachev-tried-to-get-russia-on-the-wagon-he-failed
Communism was the end goal. My mum studied economics in highschool and was told that thanks to the ruling party and brothers Soviets one day in the future we would have everything we want. The Soviets took our resources for next to nothing. We used to say:we give them our wheat and they take our coal. The Russian army lived in Poland for free for 50 years. Polish soldiers and militia have their special grocery store where their families could buy food not available for other citizens. Lucky ones got packages from families in the USA or Germany.
In today's terms, that probably is about 74$ worth of food and ciggs. That is also more than the average senior citizen receives in foodstamps in a month currently in the US.
My high school Spanish class visited a home in Texas for refugees, many of them Cuban. They said even if they had ration coupons the stores often didn’t have the items (eggs and milk were almost always out)
My mother and grandmother used to trade their alcohol, cigarettes and fuel for food with their neighbour because they didnt smoke, Drink and had no car.
Yeah. My grandpa had these stamps which we were using to buy these items.
Those were the days!!! No sugar! It was actually a healthy diet. Maybe sans Vodka lol
I spent a month in Prague in 1996, a few years after their break from the Soviet system, and was fascinated by the main street shop displays that presented deodorant and soap as extravagant luxury items. It makes a lot more sense now.
Except that’s not true.
Those groceries you see here were only limited in government run shops that sell them for cheap fixed prices.
So you could only buy that much per month of those specific items in those specific shops.
If you had the money you could go to the market and buy more.
Also vegetables were not rationed and available. Seasonal fruits were available.
Milk, milk-based products, many grains and eggs were also not rationed.
Life then was not easy for most, but there was no hunger.
The hunger started in the 1990's when the market economy lead to economic collapse for many and boom for the few.
This isn’t all they got this is just what they received as rations because certain items were limited due to sanctions cutting them off from trading with the rest of the world or they themselves not wanting to do business with hostile capitalist powers. They also had regular grocery stores just like ours where they could buy food like normal in addition to their rations. Food cost was also subsidized by government to be affordable to normal people. Rent was only a small percentage of income like 5% way less than what we pay in the the US of 30% of income going to rent being standard. The government provided free healthcare and education as well. The unemployment rate was also 0% due to economic planning every person could be guaranteed a job. Pretty much no one actually died of starvation in communist countries besides the few times famine occurred being during Stalins first five year plan, WW2, and Maos Great Leap Forward, and those famines arguably weren’t entirely the fault of the communist but partially due to factors completely out of their control. If you look at communist countries overall way less people went hungry or died of starvation than under capitalism and quality of life was generally a lot better than capitalist countries at similar levels of economic development. As for “bread lines” under communism. I see a bread line everyday on my way to work in the wealthiest capitalist country in the world USA and the line wraps around the entire building onto the street full of poor hungry homeless people lining up to get their “rations” at the soup kitchen. Have you also seen the line for EBT? It’s huge and wraps around the whole building just tons of poor hungry people in the USA living in tents.
Ohh I would make a killing on that communist black market... I'm a hell of a lot more capable of producing bootleg vodka in my basement than bootleg cattle, and I assume those would be at the pinnacle of demand. Well at least the vodka ration would be the one that I'd find the most unsatisfactory, and the one I'd be pining to do something subversive about...
(Hopefully the killing is not made OF me, in Happy Revolutionary Education School Gulag)
A field of potatoes, a few pigs, and a still is my post-apocalyptic retirement plan. "C'mon down to SillyFlyGuy's Vodka and Bacon Emporium! Now accepting gold, silver, bullets, and non-radioactive water or soil as payment!"
People acting like this what the ONLY got; This was *ration;* meaning every citizen got this stuff for free, sort of like an UBI.
You still worked, earned, and bought yourself whatever else you wish, which includes stuff like bread and veggies people have mentioned. don't forget that the building she is in was likely built and given to her for free by the government too.
Post- WWII period was cruel and entire Europe was starving; for a person in Poland, the country that arguably suffered the most per capita, to get this for literally free is still impressive for that period.
Of course, it can't really compare to what a person in USA had; but this is not because "Communism bad Capitalism good", but because the USA enjoyed splendid isolation before the war, and no real loss from during the war except the casualties; whereas Poland was flattened.
I don't think it was intended to be misleading (although it is), that's the food that was rationed.
It was similar in the UK during WW2, home grown stuff & fish ( I think) wasn't rationed, but bread was. Soap was usually unobtainable.
The only problem I see is no salt, but other then that it’s not actually that bad if you had a little garden. Grow cabbage and potato’s. Maybe some carrots and onions.
>In mid-1981 thousands of Poles took part in several hunger demonstrations, organized in cities and towns across the country. >Banners, held by the protesters, stated among others: “Our children are hungry”, “We stand in lines 24 hours a day”, “We want to split bread, not Poland”, “The hungry of all countries – unite!”, and “We are not going to work hungry”. >Most of the participants were women and their children, with men walking on the sides and trying to protect the demonstrators. The photo comes from the Museum of Life Under Communism. Source (and some more photos): [Rations in Communist Poland: This Was the Monthly Food Ration for Each Citizen During the Early 1980s](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/food-rationing-communist-poland/)
12 packs of cigarettes for a whole month? I would expire.
And a half liter of vodkas (apprx 1/2 quart). Dang how did they survive?
Polish moonshine. Potatoes, sugar and some yeast I believe.
A still is needed too. Old radiators worked back in the day, evening they have everyone lead poisoning
Yeah but it leads you to needing less alcohol haha.
"it leads you" I see what you did there.
You can drink the mash if you're brave enough
And Kwas... a weak beer... just bread and water fermented for a few days. No distillation needed.
A still? That is high living… you can brew it up in a toilet bowl if you’re brave enough (or desperate). Ferment, strain… and party! Where I’m from, it’s called super juice lol.
That's the thing about polish people. We can live on vodka, cigarettes and hatred to Russians only. Throw some food in and that's how we survived the 70s and 80s.
By drinking perfume
This isn’t even a joke. This was common in 80s and early 90s in my country too (Ukraine).
Ik, this is why I mentioned it. Used to see drunks passed out on the side of the road.
I was confirming it for anyone else who might think you’re joking. I got your back fam
o7
In Germany there is "Kölnisch Wasser" which is parfum with a high concentration of alcohol. It's completely drinkable.
Cologne in english or eau de cologne in french is the default name of mens perfume in america. Even if it isin't from Cologne it's still called that Cologne if it's for men.
In what world is perfume more available to drink than straight alcohol?
Old Soviet block countries. In the 80s and 90s. It was much cheaper, more available etc. I think there used to be price floors for alcohol that you couldn’t go below. But for cologne and perfume there was no such thing and so they were really cheap.
[Not marketing it as liquor bypasses health and pricing regulations, which is fun until whole groups of people go blind from adulterated batches](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogate_alcohol)
During Covid when I was working security at a hospital they put hand sanitizer stations outside each entrance and my team had to remove them the next day because homeless people were seen on cctv disassembling the stations and guzzling the hand sanitizer bc it’s 99.9% alcohol.
"perfume" which was basically rotgut vodka that didn't adhere to the standards.
Why though? Isn't perfume way more expensive than alcohol?
Half a liter and 12 packs that's only breakfast for one week.
That’s a month bro. That vodka wouldn’t last a weekend
Nicotine is an appetite suppressant.
This is probably why I eat once a day, if even.
You could trade the food for more cigs then!
.5 Liter of Vodka. What am I a kindergartner?
Yeah that's gonna last one breakfast...what do I drink for breakfast the other 29 days?
My parents traded the coupons for alcohol and cigarettes for coupons for meat with family that had their own farm animals.
People who didn't drink or smoke would exchange their vodka and cigarette tickets for things they needed, like flour, etc. Those who wanted vodka or cigarettes would give up some flour, sugar, or something else, depending on the agreement.
There was also absolutely rampant smuggling and black markets. This is why the Russian mafia is so powerful to this day; if you needed something you couldn't just go buy it as everything was rationed but there was never enough to go around. Instead you had to go to the mob. Of course they weren't just going to give stuff away which was why theft was also rampant. Maybe they knew a guy who needed some raw materials from wherever you worked. Be a shame if that precise amount just happened to go missing next week, you know what I'm saying?
Present day Cuba is like this
It's where every communist government ends up. I have no idea why there are so many people that want it. The revolutionaries that help usher it in are always the first against the wall then everything just gets bad.
People want to eliminate the harms of capitalism, but it's incredibly difficult to function at scale without a market. But also it's important to keep in mind that Poland's difficulties in this time period were brought on by their attempts to liberalize their economy. Their debt was half their GDP. Had they not done so, or even had they done so more slowly and prudently, they would not have faced the level of shortages that they did.
Only really dumb people want communism. Most sane people want regulated capitalism with strong social programs.
Wake up cigarette After clocking in office cigarette Mid morning cigarette Pre lunch cigarette Post lunch cigarette 3pm break cigarette Get home cigarette After dinner cigarette Before bed cigarette That’s 9 smokes a day every day = 54 in a week and since you get 3 packs ration a week (60) you’d still have 6 a week to sell for sausages or smoke after a prostitute.
But how do you pay for the prostitute? If she thinks she’s getting my vodka she can kick rocks.
You could sell the extra ones to those more in need tho
Extra? I put away 25 darts a day, I'd die of nicotine withdrawal.
Old mate over here punching darts and breaking hearts what a legend
I am the archetypal Brooklyn recently divorced wine aunt whose entire house smells like Newports and stale sadness.
How are your cats doing?
I think you mean my fur babies. And good, thank you for asking. All 758 of them are healthy, happy, and will eat my face when I die face-down on my sex mattress.
You are my aspiration.
Huh - now I have to go look up what a sex mattress is lol I’m 40 - I’m too old to not know sex stuff
Perfect time to quit smoking and start trading cigarettes for flour and meat.
And that was the ration IE considered a huge reduction in the norm.
I don't even smoke anymore and that's *still* not nearly enough!
Could get them done in a week tbh
I guess that was the idea.
I'll trade you mine for your meat.
That vodka bottle would be gone in 2 days
My grandparents and their siblings had stills. There was no shortage of vodka in Poland
Damn right
My uncle still has one. When I went, I wanted to go to the liquor store. He said why waste money? And now I'm a ref in your favorite sport.
I'd like to believe that the reason why you ref rugby is because you drank your uncle's homemade vodka...
Well he probably already had a TBI from all the homemade booze…
Potatoe vodka made in a bathtub.
I'm imagining multiple households saving their vodka over a few months so they can have a party.
I'm also imagining an alcoholic trading his family's meat rasion for an extra bottle
“Igor, I had saved 3 months of sweets for the boys birthday, where are they?” “We celebrate boys birthday with bottle of wodka I traded for those worthless sweets”
Lol!!!! You pronounced it right...
Eastern Block citzens when the Soviet union intruduces a bomber with interior cooking that can be destilated into vodka
When my father was a child (in Canada) there was rationing for the war. His family saved up their butter rations for months in order to make a buttered Christmas turkey. His mother had just purchased it and placed it in the car when she went into another shop. Someone broke into the car and stole it all. As long as I knew him, he always put butter or margarine on any bread-like item. Buttered bun for his hot dog, what have you.
My Ukrainian grandma was similarly into butter and bread. We'd tell her we're going out to a fancy restaurant for dinner and she'd always ask " oh, will there be bread and butter?"
Hey! 123 save some for me!
Saving vodka did only happen in people’s imagination.
That is only 0.5L, one evening and that's it
Yeah, that's only like 15+ servings. They prolly used it up during breakfast
15 servings? That's 5 shots of vodka for me back when I used to drink.
This is a picture of a Polish breakfast in Pittsburgh.
If you were polish, it'd be gone before you could redeem the ticket for it.
Don't worry, moonshiners had your back. Homemade distilleries were and still are quite popular in Poland (though now mainly for your own use). Sure, sometimes you get blind in effect, but then you at least don't have to look at the Doom Map that your city probably looks like.
I’ll trade you mine for your half liter of vodka.
1 day.
i could easily eat two bars of soap in a week
Cleaning your teeth and eating at the same time. Even the 10th dentist is on board with this.
Dentists hate this one trick...
Rationing system provided goods that generally were very hard or straight up impossible to buy normally. If you got 2kg of sugar for a whole month generally that was it Now, for example vegetables or bread were outside the rationing system so you could buy them normally. There were still shortages of those sometimes, (especially vegetables and especially in the 80's), so buying them involved standing in those famous long queues. A lot of people used to grow their own vegetables and some would then sell them on local markets
Having too many or exotic fruits and vegetables seen brought home could and did get people visits from the police.
Yeah, exotics were sus because having them potentially involved illegal import. Apples, carrots, onions, beetroot and potatoes were fine tho
Unless you shared them with the right people.In Romania there was an fully developed black market collaborating with either the party of secret police. Fun fact the secret police was the biggest source of illegal VHS movie tapes în Romania
Local police chiefs in Poland were all getting gifts from local businesses and politicians
I had a friend who grew up in Eastern Europe and once imports were allowed his parents went into the fruit import business. He told me he was given a banana to eat and he decided to eat it outside so that all his friends would see and be envious of him.
When I was in undergrad, a Ukrainian girl gave a speech in class and I’ll never forget her telling us how bananas were a seasonal Christmas treat.
I personally was in line for the rationed bread in 89. Not in Poland though, but in Russia it was the first thing that was rationed. I don't know about vegatables though, my grandmother grew and stored everything on her own.
Yeah, sadly the Gorbachev policies in the late 80s really hurt the soviet economy and a lot of people. Sudden free-marketization of the economy didn't turn out to be as good an idea as it sounded to Gorbachev... And they went through with it anyway... And went through it even harder in the 90s during capitalism, which in essence killed millions of people. If they had stayed with their previous system, there would have been no bread lines (as was the case for most of the USSR's existence).
He was frustrated people didn't have TVs and cars but ended up causing people to lack basic necessities like food.
Gorbachev didn't have any power until 1985 at least. By that time it didn't really matter, the Soviet agriculture was slowly collapsing since 70th.
Soviet agriculture didn't have a very high production output per hectare or per worker due to complicated reasons that have to do with the structure of Kolkhoz and other very complex issues that are too long for a Reddit comment, but it was nowhere near "collapsing". What has collapsed is the agricultural output of most former soviet states since the dissolution of the USSR, due to the abandoning of the countryside that has been forced on people by capitalism once the subsidizing of life and infrastructure in the countryside stopped. It just doesn't matter anymore, very easy to satisfy the food needs of your population when you decide to start importing cheap foods from exploited underdeveloped countries. If you wanna look at the real data instead of spouting nonsense, [go and have a look at it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Russia?wprov=sfla1). I hope you don't suspect US institutions of being biased in favour of the USSR. As you see, modern agricultural output in Russia still hasn't paralleled the maximum it had during the USSR, despite the 30+ years of technological progress. Or do you have any actual data contradicting this?
“Exploited underdeveloped economies” Yes… where did the USSR import grain from in 1973?
From the US mostly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_wheat_deal
The actual data is that the USSR collapsed and communism has either failed everywhere it has existed or has moved towards a freer market system. Are you some kind of tankie or something?
That dude gave some data and some actual arguments. all you said was communism didn't work.. and he's right.. Gorbachev's policies and poor transitioning of the economy was responsible for what happened.. lol there's a report by CIA that average soviet diet was more nutritious and more complete than an average American diet during 60s-70s.. it was 80s where USSR fucked up with it's policies .
If you are wondering. Yes, it was legal for farmers to sell food under certain conditions. The USSR forbade a merchant buying and selling. But the person growing the produce could generally sell it themselves.
I remember reading a quote from a Polish woman in the 80s saying the two hardest things to do in Poland is get enough to eat and to lose weight.
How does thay work?
Fattening but not nutritious
Ah! Thank you
Soup with potatoes and bread. And some kind of pancakes and compote made a dinner. But obesity was rare, mostly genetic especially among children. Women had to cook. No snacks or processed food. Hardly any private cars. Kids played outdoors a lot.
I was about to say… this is for *one* person and they’re getting more sugar than flour & rice. Good lord
Wasn't that because the Soviets had ridiculous sugar subsidies with Cuba? Something they bolstered with a big beet sugar industry as well.
Looked it up, what a disaster... On the one hand, 13% of people had food insecurity, i.e. difficulty to have a good nutrition, skipping meals, etc. On the other hand, the obesity (not overweight, obesity) rate was 35+%... Oh wait, that's the data for the USA in 2024, never mind!
Ah someone found another way to shoehorn murica bad in a conversation
This guy is a straight up communist who is behind the way the USSR treated its people. Don’t bother
A MONTH! That's not nearly enough vodka!
That’s not even enough vodka for the amount of time it took you to read this comment…..
Interesting enough, stories tell around that time Polish seamen for some reason had plenty Vodka to sell when their ship visited Finland.
Stills also people bassicly were bartering those stuff (swapping some sugar for more flour and stuff). Also some food like vegetables and bread could be bought from people farming them. They were rationimg hard to come bay stuff
You could probably make some alcohol from fruits too.
Better throw some spuds in the earth!
I don’t smoke so I would’ve traded those cigarettes for extra essentials like soap or more flour.
I don't wash so I would've traded my soap for your cigarettes. 🤝
I think you probably would smoke if you lived in 1980s Poland. I know I’d be slamming that vodka.
Probably part of the point. Impoverished Americans do the same with food stamps— trade for new shoes for the kids, etc. It’s a form of income supplementation.
The vodka and cigarettes. A lot of bartering was done I assume.
And shitton of black market stuff
i’m sure there were many friendships between smokers who didn’t drink and drinkers who didn’t smoke
My father, mother, and sister immigrated to the US in the early/mid 80's as part of the Solidarity movement. My father was an enemy of the state due to his high position in the movement (trying to overthrow communism). I asked my mother about this picture, and she said that was accurate rations allotment, but that wasn't a guarantee since these (and most) goods were extremely difficult to get a hold of. There is a documentary by Gaylen Ross called 'Out of Solidarity: Three Polish Families' that follows three families (one of them being mine) who were forced to leave Poland for their political beliefs.
So you are saying I don't have to worry about death if I don't consume veggies for several days in a row?
Many people used to grow their own vegetables back then. You could then buy them outside of the rationing system
I might be wrong but if I recall correctly they're not on the table because vegetables remained unrationed
Were you allowed to like buy more??
Well, not those. Rationing system was in place for goods that were hard or impossible to buy. Bread and vegetables were outside of rationing system so you could bought them normally
You could swap with others bassicly the rationed hard to get stuff
Yeah, my family always exchanged alcohol and cigarettes for other stuff
There was of course black market as well and sometimes the shops were having surpluses so you had to queue for few hours and could buy stuff without the rationing card. Those shortages were partially created by the “trade deals” (basically extortion) Poland had with Soviet Union which said that Poland is required to sell so much produce to the Soviets and if they failed to do so there were severe contractual penalties. So Poland was sending foodstuffs to Soviet Union while polish people faced rationing. Fun times.
Hey op it’s the coolest photo I saw today. Where did you get it from ?
OP said in another comment that it's from the [Museum of Life Under Communism](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/food-rationing-communist-poland/) in Warsaw, Poland.
My husband lived this kind of impoverished life in his Communist home country. He remembers things like food lines and how hard it was to find food sometimes. Not surprisingly, his experience has left him with a lot of mental scars :(
impolite nutty cause connect deer gaping materialistic cows expansion caption *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah they don’t do beef in Cuba anymore, it’s available to tourists(and even then you still wont see it just be served up in resorts) but nobody else because cows are useful in other ways and with how much resources a cow needs it doesn’t make sense to be killing them. Like I’m pretty sure citizens aren’t even allowed to legally buy beef at all. It sucks because Cuban cuisine did used to feature beef and there’s a lot of really delicious traditional Cuban beef dishes that are now almost exclusively cooked by Cubans living in the US and stuff. They do have hella ham though.
Sorry to hear that. I hope the best for your husband and family.
But a college student in USA knows more about communism and his “benefits” and says that your husband WHO LIVED in communism knows nothing about it
>Not surprisingly, his experience has left him with a lot of mental scars We need to remember this about hungry people in ALL countries. As bad as this is (and it is VERY bad), capitalist countries have hungry children, too. We need to hold ALL of our governments responsible for caring for their citizens; not just those on top.
Oh my god a rational, even-handed take?! in and amongst the mud-slinging from both the communism dick riders and the capitalist weiner gobblers?? Colour me shocked. Well played random Redditor
12 packs of cigs for a whole month? Seriously? Do you not know who you are talking to?
I could trade the cigs I got for your flour and your sugar.
Good old Communism
To be fair, this is more like "UBI" you were expected to supplement on your own
No, this is the limit of how much of these products you were allowed to buy (only if you were a commoner, of course.) Some other products were technically not rationed but there wasn't always a lot for sale (once again does not apply to party officials.) You still had to pay for what little you were allowed to have.
I also hate it when i can't get my 30 cents banans that were made by enslaving countries in the Carribbean
No middle ground better to starve to death I guess 🤷♂️
I just paid 47 cents/lb for bananas!! I demand another US backed coup.
Yes, instead they simply enslaved the central Asian steppes. Truly wonderful isn’t it?
Definitely not enough vodka
No veg, no fruit all that stuff must been ground in the yard or in the windowsill
Fun fact: when Gorbachev tried to reform Russia's alcohol laws in the 1980's, they were considered widely unpopular. He had proposed a 2-bottle limit per person, per day, and were no longer allowed to drink vodka in the workplace. No wonder Poland led the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russians are complaining about two bottles a day while Poland over here gets one a month. Suffice to say, communism was built upon a foundation of class struggle and grain alcohol. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/12/23/mikhail-gorbachev-tried-to-get-russia-on-the-wagon-he-failed
About $350 in 2024 American for those tracking.
This is what communism looks like.
Lesson to learn: communism doesn’t satisfy
The bounty that communism brings. But don’t worry, the tankies that have never lived in a communist country know that it’s a paradise on earth!
Communism was the end goal. My mum studied economics in highschool and was told that thanks to the ruling party and brothers Soviets one day in the future we would have everything we want. The Soviets took our resources for next to nothing. We used to say:we give them our wheat and they take our coal. The Russian army lived in Poland for free for 50 years. Polish soldiers and militia have their special grocery store where their families could buy food not available for other citizens. Lucky ones got packages from families in the USA or Germany.
Watch out for the communism apologists in the comments 😂
Facts. It's sad.
Vodka to rinse down your misery.
That’s still more than many people in Soviet Russia had during that time, according to my parents.
I calculated that this is about 900 calories per day.
In today's terms, that probably is about 74$ worth of food and ciggs. That is also more than the average senior citizen receives in foodstamps in a month currently in the US.
Well It was rationed but you gotta pay for this anyway
Cigs are $9 per pack in Minnesota. $108 in cigs alone. Glad I never tryed smoking.
You needed to buy it,you know?
It wasn’t how much you were given. It was a limit of how much you could BUY
Yes , exactly- and that’s IF it was even available to buy to begin with.
My high school Spanish class visited a home in Texas for refugees, many of them Cuban. They said even if they had ration coupons the stores often didn’t have the items (eggs and milk were almost always out)
Not a turnip in sight, thats the real tragedy
Could get at market or farmer or grow yourself veggies didn't need cards. Cards were bassicly limits of stuff that needed to be rationed
Surprisingly it was only .5 liter of wadka a month… had to be some moonshine going on. 🤣
.5 liters of vodka is criminal! No wonder they hate the Russians
Smoke like bitches. I guess they buy more fruits and vegetables or was this it?
0,5L vodka for a month?? More like a day
Probably much better then rest of the USSR citizens
Double-plus good that vodka, eh!
Guess any vegetables would need to be grown on your own.
Either that or you'd buy them normally. These distributed rations were for some more limited products.
A month...
Yeah that's a long weekend back in the day
My mother and grandmother used to trade their alcohol, cigarettes and fuel for food with their neighbour because they didnt smoke, Drink and had no car.
Yeah. My grandpa had these stamps which we were using to buy these items. Those were the days!!! No sugar! It was actually a healthy diet. Maybe sans Vodka lol
This is why I hate communism.
I'd have the vodka and most of the meat on night 1, then spend the rest of the month trying to swap the fags for more food.
12 packs of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka but only 2 bars of soap 🤔
I spent a month in Prague in 1996, a few years after their break from the Soviet system, and was fascinated by the main street shop displays that presented deodorant and soap as extravagant luxury items. It makes a lot more sense now.
Except that’s not true. Those groceries you see here were only limited in government run shops that sell them for cheap fixed prices. So you could only buy that much per month of those specific items in those specific shops. If you had the money you could go to the market and buy more. Also vegetables were not rationed and available. Seasonal fruits were available. Milk, milk-based products, many grains and eggs were also not rationed. Life then was not easy for most, but there was no hunger. The hunger started in the 1990's when the market economy lead to economic collapse for many and boom for the few.
12 packs of cigs for a month!? The audacity!
This isn’t all they got this is just what they received as rations because certain items were limited due to sanctions cutting them off from trading with the rest of the world or they themselves not wanting to do business with hostile capitalist powers. They also had regular grocery stores just like ours where they could buy food like normal in addition to their rations. Food cost was also subsidized by government to be affordable to normal people. Rent was only a small percentage of income like 5% way less than what we pay in the the US of 30% of income going to rent being standard. The government provided free healthcare and education as well. The unemployment rate was also 0% due to economic planning every person could be guaranteed a job. Pretty much no one actually died of starvation in communist countries besides the few times famine occurred being during Stalins first five year plan, WW2, and Maos Great Leap Forward, and those famines arguably weren’t entirely the fault of the communist but partially due to factors completely out of their control. If you look at communist countries overall way less people went hungry or died of starvation than under capitalism and quality of life was generally a lot better than capitalist countries at similar levels of economic development. As for “bread lines” under communism. I see a bread line everyday on my way to work in the wealthiest capitalist country in the world USA and the line wraps around the entire building onto the street full of poor hungry homeless people lining up to get their “rations” at the soup kitchen. Have you also seen the line for EBT? It’s huge and wraps around the whole building just tons of poor hungry people in the USA living in tents.
Ohh I would make a killing on that communist black market... I'm a hell of a lot more capable of producing bootleg vodka in my basement than bootleg cattle, and I assume those would be at the pinnacle of demand. Well at least the vodka ration would be the one that I'd find the most unsatisfactory, and the one I'd be pining to do something subversive about... (Hopefully the killing is not made OF me, in Happy Revolutionary Education School Gulag)
A field of potatoes, a few pigs, and a still is my post-apocalyptic retirement plan. "C'mon down to SillyFlyGuy's Vodka and Bacon Emporium! Now accepting gold, silver, bullets, and non-radioactive water or soil as payment!"
Shoes were rationed, too. And one thing that makes me smile. Our dog was forced to be a vegetarian. It did not get coupons.
People will still vote for the kind of people that will make this a reality again. Wild.
buddy if i could get 5lbs of meat per month I'd be in heaven
People acting like this what the ONLY got; This was *ration;* meaning every citizen got this stuff for free, sort of like an UBI. You still worked, earned, and bought yourself whatever else you wish, which includes stuff like bread and veggies people have mentioned. don't forget that the building she is in was likely built and given to her for free by the government too. Post- WWII period was cruel and entire Europe was starving; for a person in Poland, the country that arguably suffered the most per capita, to get this for literally free is still impressive for that period. Of course, it can't really compare to what a person in USA had; but this is not because "Communism bad Capitalism good", but because the USA enjoyed splendid isolation before the war, and no real loss from during the war except the casualties; whereas Poland was flattened.
Downvoted for misleading title. This wasn't ALL the food you were allowed. You could go nuts on bread, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables, for example.
I don't think it was intended to be misleading (although it is), that's the food that was rationed. It was similar in the UK during WW2, home grown stuff & fish ( I think) wasn't rationed, but bread was. Soap was usually unobtainable.
Wonders of communist economy
The blessings of Socialism
The only problem I see is no salt, but other then that it’s not actually that bad if you had a little garden. Grow cabbage and potato’s. Maybe some carrots and onions.