When the customs official at Leningrad Airport had finished going through my baggage, he took me aside and asked me how long I would be staying in the Soviet Union. “About a-month,” J teld him. “You’ll learn a lot in that time,” he said. “You’ll see for yourself that our socialist way is the best way.” “We’ll see,” I replied. “Now about your baggage.” His voice had dropped several notches. “Is there anything in it that yo would like to sell?” This exchange—highlighting the acute shortage of consumer goods in the USSR—still stands out among my memories of my trip to the Soviet Union. The tourist cannot ignore the people who roam Gorky Street trying to buy almost anything he is willing to sell. If the visitor sold the Russians everything they wanted to buy, he ~ would continue his journey naked as a jaybird. Another time I was watching a food line on Bakunin Street in Lenin-grad. It was closing time, but a couple ef hundred people were still in line; some of them had been there for several hours. Whenever a customer left several others would force their way in. A clerk tried to block a sweet-looking old lady, she bashed him in the face with her handbag. Finally, a militiaman arrived in response to the manager’s summons, but the crowd drew his attention to the door and then forced entrance from another direction. Exasperated, he lashed out with his hands and sent several people sprawling to the sidewalk.
Food is not the only commodity in short supply. While in Bukhara I witnessed a wild scene in front of a store which had just received a shipment of three hundred pairs of Italian-made shoes. The store was asking $18 for a pair of simple summer sandals; ladies’ pumps brought $33 a pair. Within a very short time the crowd had grown so large that traffic was disrupted and the store closed.
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