A Shopper's Day

Armed with a list of six items, TIME Moscow correspondent Ann Blackman set out last week to see what Soviet consumers experience when they try to buy even the most basic goods. On Blackman's list: beef, apples, carrots, sugar, laundry soap and toothpaste.

12:30 p.m. I go into a two-counter shop near my apartment. One bin holds small yellowish apples that have played host to a worm or two. Ten minutes later I find better apples at a private stand. I wait in line three minutes and buy a dozen at $1.88 per lb.

12:45 p.m. At a grocery store that will close in 15 minutes for an hour-long lunch break, a saleslady tries to keep me from entering. But others push past her, so I join the rush. A refrigerated bin holds brown paper bags filled with ground meat, half a dozen scrawny chickens and four packages of beef -- fatty, mostly bone and covered in grimy cellophane -- priced at $1.60 per lb. I stand in line for 14 minutes and buy a 2-lb. package of beef. There had been some sugar that morning, an employee informs me, and there may be some in the afternoon. I pass an outdoor state fruit stand that will not open for nearly an hour. Seventeen people are already in line, waiting for prized tangerines.

1:22 p.m. A good sign: a long queue just inside a hardware store. Obviously, something scarce is available. It turns out to be laundry soap, brown waxy bars that people must grate into washing machines. I join the line, No. 68. "We never used to stand in line for soap," says Alexandra Vasivna, a Moscow pensioner and No. 69. "I don't know what's happened." I hold her place while she sees how much is left. "Nine cartons," she reports. "I don't know if we'll get any." A man in front grumbles, "We would if people didn't hoard." At 1:48, I finally reach the soap counter. One bar, 36 cents.

1:50 p.m. I rush to a store about to close for lunch. No toothpaste here. I head for the private farmers' market, where prices are too high for most Soviets but the quality and selection are far superior to that in state stores.

2:10 p.m. Usually the market is crowded, but today business is as limp as the rotting persimmons on display. I buy carrots at $1.64 per lb., three times the price of their frail cousins at the state store but six times better looking.

3:15 p.m. Already exhausted, I walk four more blocks through ankle-deep slush to another store for toothpaste. I select some, proceed to a separate counter to a cashier with an abacus, pay the bill, then go back to the toothpaste counter with a stamped ticket to pick up my purchase.

3:40 p.m. Home at last. Elapsed shopping time: 3 hr. 10 min. Total cost of purchases: $9.42. I never did find sugar. But that's not unusual. What impresses one is the constant struggle the Soviets must go through every day to buy those things that so many Westerners take for granted.