Lucky lady in the main photo with a 2.5kg haul of meat<p>That was worth a lot of vodka and cigarettes in the lines<p>We used to stand in line from 6am until 12-4pm. Siblings would take turns on who got to go to school that day and who had to stand in line. Eventually some schools started doing a 12pm start for half the school.<p>Rarely did we get meat, almost never veg aside from potatoes. Resulted in some very creative but delicious recipes.
I estimated from the photo:<p>Vodka: 231 kcal/100ml * 500ml = 1155 kcal<p>Meat: say 300 kcal/100g * 2.5kg = 7500 kcal<p>Butter: 717 kcal/100g * 500g = 3585 kcal<p>Cooking oil: 884 kcal/100g * say 300g = 2652 kcal<p>Sweets: say 387 kcal/100g * 250g = 967 kcal<p>Rice, uncooked: 364 kcal/100g * 1.3kg = 4732 kcal<p>Sugar: 387 kcal/100g * 2kg = 7740 kcal<p>Flour: 364 kcal/100g * 1.3kg = 4732 kcal<p>Total 1155+7500+3585+2652+967+4732+7740+4732 = 33063 kcal<p>That's 33063 kcal for a month, or 1086 kcal per day on average... how? Long-term, that's a starvation diet, and that's assuming you consume every gram of everything you get including the cooking oil, the vodka, and the unhealthy amount of sugar.<p>[edit] I see now that some products were not rationed, but still, this seems like a rather restrictive diet and indeed from the article:<p>>In mid-1981 thousands of Poles took part in several hunger demonstrations, organized in cities and towns across the country.<p>>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”.
I'm from Poland. We moved the US when I was a young child.<p>I still remember taking a picture around 1990 after going to Costco/PriceClub the day my dad got a raise to $20 an hour. We bought a lot of groceries, put them on the kitchen table, and took a timed photo the 3 of us and all the groceries.
The early-mid 1980s was a tough time, but it is remarkable how rationing had been overcome by the late 1980s. Near the end of the decade, a Polish–Russian relative of mine was delivering food to friends and family in Russia, because some products were now relatively abundant in Poland while Russia dealt with shortages.<p>My own, purely anecdotal impression from looking at the background of photos and video recordings from Poland circa 1988–1989 is that that country (or at least a few parts of it) was already better off than other Warsaw Pact countries.
So many interesting things here: first, only .5L of vodka per month? That surprises me, as I know people who would go through that in a single weekend, let alone an entire month... especially in Poland, known for their drinking culture, that little amount of (what seems to be cheap to produce) alcohol is striking. Second, these are all just staples: the only real things one could make out of these rations are bread, meat, and rice—which is odd in of itself: I wouldn't expect rice to be a part of the Polish diet. I'm assuming vegetables and other foods like that weren't rationed, and/or people grew it themselves.
- <i>"Article based on A ration card for survival – rationing in Communist Poland by Andrzej Zawistowski"</i><p>I don't think you can copy-and-paste large exact text passages in bulk [0] and pass it off as "based on". This is simply plagiarism.<p>[0] <a href="https://polishhistory.pl/a-ration-card-for-survival-rationing-in-communist-poland/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://polishhistory.pl/a-ration-card-for-survival-rationin...</a><p>I remember this website: I caught it on HN plagiarizing Wikipedia in a different article (with zero attribution in that case) [1]. It's a spam domain of some kind, it's not legitimate in any sense.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36032869">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36032869</a>
"The central planning system, while intended to ensure equitable distribution, was riddled with inefficiencies and mismanagement."<p>I'm shocked. <i>Shocked</i>, I say!
both cigarettes and liquor are tremendously addictive; yet the allocation is written as "essential" .. only decades earlier, massive and cruel killing spread across that region, persistent the minds of so many.<p>This bit of history is completely foreign to me and I am listening, but there is more going on that what is being discussed. Like a family argument, where the thing said is to hurt the opponent more than the center of the conflict.
"The central planning system, while intended to ensure equitable distribution, was riddled with inefficiencies and mismanagement."<p>I'm shocked. *Shocked*, I say!
This is what communism brought for those who lived under it. After 50 years people had to line up to get their food. Just look around the world and see what people who live under that system reap, poverty and slavery. Thank God Poland freed itself from that evil imposed on it by Russia who was the main driver of that garbage. Can you believe Russia still glorifies it and celebrates it's hero's Lenin and Stalin, insane.....