Red Square: 1969 - Lining up for toilet paper

[CopperGoat]

My friend told me that this actually happened. When the Russians actually lined up for toilet paper in Red Square on 1969. Did this actually happen? And if it did, why did it happen?

[Conghaileach]

I suppose that since items such as toilet roll were subsidised and free to the people, there were certain places they went to get some kind of ration once a week or so.

This is just really a guess. I honestly don't know for sure, and there are definitely comrades here who would know more about the issue than I do.

[redstar2000]

"Red Square" is a pretty big place and it seems to me there was at least one department store located there.

Russians developed some interesting shopping habits during the period of the USSR. It was customary to carry two or three months wages with you in cash at all times, since you had no way of telling when consumer goods might suddenly become available.

You bought not only what you needed but as much as you could carry; later you would trade your surplus with a friend or neighbor for their surplus...thus informally evening-out the sporadic and unpredictable Gosplan distributions.

And, by all accounts, there were always lines for everything.

:cool:

[CopperGoat]

What are the "the sporadic and unpredictable Gosplan distributions. "?

[redstar2000]

Gosplan was the short name for the USSR central economic planning agency. In theory, they were ultimately responsible for insuring that toilet paper, for example, was produced and delivered in a timely fashion throughout the year.

As best I can gather, what actually happened is that there'd be no toilet paper available at all in the state retail stores for a month or two...then, suddenly, a couple of freight cars full of toilet paper would be delivered...plenty available. Then, another period of nothing, then sudden abundance. And this was true of just about every consumer commodity that you can imagine.

Thus the shopping habits of the Soviet consumer. Buy now or do without for a while.

This was not, by the way, something that "had" to happen. Soviet central planning did not plan to produce consumer goods in abundance and sometimes not even in sufficiency...with predictable results.

Allied to this was the slow and cumbersome techniques of information transferral; Gosplan itself was always months behind in knowing how the economy or a particular aspect of it was doing. If there was a serious shortage of some vital good (toilet paper :o), it might take Gosplan six months just to find out!

With modern information gathering and distribution techniques, of course, that would not be a problem.

:cool: