Prohibited photos of stores in the USSR

So, friends, today there will be a post about photographs of Soviet stores, which almost never hit the Soviet media. For ideological reasons, these photographs were not published either in the Soviet press or in Soviet periodical magazines, and they were most often taken not by Soviet citizens at all - they were taken by foreign journalists who came to the USSR. Why weren’t the pictures taken by the inhabitants of the Soviet Union? Soviet citizens at that time were most often busy standing in the very queues that photographers managed to capture.

So, in today's post - photographs of Soviet stores that were banned in the USSR.

Let's get started. Many often do not believe the fact that in the late USSR there was nothing on the shelves except bottles of juice, here is direct evidence of this fact - the picture was taken in one of the Soviet grocery stores in the eighties. The image quality is pretty good, you can even consider the labels - on the middle shelf are cans with apple and cherry juice, and on the top - with apple and raspberry.

By the way, the composition of this Soviet balloon "juice" was far from natural - for example, birch sap was greatly diluted with sugared water with the addition of citric acid. And what is interesting - the plate in the photo below (above the banks in the upper row) does not lie, calling the product "apple-raspberry drink".

Perhaps, only tomato juice was more or less natural in the USSR (it is the most difficult to fake and dilute it), but very often it was also almost the only product in the Soviet grocery of the eighties.

Now let's see how the meat departments of the stores looked and functioned. In the eighties, more and more money went to the war in Afghanistan, and normal meat disappeared in stores. Arriving in the meat department of the deli in the evening, most often you could see just such a picture, the refrigerator in the meat-poultry department is completely empty.

How did Soviet citizens buy meat? From time to time, meat was brought to shops, and the time of its arrival was known to everyone who had time to defend it in a huge queue. The tail of the line often ends far outside the store, which is clearly visible in this photo:

And on this frame the beginning of the line in the meat department is captured. Also pay attention to the empty white counters around; there is nothing at all.

If you think that taking the first place, you are guaranteed to get the best pieces of meat, then you are very mistaken. The best pieces went "from under the counter" to numerous acquaintances of sellers; in those years, a popular joke even went to the USSR: "Communism will come about when every Soviet person has his own familiar seller in the meat department."

Ordinary Soviet citizens, who did not have friends, were forced to be content with obscure pieces of carcasses with huge bones.

And here is the sale of the very “incredibly tasty Soviet sausage." Details are also very important - an empty refrigerator is in front of customers. There are only two types of sausages in the department - sausages and the best sausage in the world for 2 rubles and 20 kopecks. In front of the counter with the scales there is a large queue of buyers who cut this sausage into pieces - I won’t be surprised, if also in a limited amount, not more than 0.5 kg in one hand.

And this is the sale of frozen chickens - which were a terrible shortage in the late USSR. I grew up in a non-poor family, but I saw chicken no more than 1-2 times a month - it simply could not be bought anywhere.

The picture is still unique in that in the middle of the queue an uncle with some red crust is captured, and, apparently, he is preparing to present it to the seller - beneficiaries could buy goods without a queue and in larger quantities than ordinary citizens. Such beneficiaries (from among the veterans of various Kulikovo battles and the All-Union Moon Buildings named after the Komsomol) were found in almost every store, and the whole line hissed.

Let's look into the fish department now. I think you have seen this widespread picture more than once, when only frozen pollock, wrapped in sheets of brown paper, is sold in the fish department.

And recently I managed to find such a curious “background” of this picture, which shows the full picture well - the saleswoman collects frozen fish from a huge aluminum cuvette and takes it to customers. Most likely, pollock was "thrown out" in the same way as chickens and meat - they were brought to a store at a certain time, and a line was immediately lined up for it. That is, if you came to the fish department at some other time, there would not even be a pollock.

Now let's go through dairy products. This is what the average milk row looked like in the Soviet grocery stores of the eighties - at best there was cottage cheese packaged in half-kilogram packs of waxed paper, sometimes there was butter. There was also milk and kefir - that, in principle, was the whole assortment. Cream was in short supply, sometimes they brought in baked milk (with a lid of golden foil) - it was considered a delicious delicacy. Yoghurts or something like that in the USSR did not exist in principle.

In some years, even bottled milk was in short supply in parts of the USSR, and it did not stand on the shelves freely, but was sold by sellers, as can be seen in the picture below. In general, by the way, if in the USSR something was not free on the shelves (like juice in cylinders in the pictures above), then rest assured that it was a scarce product in demand.

And another very interesting shot regarding the Soviet "milk". Often, fresh milk was sold in the USSR not in the store itself, but from the boxes near it; there are two versions of why this happened. The first version - some small supplier supplied milk, and in order not to drag it to the store, they quickly sold it to customers right at the entrance - good milk flew in an hour. The second version - store sellers thus sold milk "past the checkout", punching checks later and putting the price difference in your pocket.

Sometimes milk could be bought on the street, from a barrel for bottling (like kvass). Can you imagine now such a queue for plain milk? Here I am.

And this is the turn to the bread department. Yes, there too people were forced to stand in line - good white bread and some bagels quickly dismantled, there was only one sour bread - "brick".

The picture below, taken in the same department, most likely depicts just such a situation - my grandmother did not have enough goods from the assortment of the bread department. In general, compare how much this does not look like modern grocery stores, where absolutely any products are openly on the shelves.

And here is a photo from the wine and vodka department, the photographer captured the moment of happy possession of the White Stork cognac, which in the eighties was released no more than 2 bottles in one hand.

Also, the wine and vodka department, the owner of Pshenichnaya vodka, purchased with a coupon - the uncle also shows the photographer the coupons themselves with one cut and boiled square.

If you think that it was better with manufactured goods in the late USSR, then I will disappoint you. This is how household goods stores often looked - on the shelves you can see only colanders of two colors, as well as blue plastic children's pots.