Lmao 2.5kg of meat? Forget it. If you got any, it was a day to celebrate. You couldn't get shit for stamps and you had to stand in long queues to get the scraps that you could get. You waited for hours for a delivery that immediately disappeared or didn't come at all. You literally bought what you could. People used to barter the stamps and a grey market to get what you needed popped up. The only way to get what you wanted was to pay with dollars.
My wife was born in ( but too late to remember) a former Soviet state.
Talking with her grandma is pretty interesting. Recently with global inflation, some of the grandmas friends were speaking fondly about government controlled price of bread.
Then my grandma (in law) who still has more of her marbles than any 91 year old I've ever met said "lol, yeah that was the price on the sign, but there was no bread in the store!"
The Soviet Union was a fun place. People whose great grandparents happened to be German were put on a train to Kyrgistan and just dumped out onto the steppe.
The 50% who survived the first winter and actually managed to build up villages were later banned from buying or selling at the local market, forcing them into the black market to survive, which was obviously illegal as well.
But they weren't allowed to emigrate to Germany either.
Note - a shitload of rambling below and going off topic, but worth a read.
Too young for that, but my brothers, parents and grandma lived through it. There's plenty of articles available about that shit though, if you want more sources. Personal stories like they somehow got a hold of licorice. I don't know if they managed to get it / it was available, or if they got it from my uncle who managed to move to West Germany. So my eldest brother went to my grandpa and asked him "grandpa, do you want these sweets?". Grandpa wasn't one to throw away food, so he said sure. Bro then went "is it good?" "Yeah it's good" "cause I gave it to the dog and he hated it".
My second oldest bro bit the dog and told him (slurring his speech cause he was missing teeth at the time) "now you know how it feels". They both were hatching a plan to go into a "scary" basement together in the house. So the second oldest went "dude, you go down there first and scream if there's something scary so I can run".
I remember my parents telling me about how they got their car - the legendary Fiat 126p, "maluch" or "little guy". They were pretty well off, dad was a "supervisor of supervisors" in a mine - I'd compare it to middle management in an IT company? There were miners, "sztygars" (direct supervisors, safety inspectors directly next to the miners) and he was a "nadsztygar" which is "oversztygar".
If you want a "folk" song from Silesia - check out "Eye of the sztajger" by kabaret Nol Nejm - it's a song about a lazy miner who slept behind the digging combine (industrial machinery underground to dig the coal). He dreamt up a "leprechaun" type of figure appearing to him. Miners have a folk tale of "Skarbek" - a legendary figure that shows miners where "treasure lies" - not gold, but "still reflective / shiny - black gold" - of course meaning good quality coal. So Skarbek pops up in his dream, offerring him "something that's reflective / shiny like gold" and he takes it. He later gets caught by the "sztajger" (i.e. sztygar), shows his bag and he's been stealing lightbulbs lmao. Everything to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger" and the chorus going on about "eye of the Sztajger - sees everything, knows everything, has a notepad and notes everything, I'm telling you, crouched tiger, hidden dragon, he's not James Bond, he's not Kloss he's an eyeeeee, of the sztajger".
Kloss was another spy-figure, agent J-23, a polish spy that assumed the identity of a captured by the soviets german officer of the Abwher - german intelligence. A very popular TV series in PRL (polish people's republic, Poland under the soviet regime).
For an actual folk song (and not a meme) alternatively listen to FEET - Maglownia which is about a dude that has to wring out wet clothes his wife just washed. He wants to go play soccer with the boys after "szychta" (shift, usually in the mines), but his wife catches him and he has to "turn and turn and wring it out and getting pissed off, turn and turn, no way out, I'm not a dude that argues a lot, turn and turn, like an idiot, maybe I'll get to buy a halba? (0.5l, usually of vodka), turn and turn, I got blisters, I've had enough wringing". This one is incredibly catchy, you've been warned lol.
I got more stories from WW2, since grandma talked about it a lot in her older years. My dad was always rolling his eyes going "aight grandma, sure that happened". I had grandpa's parachuting wings from after WW2, sadly no number on them left for the amts of jumps. Now my niece has em in "her" lego bucket which was mine when I was a kid.
We have "A bridge too far" by Cornelius Ryan. It's completely unglued now, but the back of it has grandpa's address on it, when he was in an artillery battery going with the allies. He had something to do with Market Garden, but I don't remember what - for sure he didn't jump.
Fav story is Grandpa Johann (grandma was German, Johann was Polish, this is from her POV). They lived in Knurów, which is like a stones throw away from Gliwice (Gleiwitz) where everything started. A year before 1939 grandpa Johann and like four of his buddies were going to "guard the border" - get shitfaced drunk in the mornings, wearing "the uniforms from the uprising" (I'd assume the Silesian uprisings 1919 - 1921). They had one mauser and a pistol among the five of them. He also had a second uniform at home when the one got inevitably dirty from them being shitfaced drunk and rolling on the ground in the mud. They might've had more weapons each, but only brought one in turn, guess they didn't want to carry too much, and just have an excuse why they're away from their nagging wives.
Then 1st of September, 39' came. Grandma was cooking something and suddenly she heard "szzzzip, szzzzzip, szzzzzzzip". First thing she thought was "fucking Johann pissing off the German army again" (she used a regional word which could roughly be translated to "poke", but more in a sense of Steve Irwin in South Park "jamming a thumb up its ass" type of poke). Then she saw grandpa Johann in his full glory, jumping over fences. She said "how mighty he looked, fit like a gazelle, only slightly stumbling from the vodka". Then she noticed the Germans in "their beautiful long coats, with even longer carabines". She said they went after Johann and his buddies, but by the time they cleared the first fence with their long coats and guns "the mighty Johann Gazzelle was so deep in the woods they never found him". She panicked, grabbed the second uniform he had and stuffed it into the small oven for cooking, so it'd burn down. She also grabbed the pistol he had (and didn't bring to the border for some reason lol) and threw it into the septic tank / the shitter. The small oven choked on the heavy, wool uniform and started smoking the entire house. The germans came to see what's happening and to put out the possible fire. Luckily she was german, so in perfect "Dojcz" (deutsch, german) she told them that it's fine and to fuck off lol.
Dad doubted grandma till one faithful day they were connecting the house to a working sewer system and didn't need the septic tank. So they pumped it out and found remains of a pistol, almost completely rusted through, but the shape was unmistakable.
Later grandpa was hauled off by Wehrmacht and forced to fight on some front (don't know which one, probably western). He had leave, went back to Knurow and married my grandma "so she could get some money from the government in case he gets killed". He later got captured by the allies and they started talking to him in german. Obviously he knew some (since silesian has a lot of german words in it, as evident by some of my explanations of words above). They asked him where he's from, he said Gleiwitz. "But that's Poland" "yes" and then the dude, in perfect Polish went "why the fuck are we speaking German then?" "You tell me". So he enlisted with the allies. My mum and brother made a map of where he went for a history project for highschool, dude basically went all over Europe including Italy IIRC? It was weird as fuck. Sadly I have shown this to my middle school teacher, he took it and forgot to give it back. But yeah, grandpa survived the war, went back to Grandma and my dad was born in 1950. No idea if either of my uncles were older or nah, maybe a year or two?
My maternal grandpa defended the bells of a local church during WW1 from being taken away by the germans and melted into ammunition. They were from the XVth century. There was a wooden church there, built in 1447. In 1723 they built a second wooden church in place of the old one, that burned down during WW2. The bells survived till today and have recently been shown off to the public and rung again, for some occasion. I think it might've been 90 years of the opening of the new church. If interested, google "popielow dzwony" - popielow is the village name. They defended the bells, then took them and burrowed them somewhere, then dug them up after the war and returned them to the parish.
Also my dad has a notepad from his youth full of stupid rhymes, jokes and naughty puns which I recently found in the basement. He said not to read it so we stopped, but not before hearing the best pickup line ever. "Mis" means "teddy" or "small bear". "Misie" is plural. "Mi sie" means "for/to me". So you ask "have you heard the tale of three little bears? You look good to me, take off your clothes for me, give yourself to me". In polish it's "podobasz misie, rozbierz misie, oddaj misie".
Edit: also check a comment I replied to this comment, about german citizenship and us being a family of traitors lol
Holy fuck I forgot the best part of the Johann story. My dad devoutly learned German, probably because of the connection with his mum (he loved her very much, he promised her he wouldn't sell the house they lived in, and even in his old age he goes there to groundskeep, restore the house and he'll be doing this till he cannot anymore he said). I'd say he was about as "germanpilled" as possible - also seeing how well his brother did in West Germany. So he thought he'll get us all german citizenship. We didn't mind, it's in our blood, grandma was German after all, and double citizenship is a thing. So he went through the entire process, getting us all citizenship. We had to go to the embassy, pics in hand, show up with the entire family, give fingerprints n'shit. About a year later, we get six letters from the embassy. All of them the same, all addressed to a different person in the family. We check them out, we all got the citizenship, yay! Except the dad looks like he saw a ghost. Then he starts laughing like crazy. We ask him what's up - turns out his was rejected. Because he was too close in relation to someone who "betrayer the german state and deserted the army". We were like "wtf, who???". Turns out, the german state was the 3rd reich, and the army was wehrmacht, when grandpa Johann joined the allies lmao. So now the only person who really wanted the citizenship didn't get it, because grandpa was a traitor to Hitler
Also, there was a joke that firefighters don't put out barns in Silesia, especially in "Barns". Barns is a village (now district of Rybnik) literally named "Barns" - Stodoly. They had a smithy there in XVIth century. The reasons the firemen stayed away, was post WW1 nobody gave up their guns and ammo, they hid it in their barns. So everytime a fire happened, a literal arsenal was burning and cooking off, so they stayed away, contained the blaze and let it burn out
Also, Stodoly was a second spot where germans started a provocation - they got SS troops on thr 31st of August 39' in Polish uniforms to take a border office, then brought a second squad of SS troops, dressed in german uniforms, then brought corpses from a concentration camp dressed in both Polish and German uniforms to "legitimize" a supposed "Polish" attack.
Authoritarian dictatorships that move wealth and power to the top at the expense of the peopel don’t work. “Communism” is barely on the radar, you can stick whatever label you want on it.
What was the reason for rationing, was it inflation, unemployment, drought or what? I though Poland economy was free to do what it wanted, or was it subject to the same problems as the Soviet Union?
I fail to see how limiting how much product can be bought and sold would stimulate an economy, outside of a major excess issue like the one that led to The New Deal in the USA.
You're thinking too much in market terms. It should be more "Our allocation of production has resulted in shortages of these goods; we must figure out a way of distributing these goods without resorting to 'highest-bidder' style market economics."
Typically, in market-oriented economies, this happens during wartime when the government doesn't trust market economies (rightly) to deliver the needs of the war while there are still civilians willing to outbid the government. In command economies, this happens whenever the priorities of the government and the civilian population are at odds (such as Poland exporting most of its sugar to the SovUnion despite massive domestic demand for sugar and higher sugar production per capita than ever before).
I have a game wishlisted on Steam called Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic that I’m hoping might prove educational to better understand how that system worked because sometimes it seems so foreign to me.
Market economies are very psychological - "How do you encourage people to consume/produce X?" But command economies are simpler in a sense, because it's all very material - "What do we make, and who do we give it to?"
It's hard to take your very legitimate explanations seriously when your username is bolded as OP, and top of mind to me. Haha. Seriously though, thanks for taking the time to type it out.
I'm Estonian, not Polish, but I've helped my mom grow potatoes and stuff. Because of the peasant history, our people have always grown our own food. Only in the least few decades has it been getting less common.
I find it funny that a lot of people seem to be assuming that this is everything that they were allowed to eat. Fruits and veggies have been completely banned, in this world! Haha
Rationing in the early 80s is considered to be one of the major agitating factors that led to increased labor union activity and, thus, the eventual end of the Communist regime in Poland. Would seem that it was not nearly enough vodka to quietly cope!
I can see why. Like if I was flat broke, these rations would be super welcome, but as an ongoing totality of what I could have for all of my labor? No, fuck that! The people at the top were obviously hoarding all the wealth, which seems to always happen every time this form of government is tried.
It happens every time any form of government is tried to be honest. The problem is with people, not the system of government.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
-Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Right. Which is a fundamental reason why the government should not be trusted to act in the best interest of the people. There must be checks and balances, and they must be held accountable and be forced to do their duty. The USA had a great run of this, but over the last 4 decades politicians have changed the lay of the land to benefit themselves and their donors more and more, and the people haven't the gumption, will, or faculties to challenge them and hold them to account. Politicians have also realized that much of our system relied upon integrity, or the assumption that the individual would follow the system, with very little to no consequences if they just do whatever they want.
I'm no historian, but I see the cycle of [Brave New World -> Prosperity / Dominance -> Decline -> Corruption -> Oppression -> Revolution -> Brave New World] as a fairly common pattern, with timescales from decades to centuries. It might be cognitive bias, but it seems kind of inevitable, really.
Is 20 cigs a day honestly the average nowadays?? Mind blowing and sad.
My mum who was an addicted smoker since she was 10 years of age and went through maybe 5 to 10 cigs a day.
it's been the average for a long time. it's due to nicotine's pharmacological effects. its half life is roughly 1~2 hours. so a smoker on average will feel the compulsion to smoke an hour or so after the last cigarette. since most people are awake somewhere 16 hours a day, that's about ~16 cigarettes a day.
your mom's smoking habits were definitely atypical
This is what Conservatives around the world want and glory hallelujah we are almost there! The only difference is all those rations will not come from the government but from corporations paid for by the government.
This has little to do with socialism/capitalism and more with that fact that the economy was centrally (terribly) governed and most of the products were exported to the "friend nation USSR"
75% of sugar output exported to moscow and leningrad, you think the people of anywhere outside the immediate vicinity of those two cities got to see any of it? Let alone anywhere east of the Urals?
Ussr never fully recovered after ww2 and had to engage in a very expensive arms race while attempting to rebuild.
Imo saying that communism doesn't work often forgets this fact.
Completely different situations.
One country had to recover from complete devastation and bootstrap everything from scratch, could not rely on anyone and had to fund and support allies with that.
While other European countries were barely touched it could benefit from US funding which was in itself completely untouched and benefited from the collapse of the entire capitalist competition worldwide.
Ussr provided major military assistance to china Korea, vietnam, African countries fighting for freedom.
Also look up comecon.
Also who do you think was responsible for reconstruction of half the germany? It was ussr most which was also half destroyed itself.
All of this was a much higher burden on ussr than US which was left intact.
They are in the same place where pro-capitalist liberals are when people talk about food insecurity in today's West, and let's face it, the rest of the non-Western world.
Unpopular opinion: we need to ration electricity consumption as well as fuel today, even in capitalists countries. Because that stuff actually has incredible impact on the planet, and will (must) drive consumption down, so that companies / individuals start integrating "efficiency" into their thinking
I don't see any other solution to the "exponentially growing power consumption" problem.
Rather than stimulus checks we need to be using the money to subsidize alternatives. And we can just switch subsidies. Some examples of that include that by reducing cattle subsides we can subsidize lower emissions meat alternatives or even offer free classes on how to cook meals that happen to be lower emissions, and we can stop funding airports and put that money into rail systems, similarly by removing mandatory minimum parking and reducing road funding that money can be put into transit solutions that enable less car centric lifestyles.
I imagine there are food items which aren't rationed, because there's no fruit or vegetables here. If you grew your own fruit and had sugar you could preserve it as jam. The sugar helps prevent spoilage. Or if you grew rhubarb you could make a pie, which would be pretty darn sour without sugar.
I wonder how they used it. Fancy baked goods the first days, then a rush to bake long lasting good before the perishables spoil? Did widowers ask family to bake with their rations?
I might bring tankies out of the woodwork for saying this, but I remember one time a tankie told me that scarcity in communist countries is by design and it's a good thing, after I pointed out that people had to be on the waiting list just to get a car. What if the person lives in rural with no access to public transport?
I understand capitalism is wasteful, but doing the extreme opposite and making people wait to own a car or giving someone bare essentials is not a good thing. Having a scarcity economy is not good, especially considering that the Soviet Union produced more tanks than cars throughout its history. The American military industrial complex is rightly criticised for overspending, but communist countries are worse since the case is that more tanks were made than civilian cars. It means more budget went to the military than to producing consumer good. Talk about priorities.
No but the person you replied to called out a specific scenario in which the person lives in a rural area with no public transport access which is a real thing in every single country, with good public transit or not.
The concept of someone not having access to public transit isn't an American centric point of view.
Not all countries have good public transport system. Imagine living in Siberia at the time of the communists, unless you're in gulag which doesn't require you to travel to other places.
Yes, busses were relatively common and affordable, but many of them were smelly and horrible. Except for the Icaruses, the passengers of which felt like kings among men.
Soviet Union had a limited ability to produce things, especially heavy machinery. Their leadership quickly realised that they can't outproduce the Western countries on everything, so they decided to only match their military production capabilities. Which led to them falling further and further behind.
Don't take what tankied say like they mean it, it's just propaganda / they amuse themselves coming up with lies that you have to unravel and defeat. And if you do so, then magically the discussion is over and we'll talk about some other thing.
Well if you really want to be restricted purchasing the maximum amount of those items then you don't need to sign up. Just limit your monthly amount to be as displayed.
300g cooking oil (Google says rapeseed oil is popular in Poland so I used that): ~2652 Calories
250g chocolate: ~1338 Calories
Total: 24,397 Calories or ~813 Calories per day
Some other people online also did the math and came up with similar numbers. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37027027 came up with 33,063 Calories (including the sugar)
Nice, that was super fast. I guess it's probably enough for one person to survive if they practically don't move at all the entire month, for a little while at least.
Exactly, and thst sounds like the sort of rations Americans had during the world wars. It was supplimented by a mass movement of community gardens. Personally I'm more a fan of the ration points system we used so that you aren't stuck with stuff you won't use and those who'd rather eat like Hannibal of Carthage and go less hungry can do that while those who'd rather eat more resource intensive foods like meat can accept the cost of their demands in the form of calories. Though that may just be because I've always been the sort who'd rather be full of lentils and potatoes than hungry after a burger, even before I quit meat.
Vodka and cigarettes are not necessities. Different times, obviously. If the vodka was being made either from potatoes or grain, even if of lower quality, those would be better put towards adding extra available calories for people.
p.s
This made me remember being told there was a time, my country being at war then, where cigarette packs were distributed to soldiers with a banner stamped on it that stated "Have a cigar and relax".
They weren't starving, most fresh produce wasn't rationed at all and was readily available. The items you see here are the just what was rationed due to supply.
Philosophical options aside, meat and butter are very energy dense food sources.
But it would make sense replacing that cooking oil with a large tub of universal purpose vegetable based butter: it would introduce more available calories, both for cooking and direct consumption.
Doesn't mean that it's a good idea. When you feed food to food, you waste a lot of food. That's the meat, dairy and eggs industry. Conversion ratios vary, but they're terrible and, by the simple laws of physics, can't beat just eating plants.
universal purpose vegetable based butter
That is what did happen, but it turns out that hydrogenation causing trans fats isn't good for health. Fun fact: ruminant milk, especially from "grass fed", can contain up to 10% trans fats because the bacteria inside can do a natural hydrogenation too.
Vegetable oil is the best option for calories, but it's also boring, so the staples for food security have been: grain flour + vegetable oil + sugar.
I lack the appeal to invest myself into a conversation that will return a zero sum outcome.
It's the College of Cardiologists, in my country, that actively recommends the use of vegetable based butter as a source of safe fats.
This isn't a body easy to get public suport from and false advertising is severely punished in my country, so I risk I'm fairly well informed and safe to eat my vegetable based butter and recommend it to others. And it is vegan safe.
Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios of total and cardiometabolic mortality for 1-tablespoon/day increment in cooking oil/fat consumption. Forest plots show the multivariable HRs of total (a) and cardiometabolic (b) mortality associated with 1-tablespoon/day increment in butter, margarine, corn oil, canola oil, and olive oil consumption. HRs were adjusted for age, sex, BMI, race, education, marital status, household income, smoking, alcohol, vigorous physical activity, usual activity at work, perceived health condition, history of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer at baseline, Healthy Eating Index-2015, total energy intake, and consumption of remaining oils where appropriate (butter, margarine, lard, corn oil, canola oil, olive oil, and other vegetable oils). Horizontal lines represent 95% CIs
These are just the goods that are rationed/limited. These were the goods with the highest demand and lowest supply. There are unrationed goods that could still be purchased, like potatoes.
The rice is about 6 us measuring cups worth, and 1 cup is enough for 2 people to have a meal after it soaks up a bunch of water (plus a bit little vodka and sugar for taste).
The Flour can make several loaves of bread as well, it's about 5000 Calories for that bag without considering oil added for a nice focaccia or butter and milk for a classic brioche.
If each person gets this then it can be sufficientlast a week or two, but I assume it was supplementary in nature.
There's no yeast included though. Are they also maintaining a sourdough starter with that ration? Also a brioche would probably use up quite a bit of their ration for the month and possibly last about a week. Lastly, who puts vodka in rice?
Yet 1/2c is the serving size. I can never decide if that’s a useless fiction or a good reminder that rice is a lot of carbs. Anyhow, I’m down to 1.5c (uncooked) for two people
Thank you for posting this. I don't understand what a lot of those foods are. It looks like a heck of a lot of it is pasta/noodles based though. And maybe milk powder? Where is the protein other than the canned tuna(?) up at the top.
That was it. No more than that. Worst thing is that almost all this products are from Mexico. Before the collectivists and leftists took power in Venezuela, we used to make all these products
Left to right
4 blue pasta packages, 200 grams each
4 green rice packages, 1 kg
4 yellow spaghetti packs. 200 grams each
6 shredded tuna cans. 130 grams each
1 oil bottle. 1 liter
2 red bottles, tomato sauce/ketchup. 220 grams each
2 orange packs, corn flour, 1kg each
1 pack of refined sugar, 1kg
1 white pack, dry whole milk, 500 grams
2 green packs, black beans, 1kg each
3 yellow packs, egg spaghetti, 290 grams each
3 red packs, elbow shaped spaghetti , 200 grams each
1 blue pack, lentils, 1 kg
Take into account that this is supposed to last a family of 4 a month. If it ever arrives.
Because it's assigned per family
Also, as most of these products are from Mexico, the transportation is not the best and most of the time they arrive corroded, open by rats, or with less or very different products than advertised
So yeah I'm glad I escaped the collectivistic hellhole with my family mostly intact
Thank you for answering, this is very eye opening. In Canada we get a similar amount of food at our volunteer based food banks that is supposed to last a month but lasts a few days, but it's different in the type of product. And it would never be given to us in a state that was degraded or torn into by pests.
I don't think you got this for free, it was probably just the maximum you could buy of any of these items in a month. That's how war time rationing worked in the UK.
This is just what the State determined was necessary for a person's needs, and issued to them as their communist rations. People could and did engage in capitalism to get what they actually needed.
Good so we got flour figured out. How many homeless people did Poland have in the 1980s?
Uncertain, because like the Soviet Union, homelessness was illegal and official stats weren't kept. Nevertheless, 'vagrancy' was a serious and recurring problem in Warsaw Pact states.
216 Comments
Maalus@lemmy.world · 146 pts · 1y
Lmao 2.5kg of meat? Forget it. If you got any, it was a day to celebrate. You couldn't get shit for stamps and you had to stand in long queues to get the scraps that you could get. You waited for hours for a delivery that immediately disappeared or didn't come at all. You literally bought what you could. People used to barter the stamps and a grey market to get what you needed popped up. The only way to get what you wanted was to pay with dollars.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 43 pts · 1y
You sound like you were actually there? If so, please continue.
Windex007@lemmy.world · 100 pts · 1y
My wife was born in ( but too late to remember) a former Soviet state.
Talking with her grandma is pretty interesting. Recently with global inflation, some of the grandmas friends were speaking fondly about government controlled price of bread.
Then my grandma (in law) who still has more of her marbles than any 91 year old I've ever met said "lol, yeah that was the price on the sign, but there was no bread in the store!"
"Ooooohhhhh yyyeeaaaaahhhh....."
superkret@feddit.org · 34 pts · 1y
The Soviet Union was a fun place. People whose great grandparents happened to be German were put on a train to Kyrgistan and just dumped out onto the steppe.
The 50% who survived the first winter and actually managed to build up villages were later banned from buying or selling at the local market, forcing them into the black market to survive, which was obviously illegal as well.
But they weren't allowed to emigrate to Germany either.
DrunkenPirate@feddit.org · 11 pts · 1y
In the 90‘s they were allowed. And Germany welcomed them.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 1y
"would you like your tea with no milk or no cream?"
Klear@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
And no tea?
Maalus@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
Note - a shitload of rambling below and going off topic, but worth a read.
Too young for that, but my brothers, parents and grandma lived through it. There's plenty of articles available about that shit though, if you want more sources. Personal stories like they somehow got a hold of licorice. I don't know if they managed to get it / it was available, or if they got it from my uncle who managed to move to West Germany. So my eldest brother went to my grandpa and asked him "grandpa, do you want these sweets?". Grandpa wasn't one to throw away food, so he said sure. Bro then went "is it good?" "Yeah it's good" "cause I gave it to the dog and he hated it". My second oldest bro bit the dog and told him (slurring his speech cause he was missing teeth at the time) "now you know how it feels". They both were hatching a plan to go into a "scary" basement together in the house. So the second oldest went "dude, you go down there first and scream if there's something scary so I can run".
I remember my parents telling me about how they got their car - the legendary Fiat 126p, "maluch" or "little guy". They were pretty well off, dad was a "supervisor of supervisors" in a mine - I'd compare it to middle management in an IT company? There were miners, "sztygars" (direct supervisors, safety inspectors directly next to the miners) and he was a "nadsztygar" which is "oversztygar".
If you want a "folk" song from Silesia - check out "Eye of the sztajger" by kabaret Nol Nejm - it's a song about a lazy miner who slept behind the digging combine (industrial machinery underground to dig the coal). He dreamt up a "leprechaun" type of figure appearing to him. Miners have a folk tale of "Skarbek" - a legendary figure that shows miners where "treasure lies" - not gold, but "still reflective / shiny - black gold" - of course meaning good quality coal. So Skarbek pops up in his dream, offerring him "something that's reflective / shiny like gold" and he takes it. He later gets caught by the "sztajger" (i.e. sztygar), shows his bag and he's been stealing lightbulbs lmao. Everything to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger" and the chorus going on about "eye of the Sztajger - sees everything, knows everything, has a notepad and notes everything, I'm telling you, crouched tiger, hidden dragon, he's not James Bond, he's not Kloss he's an eyeeeee, of the sztajger".
Kloss was another spy-figure, agent J-23, a polish spy that assumed the identity of a captured by the soviets german officer of the Abwher - german intelligence. A very popular TV series in PRL (polish people's republic, Poland under the soviet regime).
For an actual folk song (and not a meme) alternatively listen to FEET - Maglownia which is about a dude that has to wring out wet clothes his wife just washed. He wants to go play soccer with the boys after "szychta" (shift, usually in the mines), but his wife catches him and he has to "turn and turn and wring it out and getting pissed off, turn and turn, no way out, I'm not a dude that argues a lot, turn and turn, like an idiot, maybe I'll get to buy a halba? (0.5l, usually of vodka), turn and turn, I got blisters, I've had enough wringing". This one is incredibly catchy, you've been warned lol.
I got more stories from WW2, since grandma talked about it a lot in her older years. My dad was always rolling his eyes going "aight grandma, sure that happened". I had grandpa's parachuting wings from after WW2, sadly no number on them left for the amts of jumps. Now my niece has em in "her" lego bucket which was mine when I was a kid.
We have "A bridge too far" by Cornelius Ryan. It's completely unglued now, but the back of it has grandpa's address on it, when he was in an artillery battery going with the allies. He had something to do with Market Garden, but I don't remember what - for sure he didn't jump.
Fav story is Grandpa Johann (grandma was German, Johann was Polish, this is from her POV). They lived in Knurów, which is like a stones throw away from Gliwice (Gleiwitz) where everything started. A year before 1939 grandpa Johann and like four of his buddies were going to "guard the border" - get shitfaced drunk in the mornings, wearing "the uniforms from the uprising" (I'd assume the Silesian uprisings 1919 - 1921). They had one mauser and a pistol among the five of them. He also had a second uniform at home when the one got inevitably dirty from them being shitfaced drunk and rolling on the ground in the mud. They might've had more weapons each, but only brought one in turn, guess they didn't want to carry too much, and just have an excuse why they're away from their nagging wives.
Then 1st of September, 39' came. Grandma was cooking something and suddenly she heard "szzzzip, szzzzzip, szzzzzzzip". First thing she thought was "fucking Johann pissing off the German army again" (she used a regional word which could roughly be translated to "poke", but more in a sense of Steve Irwin in South Park "jamming a thumb up its ass" type of poke). Then she saw grandpa Johann in his full glory, jumping over fences. She said "how mighty he looked, fit like a gazelle, only slightly stumbling from the vodka". Then she noticed the Germans in "their beautiful long coats, with even longer carabines". She said they went after Johann and his buddies, but by the time they cleared the first fence with their long coats and guns "the mighty Johann Gazzelle was so deep in the woods they never found him". She panicked, grabbed the second uniform he had and stuffed it into the small oven for cooking, so it'd burn down. She also grabbed the pistol he had (and didn't bring to the border for some reason lol) and threw it into the septic tank / the shitter. The small oven choked on the heavy, wool uniform and started smoking the entire house. The germans came to see what's happening and to put out the possible fire. Luckily she was german, so in perfect "Dojcz" (deutsch, german) she told them that it's fine and to fuck off lol.
Dad doubted grandma till one faithful day they were connecting the house to a working sewer system and didn't need the septic tank. So they pumped it out and found remains of a pistol, almost completely rusted through, but the shape was unmistakable.
Later grandpa was hauled off by Wehrmacht and forced to fight on some front (don't know which one, probably western). He had leave, went back to Knurow and married my grandma "so she could get some money from the government in case he gets killed". He later got captured by the allies and they started talking to him in german. Obviously he knew some (since silesian has a lot of german words in it, as evident by some of my explanations of words above). They asked him where he's from, he said Gleiwitz. "But that's Poland" "yes" and then the dude, in perfect Polish went "why the fuck are we speaking German then?" "You tell me". So he enlisted with the allies. My mum and brother made a map of where he went for a history project for highschool, dude basically went all over Europe including Italy IIRC? It was weird as fuck. Sadly I have shown this to my middle school teacher, he took it and forgot to give it back. But yeah, grandpa survived the war, went back to Grandma and my dad was born in 1950. No idea if either of my uncles were older or nah, maybe a year or two?
My maternal grandpa defended the bells of a local church during WW1 from being taken away by the germans and melted into ammunition. They were from the XVth century. There was a wooden church there, built in 1447. In 1723 they built a second wooden church in place of the old one, that burned down during WW2. The bells survived till today and have recently been shown off to the public and rung again, for some occasion. I think it might've been 90 years of the opening of the new church. If interested, google "popielow dzwony" - popielow is the village name. They defended the bells, then took them and burrowed them somewhere, then dug them up after the war and returned them to the parish.
Also my dad has a notepad from his youth full of stupid rhymes, jokes and naughty puns which I recently found in the basement. He said not to read it so we stopped, but not before hearing the best pickup line ever. "Mis" means "teddy" or "small bear". "Misie" is plural. "Mi sie" means "for/to me". So you ask "have you heard the tale of three little bears? You look good to me, take off your clothes for me, give yourself to me". In polish it's "podobasz misie, rozbierz misie, oddaj misie".
Edit: also check a comment I replied to this comment, about german citizenship and us being a family of traitors lol
Maalus@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
Holy fuck I forgot the best part of the Johann story. My dad devoutly learned German, probably because of the connection with his mum (he loved her very much, he promised her he wouldn't sell the house they lived in, and even in his old age he goes there to groundskeep, restore the house and he'll be doing this till he cannot anymore he said). I'd say he was about as "germanpilled" as possible - also seeing how well his brother did in West Germany. So he thought he'll get us all german citizenship. We didn't mind, it's in our blood, grandma was German after all, and double citizenship is a thing. So he went through the entire process, getting us all citizenship. We had to go to the embassy, pics in hand, show up with the entire family, give fingerprints n'shit. About a year later, we get six letters from the embassy. All of them the same, all addressed to a different person in the family. We check them out, we all got the citizenship, yay! Except the dad looks like he saw a ghost. Then he starts laughing like crazy. We ask him what's up - turns out his was rejected. Because he was too close in relation to someone who "betrayer the german state and deserted the army". We were like "wtf, who???". Turns out, the german state was the 3rd reich, and the army was wehrmacht, when grandpa Johann joined the allies lmao. So now the only person who really wanted the citizenship didn't get it, because grandpa was a traitor to Hitler
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
That was a wild ride. Man, such a great comment chain
Maalus@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
Also, there was a joke that firefighters don't put out barns in Silesia, especially in "Barns". Barns is a village (now district of Rybnik) literally named "Barns" - Stodoly. They had a smithy there in XVIth century. The reasons the firemen stayed away, was post WW1 nobody gave up their guns and ammo, they hid it in their barns. So everytime a fire happened, a literal arsenal was burning and cooking off, so they stayed away, contained the blaze and let it burn out
Also, Stodoly was a second spot where germans started a provocation - they got SS troops on thr 31st of August 39' in Polish uniforms to take a border office, then brought a second squad of SS troops, dressed in german uniforms, then brought corpses from a concentration camp dressed in both Polish and German uniforms to "legitimize" a supposed "Polish" attack.
Logi@lemm.ee · 8 pts · 1y
I had the opportunity to visit Russia in 1987 at the hight of the USSR. It was a hell-hole. Communism doesn’t work.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
Authoritarian dictatorships that move wealth and power to the top at the expense of the peopel don’t work. “Communism” is barely on the radar, you can stick whatever label you want on it.
bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 1y
yarr@feddit.nl · 5 pts · 1y
I had the opportunity to visit Detroit in 2017 at the height of the USA. It was a hell-hole. Capitalism doesn’t work.
TheTetrapod@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Who the fuck is down oting this on Lemmy?
knexcar@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
People sick of the “Capitalism Bad” circlejerk when the alternative isn’t much better as shown in the above post.
yarr@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 1y
Capitalists!
NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world · 105 pts · 1y
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · 30 pts · 1y
And far too few darts
DrBob@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 1y
Meet the black market.
superkret@feddit.org · 6 pts · 1y
How many cigarettes do I get if I trade in all my soap, washing powder, flour and rice?
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
Two.
superkret@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1y
worth it!
hOrni@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
Seriously. It's what I'm buying for myself for a gaming evening if I don't want to get drunk.
wrekone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 62 pts · 1y
0.5 liter of vodka? What were they supposed to do the other 29 days of the month?
bhamlin@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
Let alone the rest of the first day?
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 59 pts · 1y
ah 12 packs of cigarettes and a half a litre of vodka. a complete balanced breakfast.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
ah...
blin.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1y
did you say abe lincoln?
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1y
Only if Abe is into cheeki breeki hardbass.
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 1y
Sure, but what will you eat for the rest of the month?
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works · 59 pts · 1y
Would they have been expected to grow their own vegetables, or did they just embrace the average young male diet?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 72 pts · 1y
I believe vegetables weren't rationed
trolololol@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
What was the reason for rationing, was it inflation, unemployment, drought or what? I though Poland economy was free to do what it wanted, or was it subject to the same problems as the Soviet Union?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1y
Same essential problems as the SovUnion, but in the early-mid 1980s, the Polish economy was struggling.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I fail to see how limiting how much product can be bought and sold would stimulate an economy, outside of a major excess issue like the one that led to The New Deal in the USA.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 1y
You're thinking too much in market terms. It should be more "Our allocation of production has resulted in shortages of these goods; we must figure out a way of distributing these goods without resorting to 'highest-bidder' style market economics."
Typically, in market-oriented economies, this happens during wartime when the government doesn't trust market economies (rightly) to deliver the needs of the war while there are still civilians willing to outbid the government. In command economies, this happens whenever the priorities of the government and the civilian population are at odds (such as Poland exporting most of its sugar to the SovUnion despite massive domestic demand for sugar and higher sugar production per capita than ever before).
jqubed@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
I have a game wishlisted on Steam called Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic that I’m hoping might prove educational to better understand how that system worked because sometimes it seems so foreign to me.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Market economies are very psychological - "How do you encourage people to consume/produce X?" But command economies are simpler in a sense, because it's all very material - "What do we make, and who do we give it to?"
Excellent game, btw
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
It's hard to take your very legitimate explanations seriously when your username is bolded as OP, and top of mind to me. Haha. Seriously though, thanks for taking the time to type it out.
Zementid@feddit.nl · 39 pts · 1y
That is around 970 calories a day if you take 1/30th of each edible item on the Table.
It's not enough, but surprisingly almost half the needed amount.
Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 27 pts · 1y
If Poland is anything like the US, families were expected to keep a garden where they grew many vegetables and fruits, and often kept chickens.
CoCo_Goldstein@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
Are you referring to 'Victory Gardens' in WWII?
If so, that's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, since Poland had been at peace for over 35 years.
boonhet@lemm.ee · 13 pts · 1y
I'm Estonian, not Polish, but I've helped my mom grow potatoes and stuff. Because of the peasant history, our people have always grown our own food. Only in the least few decades has it been getting less common.
Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 1y
Prior to WWII, during the depression.
Tja@programming.dev · 15 pts · 1y
You supplement it with potatoes, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers and other veggies. And some apples and seasonal fruit.
Things sucked but people weren't malnourished back then.
Also not shown here: gasoline was also rationed, as were cars themselves.
otp@sh.itjust.works · 36 pts · 1y
I find it funny that a lot of people seem to be assuming that this is everything that they were allowed to eat. Fruits and veggies have been completely banned, in this world! Haha
shalafi@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 1y
Fruit is often hard to grow, but simple veggies like potatoes and onions are a no-brainer. Garlic too!
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Have fun obtaining them.
Fandangalo@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 1y
More on the history of this photograph here: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/food-rationing-communist-poland/
kindenough@kbin.earth · 17 pts · 1y
Thank you for the effort, that was an interesting read.
Redex68@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Who the hell writes like this, felt like a student that had an x word paper due and added literally every adjective they could think of to pad it.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 1y
Sounds like a miserable existence. You're going to need a lot more vodka than that to cope.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 1y
Rationing in the early 80s is considered to be one of the major agitating factors that led to increased labor union activity and, thus, the eventual end of the Communist regime in Poland. Would seem that it was not nearly enough vodka to quietly cope!
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 1y
I can see why. Like if I was flat broke, these rations would be super welcome, but as an ongoing totality of what I could have for all of my labor? No, fuck that! The people at the top were obviously hoarding all the wealth, which seems to always happen every time this form of government is tried.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 1y
Well, you still had to purchase the food, you were just limited by ration cards in how much of certain goods you could purchase.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
Oh shit, that's even worse!
crapwittyname@lemm.ee · 7 pts · 1y
It happens every time any form of government is tried to be honest. The problem is with people, not the system of government.
-Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Right. Which is a fundamental reason why the government should not be trusted to act in the best interest of the people. There must be checks and balances, and they must be held accountable and be forced to do their duty. The USA had a great run of this, but over the last 4 decades politicians have changed the lay of the land to benefit themselves and their donors more and more, and the people haven't the gumption, will, or faculties to challenge them and hold them to account. Politicians have also realized that much of our system relied upon integrity, or the assumption that the individual would follow the system, with very little to no consequences if they just do whatever they want.
crapwittyname@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 1y
I'm no historian, but I see the cycle of [Brave New World -> Prosperity / Dominance -> Decline -> Corruption -> Oppression -> Revolution -> Brave New World] as a fairly common pattern, with timescales from decades to centuries. It might be cognitive bias, but it seems kind of inevitable, really.
Scandinavia seems like a good place to live ATM.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com · 27 pts · 1y
I was trying to figure out how to make it work for week but a month?
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 1y
12 packs of cigs seems like a huge luxury
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk · 10 pts · 1y
For a month? It's just dried shredded leaves wrapped in paper, cigarettes are super cheap to produce, tax makes them expensive.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
You didn't live in the eighties I bet. It was cheap back then and everyone smoked.
kava@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
average smoker smokes about 20 cigarettes a day. so it's a little less than half of a monthly use of cigarettes.
from what i understand the ration was meant to supplement what you consume, not provide everything
strawberrysocial@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Is 20 cigs a day honestly the average nowadays?? Mind blowing and sad. My mum who was an addicted smoker since she was 10 years of age and went through maybe 5 to 10 cigs a day.
kava@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1y
it's been the average for a long time. it's due to nicotine's pharmacological effects. its half life is roughly 1~2 hours. so a smoker on average will feel the compulsion to smoke an hour or so after the last cigarette. since most people are awake somewhere 16 hours a day, that's about ~16 cigarettes a day.
your mom's smoking habits were definitely atypical
Eiri@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 1y
Their priorities were fucked up. Cigarettes and alcohol, obviously, but more sugar than rice? Huh?
Also, lots of meat but no other food groups?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1y
Elsewhere in the comments it's mentioned that these were just the rationed things; there were unrationed foodstuffs.
Tja@programming.dev · 15 pts · 1y
Rice is not precisely native to Poland... The staple food is potatoes, which weren't rationed.
seaQueue@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1y
Four and a half kilos of carbohydrates and sugars, goddamn.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz · 29 pts · 1y
For a month, that’s only about 600 kcal/day from carbs. Maybe potatoes are unrationed.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
That's a starvation diet for a full grown male. Hell, that's even less than a very small female adult would need.
pageflight@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
A loaf of bread is about half a kilo of flour, that's not much for a whole month!
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 1y
I wonder why it's 1.3kg. The soviet union adopted the metric system, so it seems like an odd choice. Maybe Poland had a historical measure that size.
limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 1y
lot of problems, but not diabetes
whoisearth@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 1y
This is what Conservatives around the world want and glory hallelujah we are almost there! The only difference is all those rations will not come from the government but from corporations paid for by the government.
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
Alright, where are the anti capitalist tankies defending this?
repungnant_canary@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 1y
This has little to do with socialism/capitalism and more with that fact that the economy was centrally (terribly) governed and most of the products were exported to the "friend nation USSR"
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
75% of sugar output exported to the Sovs while the citizens of Poland 'enjoyed' sugar rationing.
niktemadur@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
75% of sugar output exported to moscow and leningrad, you think the people of anywhere outside the immediate vicinity of those two cities got to see any of it? Let alone anywhere east of the Urals?
Tja@programming.dev · -10 pts · 1y
Comunimsm is not that bad! It only has a 100% failure rate, but that's the CIA/UFO/Soros fault!
gmtom@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1y
Reminder you live in a country where you have to pay other people to deny you healthcare.
Tja@programming.dev · 4 pts · 1y
Nope, I have universal Healthcare, like 32 of the 33 advanced economies.
sneaky@r.nf · 3 pts · 1y
Plenty of countries with universal healthcare that are also capatalistic societies. I love communism, too but the other comment had a valid point.
humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee · -2 pts · 1y
Ussr never fully recovered after ww2 and had to engage in a very expensive arms race while attempting to rebuild. Imo saying that communism doesn't work often forgets this fact.
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 1y
Tja@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1y
Plenty of capitalist countries did recover, so that just one more argument against communism.
humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee · 0 pts · 1y
Completely different situations. One country had to recover from complete devastation and bootstrap everything from scratch, could not rely on anyone and had to fund and support allies with that.
While other European countries were barely touched it could benefit from US funding which was in itself completely untouched and benefited from the collapse of the entire capitalist competition worldwide.
Tja@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1y
The ussr was much less devastated than Germany, and it didn't support allies, it received support first and exploited colonies later.
humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 1y
Not true. Majority of ussr most economically valuable areas were destroyed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kPVo9w79D6w
Ussr provided major military assistance to china Korea, vietnam, African countries fighting for freedom.
Also look up comecon.
Also who do you think was responsible for reconstruction of half the germany? It was ussr most which was also half destroyed itself.
All of this was a much higher burden on ussr than US which was left intact.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
They are in the same place where pro-capitalist liberals are when people talk about food insecurity in today's West, and let's face it, the rest of the non-Western world.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
There goes the sweets! Now she’s even more annoyed!
Maeve@kbin.earth · 0 pts · 1y
I can and do live very well off less than that.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1y
Complaining about them when they aren't here. See? They're everywhere!
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · -1 pts · 1y
You do realize that all nations ration as necessary right?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Here in the USA I can buy whatever I want, even if it's bad for everyone.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1y
The US isn’t currently rationing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Here in the USA we are aware that they aren't rationing. You don't think it's necessary?
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1y
Your comment is irrelevant
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
No it's not
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1y
“In the 80s Poland was rationing”
“All countries ration when they need to”
“Im currently not rationing in the US”
“That’s because the US isn’t currently rationing {link to previous US rationing occurrences}”
“I know that”
So explain what relevance that has to the discussion
scutiger@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
Half a liter of vodka monthly? Aren't the Poles known for their consumption of vast quantities of the stuff?
matti@sopuli.xyz · 12 pts · 1y
Yeast is not on the list but the 2kg of sugar wasn't just for cakes I'm sure.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
What they were officially allowed to drink vs what they did drink.
kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
Unpopular opinion: we need to ration electricity consumption as well as fuel today, even in capitalists countries. Because that stuff actually has incredible impact on the planet, and will (must) drive consumption down, so that companies / individuals start integrating "efficiency" into their thinking
I don't see any other solution to the "exponentially growing power consumption" problem.
bitcrafter@programming.dev · 21 pts · 1y
In the U.S., at least, power generation has been roughly flat for the last 20 years, not growing exponentially:
whoisearth@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1y
That's excluding our hard on for AI the last few years. Would love to see this updated.
maketotaldestr0i@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
electricity is only a tiny fraction of energy use.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1y
Power usage levels in the US, though, are insane compared to mother countries.
hark@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I'm surprised by how much natural gas makes up the mix.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 1y
c/selfhosted has entered the chat
kalpol@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Power for the power god
desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
time to self-host a powerplant?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1y
Pigouvian taxes are a traditional solution to negative externalities, and they are often better received by the public than rationing.
It's expensive to be poor - the lights turning off a few days before the end of the month will incur even more costs than a higher electricity bill.
Taxes raise money for other programs, instead of costing money to enforce rationing.
Higher taxes in general will also help reduce inflation.
Tax revenue can be spent on stimulus checks to offset the cost for people who use less energy than average.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Rather than stimulus checks we need to be using the money to subsidize alternatives. And we can just switch subsidies. Some examples of that include that by reducing cattle subsides we can subsidize lower emissions meat alternatives or even offer free classes on how to cook meals that happen to be lower emissions, and we can stop funding airports and put that money into rail systems, similarly by removing mandatory minimum parking and reducing road funding that money can be put into transit solutions that enable less car centric lifestyles.
Deceptichum@quokk.au · 15 pts · 1y
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 39 pts · 1y
I imagine there are food items which aren't rationed, because there's no fruit or vegetables here. If you grew your own fruit and had sugar you could preserve it as jam. The sugar helps prevent spoilage. Or if you grew rhubarb you could make a pie, which would be pretty darn sour without sugar.
It's the cigarettes that kill me!
espentan@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 1y
Apparently it's not just you, cigarettes are killing several people.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
They’ve killed at least 2 people, maybe three people. It’s really hard to say
CoCo_Goldstein@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
You are assuming they have land to grow those fruits and vegetables on.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1y
I'm assuming someone was able to grow some, or they too would have been rationed. Whether anyone could afford them is another matter.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1y
Wasn't Poland famously invaded for that land?
Tja@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1y
Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Not sure. It may be that it looks like a lot simply because we're used to modern foods having sugar pre-added?
frostysauce@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 1y
Sugar + yeast = booze
MNByChoice@midwest.social · 12 pts · 1y
I wonder how they used it. Fancy baked goods the first days, then a rush to bake long lasting good before the perishables spoil? Did widowers ask family to bake with their rations?
Alenalda@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
This ladys eating better than I do
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
How?
With an average net income ranging from 1100 USD to 2400 USD, any average worker should eat better than this
This lady monthly rations amount to approximately 160 USD, while the average minimum wage workers spends from 260 to 350 USD worth on groceries
Which I really doubt is a problem, given that the median of the monthly income in usa is about 5k usd
Kvoth@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
I'm not gonna say that's anywhere near sufficient, but as a US citizen where do I sign up
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1y
To be ration-limited by what you can purchase? I'm sure that's a fad diet somewhere.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
I might bring tankies out of the woodwork for saying this, but I remember one time a tankie told me that scarcity in communist countries is by design and it's a good thing, after I pointed out that people had to be on the waiting list just to get a car. What if the person lives in rural with no access to public transport?
I understand capitalism is wasteful, but doing the extreme opposite and making people wait to own a car or giving someone bare essentials is not a good thing. Having a scarcity economy is not good, especially considering that the Soviet Union produced more tanks than cars throughout its history. The American military industrial complex is rightly criticised for overspending, but communist countries are worse since the case is that more tanks were made than civilian cars. It means more budget went to the military than to producing consumer good. Talk about priorities.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 1y
Not a tankie, nor a communist, just a progressive with an interest in history, but,
Is such a US-centric view. They all didn't need to drive cars, dude, they had public transportation.
Edit: Added emphasis for people having trouble reading
Takumidesh@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Do you think that every single person in Europe is perfectly served by public transport?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1y
Nope. Did I say that?
Takumidesh@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
No but the person you replied to called out a specific scenario in which the person lives in a rural area with no public transport access which is a real thing in every single country, with good public transit or not.
The concept of someone not having access to public transit isn't an American centric point of view.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Not all countries have good public transport system. Imagine living in Siberia at the time of the communists, unless you're in gulag which doesn't require you to travel to other places.
Justas@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
Yes, busses were relatively common and affordable, but many of them were smelly and horrible. Except for the Icaruses, the passengers of which felt like kings among men.
Justas@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Soviet Union had a limited ability to produce things, especially heavy machinery. Their leadership quickly realised that they can't outproduce the Western countries on everything, so they decided to only match their military production capabilities. Which led to them falling further and further behind.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
No, are you sure? /s
Don't take what tankied say like they mean it, it's just propaganda / they amuse themselves coming up with lies that you have to unravel and defeat. And if you do so, then magically the discussion is over and we'll talk about some other thing.
PixellatedDave@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Well if you really want to be restricted purchasing the maximum amount of those items then you don't need to sign up. Just limit your monthly amount to be as displayed.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 1y
Can someone calculate the calories in that? I'm too lazy.
Maybe don't include the sugar. That's a shit ton of sugar to go through in month.
asqapro@reddthat.com · 21 pts · 1y
Ballpark estimate, excluding the sugar:
2.5kg beef: ~6265 Calories
0.5l vodka: ~1082 Calories
1.3kg white rice: ~4743 Calories
1.3kg flour: ~4732 Calories
500g butter: ~3585 Calories
300g cooking oil (Google says rapeseed oil is popular in Poland so I used that): ~2652 Calories
250g chocolate: ~1338 Calories
Total: 24,397 Calories or ~813 Calories per day
Some other people online also did the math and came up with similar numbers. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37027027 came up with 33,063 Calories (including the sugar)
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 1y
Nice, that was super fast. I guess it's probably enough for one person to survive if they practically don't move at all the entire month, for a little while at least.
Still not pleasant I imagine.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1y
What would you be willing to do to ensure that your fellow citizens aren't dying of literal hunger on the streets?
(Clearly to most Americans, that answer is "absolutely nothing")
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Exactly, and thst sounds like the sort of rations Americans had during the world wars. It was supplimented by a mass movement of community gardens. Personally I'm more a fan of the ration points system we used so that you aren't stuck with stuff you won't use and those who'd rather eat like Hannibal of Carthage and go less hungry can do that while those who'd rather eat more resource intensive foods like meat can accept the cost of their demands in the form of calories. Though that may just be because I've always been the sort who'd rather be full of lentils and potatoes than hungry after a burger, even before I quit meat.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
I think some of us have experienced poverty (or near-poverty) in our lives, so we understand things like this.
AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
That's what the cigarettes are for
DaFuqs@feddit.org · 3 pts · 1y
But what if I wanted to eat the soap?
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Yummy bubbles
kralk@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
You get another 333 calories from the sugar, add it to the vodka!
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 1y
They have almost as much sugar as starch, 2.5kg of meat, and no other protein?
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 1y
Vodka and cigarettes are not necessities. Different times, obviously. If the vodka was being made either from potatoes or grain, even if of lower quality, those would be better put towards adding extra available calories for people.
p.s
This made me remember being told there was a time, my country being at war then, where cigarette packs were distributed to soldiers with a banner stamped on it that stated "Have a cigar and relax".
gmtom@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
They weren't starving, most fresh produce wasn't rationed at all and was readily available. The items you see here are the just what was rationed due to supply.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Neither is meat or butter
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 1y
Philosophical options aside, meat and butter are very energy dense food sources.
But it would make sense replacing that cooking oil with a large tub of universal purpose vegetable based butter: it would introduce more available calories, both for cooking and direct consumption.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Doesn't mean that it's a good idea. When you feed food to food, you waste a lot of food. That's the meat, dairy and eggs industry. Conversion ratios vary, but they're terrible and, by the simple laws of physics, can't beat just eating plants.
That is what did happen, but it turns out that hydrogenation causing trans fats isn't good for health. Fun fact: ruminant milk, especially from "grass fed", can contain up to 10% trans fats because the bacteria inside can do a natural hydrogenation too.
Vegetable oil is the best option for calories, but it's also boring, so the staples for food security have been: grain flour + vegetable oil + sugar.
Here's some relevant history: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/naval-blockade-of-germany/
and a more modern article tied to the same topic: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/troy-vettese-do-not-let-them-eat-meat/
qyron@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 1y
I lack the appeal to invest myself into a conversation that will return a zero sum outcome.
It's the College of Cardiologists, in my country, that actively recommends the use of vegetable based butter as a source of safe fats.
This isn't a body easy to get public suport from and false advertising is severely punished in my country, so I risk I'm fairly well informed and safe to eat my vegetable based butter and recommend it to others. And it is vegan safe.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I don't disagree, I'm just pointing out that hydrogenated fat ("margarine") is a problem.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-01961-2/figures/1
frostysauce@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 1y
As is vodka. Ounce for ounce ethanol has the same calories as butter.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 1y
I'm as anti-capitalist as it comes but how the hell would this even last half a week, let alone a night with the vodka, rice, and sweets
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1y
These are just the goods that are rationed/limited. These were the goods with the highest demand and lowest supply. There are unrationed goods that could still be purchased, like potatoes.
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 1y
This makes so much more sense.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 1y
Didn’t know! I limited potatoes sounds good
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
The rice is about 6 us measuring cups worth, and 1 cup is enough for 2 people to have a meal after it soaks up a bunch of water (plus a bit little vodka and sugar for taste).
The Flour can make several loaves of bread as well, it's about 5000 Calories for that bag without considering oil added for a nice focaccia or butter and milk for a classic brioche.
If each person gets this then it can
be sufficientlast a week or two, but I assume it was supplementary in nature.danafest@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 1y
There's no yeast included though. Are they also maintaining a sourdough starter with that ration? Also a brioche would probably use up quite a bit of their ration for the month and possibly last about a week. Lastly, who puts vodka in rice?
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Ah right, Monthly lol I was thinking more like weekly or biweekly. Yeah, this isn't enough.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1y
Vodka: 10/10 with rice
humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 1y
Questions comrade?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
I imagine people with limited resources who are receiving rations that include a handful of items that you occasionally need to get creative with.
It's like the show Chopped, but much less fun.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
The vodka acts as a sort of Rice Vinegar replacement, I would stir it in after the rice has cooked since alcohol evaporates at lower temp.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 1 pts · 1y
frostysauce@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1y
One cup of uncooked rice does not make enough for me for dinner, I don't know how you think two can dine on that.
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
AA5B@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Yet 1/2c is the serving size. I can never decide if that’s a useless fiction or a good reminder that rice is a lot of carbs. Anyhow, I’m down to 1.5c (uncooked) for two people
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1y
Fluffy rice is pretty filling, imo.
AA5B@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Pretty sure they’d grow their own vegetables
strawberrysocial@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
Looks equivalent what you'd get at a Canadian food bank nowadays that's meant for 3 days.
Matriks404@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Now you know why people don't smile in Poland.
hOrni@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
Hey, I'm Polish and I do sometimes smile. I am living in Denmark, dough.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Oh, she looks so happy!
Thcdenton@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Shieet i could down all of that in 3 days easy
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1y
You could smoke 4 packs a day for 3 days?
Honytawk@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 1y
Easy
Thcdenton@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
Thcdenton@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Yes. I'd also eat those bags of sugar and flour that I totally overlooked
sus@programming.dev · 4 pts · 1y
damn that's like 8000 calories per day
Wogi@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Here's a fun fact, people generally underestimate the number of calories in a thing by 20-30%. Which you have also just done.
The total calories consumed each day if it's all consumed in 3 days, not including the cooking oil or the vodka, would be 11,145.
spaduf@slrpnk.net · 7 pts · 1y
Was this meant to be supplemented?
strawberrysocial@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
That's a very good question
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Wow, I see the sugar industry was as influential there as it was in America.
repungnant_canary@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
If you could even get all that, and if you could you had to queue for days
Jikiya@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
That's not enough butter. I would have been put down young for rioting about criminally low amounts of butter.
Wogi@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I thought I used a lot of butter. You use more than a pound a month?
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Holy shit that's a lot. I use about 10 grams per portion of 1 meal, usually breakfast.
I don't eat that daily but even like that, 30 full days non stop , that's like 300 grams
What the hell are you guys doing up there with a pound of butter?
Oh no, don't tell me. I don't want to know
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 5 pts · 1y
Is that like for a whole family?
Agent641@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1y
The meat and sweets for the adults, the ciggies and vodka for the kids
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Individual, I believe.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1y
Well, the kids usually take the vodka.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Reminds me of the leftist venezuelan regime monthly rations in the form of cajas clap.
Absolutely disgusting food.
Thank goodness I was able to escape the dictatorship with my family
x0chi@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
That catsup can go 2 ways. Ketchup or Cat Soup
strawberrysocial@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Thank you for posting this. I don't understand what a lot of those foods are. It looks like a heck of a lot of it is pasta/noodles based though. And maybe milk powder? Where is the protein other than the canned tuna(?) up at the top.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
That was it. No more than that. Worst thing is that almost all this products are from Mexico. Before the collectivists and leftists took power in Venezuela, we used to make all these products
Left to right
4 blue pasta packages, 200 grams each
4 green rice packages, 1 kg
4 yellow spaghetti packs. 200 grams each
6 shredded tuna cans. 130 grams each
1 oil bottle. 1 liter
2 red bottles, tomato sauce/ketchup. 220 grams each
2 orange packs, corn flour, 1kg each
1 pack of refined sugar, 1kg
1 white pack, dry whole milk, 500 grams
2 green packs, black beans, 1kg each
3 yellow packs, egg spaghetti, 290 grams each
3 red packs, elbow shaped spaghetti , 200 grams each
1 blue pack, lentils, 1 kg
Take into account that this is supposed to last a family of 4 a month. If it ever arrives.
Because it's assigned per family
Also, as most of these products are from Mexico, the transportation is not the best and most of the time they arrive corroded, open by rats, or with less or very different products than advertised
So yeah I'm glad I escaped the collectivistic hellhole with my family mostly intact
strawberrysocial@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Thank you for answering, this is very eye opening. In Canada we get a similar amount of food at our volunteer based food banks that is supposed to last a month but lasts a few days, but it's different in the type of product. And it would never be given to us in a state that was degraded or torn into by pests.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
If you still gained a salary from work and could buy the rest of what you need this really isn't that bad
Aggravationstation@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 1y
I don't think you got this for free, it was probably just the maximum you could buy of any of these items in a month. That's how war time rationing worked in the UK.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -1 pts · 1y
This was the USSR. They didn't pay for this.
Aggravationstation@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 1y
Apparently you're incorrect: https://polishhistory.pl/a-ration-card-for-survival-rationing-in-communist-poland/
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
deegeese@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1y
el_bhm@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 1y
No see. US imperialism is bad therefore communism good.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
500 ml of vodka? Bullshit, there was plenty of vodka and it was distilled legally and illegally.
Anticorp@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
This is just what the State determined was necessary for a person's needs, and issued to them as their communist rations. People could and did engage in capitalism to get what they actually needed.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Based capitalism, providing once again the needed products at the best price
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · -2 pts · 1y
This thread is basically:
Scarcity in socialist countries 40 years ago: pearl clutching.
Scarcity in capitalist countries fucking now: yawn.
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Bruh, you can buy more flour than that with change dropped in a fucking parking lot.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 1y
They can. And how many people have to live under bridges to allow for that?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
How many had to live on park benches and prison camps in Warsaw Pact states to allow for their 'generous' rationing?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
I think you thought I was defending the USSR. I wasn't.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1y
Good so we got flour figured out. How many homeless people did Poland have in the 1980s? How many does it have now?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Uncertain, because like the Soviet Union, homelessness was illegal and official stats weren't kept. Nevertheless, 'vagrancy' was a serious and recurring problem in Warsaw Pact states.