Sometimes my grandmother took me to a city of Ulan-Ude, where I had to stand in the ubiquitous Russian live queues or for a kickback buy from the back door some expired bread; grandmother used such stale bread to feed her pigs. I also remember soviet groceries, which were more like a way to show the proletarean slaves their place in the glorious communist society of USSR.
Typical people's grocery in the USSR consisted of 6 departments: vegetables/fruits, bread, cookery/sugar/sweets, cereals/pasta, wine/vodka, meat/fish/canned food. Also in the grocery there were cash desks and they worked cunningly: the cashier serves only 1, 3 and 5 departments, the second only 2, 4 and 6. Therefore queues at cash desks were always longer than the queues in the related departments, and those who had by mistake went to the wrong department cashier were rudely turned off, and ridiculed by other grocery visitors. The process of purchasing was as follows: after standing in line to the right department, you asked the saleswoman (fat rude soviet woman) to weight you 200g of beef, The seller cuts off a stale piece and puts in on the old squeaky mechanical scales "Tyumen" (tuned to add gram 10 over real weight), weights, and wraps into paper, on which she writes weight and puts it aside. Then she calculates the cost of the goods using abacus, and gives your a piece of paper, which includes the department number, how many grammes, the price, the seller's signature. Having reaching the end of queue at the correct cash desk for that department, you pass this piece of paper to the cashier, she produces a check and takes away that piece of paper. However, there was often a problem of shortage of change money, because the cashier treasured her coins sacredly, forcing you to pay more than the price, if you wanted to purchase anything at all.
Then it was necessary to wait again in the queue for receiving the goods, parallel to the queue for weighing, while the seller issued the goods in the intervals between the weighings. One had to literally beg the seller to bring your rotten piece of beef. After that, your check was solemnly pinned on a special awl sticking out of a wooden stand. Then the same process had to be carried out in other departments, forcing you to spent about 3 hours in the grocery. I will add that all the goods were packed into gray paper of the lowest quality with inclusions of black dots of unknown origin, often such wrapper tightly clung to the meat that you was so lucky to get; for liquid products, like milk or smetana, you had to bring your own container. By the way, it was impossible to return the purchased goods, because even a check was withdrawn from you when you received the goods. Also in these groceies were filled with sickening stench - a mixture of the smell of rotten vegetables, mold, rotten fish and decomposing meat. In the summer the soviet grocery was unbearably stuffy, without any air conditioning. Buyers considered this service to be normal and almost did not complain, and those who asked for the manager or the book of complaints were unable to achieve anything.
I remember the Soviet refrigerators-showcases with peeling paint, which constantly broke down. Under them there was water mixed with blood from meat, swarming flies and rags put under the bottom by the scrubwoman. Bread department had forks hanging on ropes (to prevent people from stealing them); these forks were used to check yesterday's and the day before yesterday's bread and choose the least stale. In the vegetable department there was an elevator for potatoes. Potatoes were loaded by porters mixed with dirt somewhere in the bowels of the grocery, went to the elevator belt, it was weighed in some way, then the staff member pulled the lever and the rotten potatoes with a roar and dust poured out of a hole with a descent similar to a shovel and filled the buyer's supplied string bag (of course, in Russian shop you can not refuse to buy the rotten potatoes or cherry pick anything at all). Because of this earthen dust, the vegetable department was the dirtiest in the grocery, and the scrubwoman constantly lounged around it, lazily moving the dirt with a broom.
For a short time they took me to the kindergarten, which I remembered by its totalitarian order: the caregivers forced children to sleep during the day, even if they did not want to, and after sleep children were put on the bench and forced to sit for a long time, punishing be locking in closet like room with brooms and buckets, if one of the children wanted to play, instead of sitting still. I some child wanted to visit toilet, he had to wait for the time allocated for that activity, when all children were collectively siting on toilette pots in a single toilet room, under the supervision of the caregivers. As the wildest child, I tried to escape from kindergarten, but I got lost and was caught on one of the floors in the kitchen. I received beating as punishment, during beating caregiver used a lot of swearing words, and then I was closed in the utility room without light, along with buckets and mops. However, I was not taken to the kindergarten after that: the administration convinced my grandmother that such restless children were detrimental to the collective discipline. Later this characteristic became one of the motives for committing me for treatment into a psychiatric asylum. The failed escape from the kindergarten was an early subconscious attempt to escape from Russia. Grandfather, Moskalev, was angry that he put a lot of effort into getting me accepted into the kindergarten, and I did not understand what I had done. Perhaps my grandfather was afraid that I would also run away from the army without growing up into a real Russian man, becoming a disgrace to the family.
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Anonymous2018-06-08 16:54
>>5 Commies still shill ussr as some utopian paradise, all of it was PR scam. Btw I have 20 cans of 'sea cabbage salat' thats made in Russia and its shit. It has some kind of stone specks or glass pieces and sometimes colored plastic. But its really cheap and has iodine.
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Anonymous2018-06-10 16:34
the boomer would die of a heart attack, but the incel, despite being younger and fitter, would commit suicide because they became depressed after reading misleading garbage on social media