How Gorbachev created an artificial food shortage

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union, about 95 percent of domestic products were on the shelves. (Food security of the state is considered guaranteed at 80 percent).

Yes, in Soviet times, there was not enough green peas, sausages, sausages or cheese in the regions; for meat at prices affordable even for students, you had to stand in queues. But almost everything could be bought at the bazaar or "got" from under the counter at a double or triple price. Except maybe pineapple-bananas and other overseas fruits. Yes, there was a shortage, but no one was starving (all the more deadly).

Even in 1987, food production grew at a faster rate than the growth in population and wages. The increase in production in comparison with 1980 in the meat industry amounted to 135 percent, in the butter and cheese industry - 131, in the fish industry - 132, flour and cereals - 123. All food processing enterprises worked at full capacity and without interruptions. But already at the end of 1988, even in Moscow, from where residents of nearby cities and people on business trips took out everything they could "get", coupons appeared. Soon it became almost impossible to buy something using them. People were on duty in lines for days, making roll calls every three hours. We almost fought and wondered: where did everything suddenly go, right down to tobacco?

Only one conclusion can be drawn: the deficit was created artificially, and not at the stage of production, but in the sphere of distribution. And the best proof of this: on January 1, 1992, Gaidar's "shock therapy" began, and on January 2, food store shelves were already full. Every day, food prices rose by more than 30 percent every day. It was a blow to families' budgets. If before the "therapy" for 10 rubles, for example, you could buy bread, milk, eggs and greens (albeit after the queue), then for these 10 rubles you could only buy bread.

“There is a document: the speech of the future first mayor of Moscow, Gavriil Popov, at the Interregional Deputy Group, where he said that it is necessary to create such a situation with food, so that food is issued with coupons,” said Yuri Prokofiev, First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU in 1989-1991 -x years: "So that it aroused the indignation of the workers and their actions against the Soviet regime."

Yuri Luzhkov, then the "chief prod" of Moscow, explained the interruptions that had begun as follows. Say, “we could supply much more meat to Moscow, until the demand is fully satisfied, but the front of the unloading of refrigerated sections does not allow. Because there are not enough access roads, they do not have time to unload the refrigerator."

The Democrats-priests were touched by this chatter: in the same way, through bureaucratic sabotage and provocations, in February 1917, the liberals artificially created interruptions in the supply of Petrograd in order to overthrow Nicholas II. Now in Moscow committees were created to combat sabotage. Naive enthusiasts entered them with a simple idea: refrigerated sections with frozen meat can be served directly on the access roads of Moscow giant factories. For example, the Khrunichev space rocket, where about 80,000 workers worked, the Hammer and Sickle metallurgical plant and Moskvich with 20,000 workers. collectives and others. The trade union committees would have distributed everything, the workers unloaded everything, but no. With such a scheme, not a single kilogram of meat would get to dealers. But the working people were unaware: it was this new class of shadow traders who were nurtured by perestroika.

These restrictions deliberately fueled separatist sentiments. People were taught that all their troubles were due to their neighbors. In the television show "600 Seconds" in 1989-1991, it was regularly shown how trucks from the regions at the entrances to both capitals dumped "coupon" products into ditches, since they were not allowed into the city.

“Compositions came with meat and butter. The guys are going to unload, as always, students. On the way, they are told: "You have money for you, get away so that you are not even close," recalled Nikolai Ryzhkov, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in 1985-1990. He was the first to declassify how Boris Yeltsin, who was striving for sole power, in order to discredit his rival Gorbachev, stopped 26 out of 28 existing tobacco factories for "repair" in one day.

“By government decrees, the gold reserves of the Soviet Union were thrown away for the purchase of imported products,” testifies Mikhail Poltoranin, ex-minister of the press and an ardent supporter of Yeltsin, who became deputy chairman of his government: “Gold flowed abroad, and under the guise of“foreign”,“native”was often issued … For example, in the ports of Leningrad, Riga or Tallinn ships were loaded with cheap feed grain, skirted Spain and Greece by sea and came to Odessa with “imported” food wheat at $ 120 per ton."

The dealers operated openly. The people began to go out to the squares with anti-Soviet slogans. It was this reaction that the democrats were trying to achieve during the entire perestroika.