About The Grocery Store Scene
In the Western world we were told of the Soviet bread lines and the grocery store shelves that had nothing more than dust on them. Was the plentiful, well stocked grocery store denialist propaganda?
shareI saw this movie in film school with a Russian instructor. She said that the U.S. videos of Soviet stores with empty shelves were during times of supply crisis, typically because of brutal weather conditions, but it wasn't the norm. The supermarkets had lots of food normally, but choices of brands were few. In the U.S., you can choose from 10 brands of peanut butter, while Russia might have only two... chunky, and less chunky. An equivalency to that type of propaganda from the U.S. would be like the long gas lines in the 70's shown to Russians during our OPEC crisis.
Russian here. Peanut butter was never available in Soviet grocery stores :)
As for reasonable general availability of groceries, it really depends on what year are you talking about. This movie shows the 1950s and the 70s. Most pictures of empty shelves you saw must be from the 80s.
The pictures we saw "were" from the 80's. It was part of the propaganda routine that we saw on the news during the Reagan era. "The Bear in the Woods", nuclear threats, The need for funding the "Star Wars" defense that was a complete fantasy, were to combat the Soviets who couldn't even put food on store shelves for their own people. I'm not expressing this as a political commentary, but just as we were told about it.
As for peanut butter, I wouldn't know since I never shopped in the Soviet Union. I was just relating it to an American perspective. Its like the American comedy "Moscow on the Hudson" when after defecting, Robin Williams faints in the grocery store because he doesn't know how to choose from fully stocked shelves and different brands... It all follows the perception we were told.
I lived in Moscow in 1983 for 5 months as a student.
There was really nothing to buy in the stores. I got a stipend in rubles, but didn't have much to spend them on.
I knew a Russian family (professors) that didn't have a very big apartment, and we used to talk about how things were---pretty much anything worth buying was gotten by the babushkas that got out pre-dawn to the open air markets. The women could bribe the maids at the dorm for clean sheets, if you gave them chocolate. The men, however, got clean sheets all the time. The "man is more important than the woman" idea of the film was totally true.
I really never saw any kind of grocery store like they showed in the film. My guess was that this was just one of those soviet propaganda moments. Maybe they existed and I never saw them, but that scene did make me laugh a little. Maybe since Katia had a car, she could go where the supermarkets were. I don't know.
The film painted a rosier picture of life in Moscow than what most would agree was real, but at least it was actually filmed in Moscow.
P.S. I brought my own U S peanut butter with me, and never noticed any for sale, but after a while I stopped looking anyway.
Empty shelves in socialist countries became more frequent and almost normal in 80's, as a result of lethargy, death of enthusiasm that moved majority of people in the earlier decades (some were really enthusiastic, the other were full of fear, but the system managed to keep major functions vital). However, life in Moscow was surpassingly easier than in the rest of USSR (except Leningrad). These two cities were the only places allowed to be visited by ordinary foreigners, and poverty wasn't so obvious (but even in Moscow and Leningrad foreigners weren't allowed to go where they wanted). Possibilities to communicate with local people were reduced as much as possible, both due to rather strict control of foreigners and to fear of local residents as well. Certainly, this better life was the reason that almost every person in USSR dreamed of moving to Moscow - and, in the same time, the reason why the regime didn't let them do it. It was almost as difficult to get permission to enter the city as to get passport and go abroad.
Also, markets were strictly separated for Russians and foreigners. Those that were meant for foreign visitors were full of stock, but the prices were extremely high and payment was in dollars. Shops for local citizens were small, empty, those rare products available were very cheap (compared to prices in other countries) but foreigners were strictly forbidden to enter them.