Quote Originally Posted by maxmixiv View Post

This one was brilliant. However, in reality, it's so amazing how swiftly you 'stop being soviet' when you suddenly cannot buy basic food (not for decades, just for couple days). Collapse is not simply a word, it means a terrible thing. I mean the life in for example 1975 and the life in 1990 - are absolutely disparate categories (also as lifes in Omsk and in Moscow at any time: hence most people in Moscow's queues were from other regions).
I remember the article in some newspaper, belonging to about the time when McDonalds had opened, where some foreign firm shipped "foreign" ice-cream to Moscow, and, of course, the queue immediately was created. "Советские люди так любят мороженое?" - asked foreign businessman in amazement. The author of article replied to him: "Советские люди любят всё!" BTW, foreign ice-cream was an absolute crap in comparison to what I used to eat, let's say in 1975..1985.
In short, any idea could be ruined if the chiefs cannot provide simple food to citizens.
I absolutely loved the мароженое they sold in Soviet times. Delicious! Советское шампанское was another favorite. And as for food, well there was not a lot of variety when I was there because by then the economy was tanking... but there were still a few places where we went to eat and it was not all cockroaches and nastiness. There was a Georgian restaurant in Leningrad called "Tbilisi" which served some pretty good food. The commissary where we worked, on the other hand, that was nasty. But we got used to it. I learned not to look too closely at the cooks. Or at my plate. One time I found half a cockroach in my каша and I just pushed it aside and kept eating. That's when I knew I'd been there too long...