There Is Little to Buy, and Many People Have Second, Illegal Sources of Income Labeled “Left-hand Money.” : The Joys of Shopping in Moscow: Shortages, Endless Lines

The girl discreetly slipped a white blouse from the bag and showed it to a prospective buyer in the crowd. The English label meant a high price, but it also meant high quality.

However, the clandestine sale at the Moskva Univermag department store never took place. A plainclothes policeman stepped from the milling crowd of shoppers, grabbed the merchandise and escorted both buyer and seller away.

In the Soviet Union, selling is the business of the state, not individuals.

Lines Are Everywhere

Nevertheless, the state monopoly is so inefficient that one routinely sees small attempts at free enterprise. But what is considered good business in the West is considered profiteering in Moscow.

Here in the Soviet capital, the shoppers’ line is one of the inescapable facts of life. There are lines for dresses, lines for shirts, lines for underwear. For shoes, Soviets will stand patiently in subzero temperatures or spend half a day in a line winding through a major store.

On a recent shopping day, it was below zero along the wind-swept expanse of Kutuzovsky Prospect, a main road leading straight to the Kremlin, but a line waited silently outside a shoe shop opposite the apartment used by the late President Yuri V. Andropov. The clock was ticking toward the 2 p.m. lunchtime closing, and many would not make it inside.

In Moskva, a major store that bustles with people but is devoid of glitter, the line for the third-floor shoe department started on the second floor. A woman in a heavy coat and fur hat who had been standing for about three hours said she did not know exactly what she wanted. The line was the only way in.

Most clerks in the Soviet Union look bored and are often surly. They tend to clump together and chat while potential customers are ignored.

The only shoes visible from the front of the line were half-length boots priced at 70 rubles ($90), a medium price. However, most women try to buy quality winter boots costing up to $160.

Another line had formed for plaid cotton flannel shirts from China--the sort sold in discount basements of the West and, at only $10, about half the price of most Soviet shirts. Other women waited for newly arrived dresses priced at 100 rubles ($130)--more than two weeks’ pay for most people.

Clothes are a priority. Many women on the subway wear leather or fur coats costing a minimum of $1,000, and one of those mink hats bobbing in the sea of fur in a Moscow subway station can cost the equivalent of $500.

Illegal Sources of Income

It is one of the many ironies of the Soviet system that despite the low pay, savings accounts are bulging. There is little to buy, and many people have second, illegal sources of income labeled “left-hand money.” People have the cash to buy items that Westerners would assume were unaffordable in Russia.

Although the minimum wage is 70 rubles ($90) a month and the average hovers around $240, consumer items are almost universally more expensive than in the West--more than $60 for a simple wool sweater, for example, and close to $200 for a well-made dress that would cost $60 in the United States. A pair of cheap Italian boots that were available in England at $30 were on sale in Moscow for $156--a level of profit for the state that would be unimaginable in a free-market economy.

But opportunity to buy, not price, is the key in the Soviet Union.

Despite marked improvements in the last two decades, shortages run throughout the economy. Deficit is one of the most common Russian words. Priorities for production and selling are set by the Communist Party’s plan, not by consumers.

An example of what can result is a hardware store where there are a few pots, a few wooden spoons, a few pans and shelf upon shelf of state-manufactured green plastic toilet seats. These products represent the official economy.

But, as exemplified by the girl arrested in the department store, there also is a vast underground economy.

T-shirts with slogans in English, Michael Jackson buttons worn by Moscow teen-agers and foreign labels adorning the backs of jeans are a constant reminder of that economy.

Some people resell scarce items originally purchased in state stores, some sell goods received from abroad and others sell goods produced illicitly at home or in state factories. Although all those sales are illegal, officials just wink at most entrepreneurs.

“Babushkas (grandmothers) will stand in line for hours to get items for three rubles that they can resell for five,” said a Moscow housewife named Marina. “They have nothing else to do, and it supplements their pensions.”

‘That’s More Dangerous’

“Other people deal in bigger things like radios, but that is more dangerous,” she said.

Foreign labels are equated with quality, often correctly. Soviet jeans, thin and shapeless, often lie unwanted on store shelves.

Word that foreign clothes are available can cause a mob scene.

A foreign student attending Stalin’s towering Moscow University put up a notice that she had a pair of jeans to sell. The dingy, dimly lit hall was soon filled with Russian girls in their underwear taking turns checking the fit. Foreign jeans will bring a quick 100 rubles ($130), and the state has taken to selling its imports at that price.

But not all of those “foreign” products are foreign. The Soviet press periodically runs an expose of some factory manager caught using the state facilities to manufacture a private line with more appeal than those authorized by the party. It’s a profitable business, but one that can end before a firing squad.

Watch-Repair Shops

The chronic shortages are reflected in the number of secondhand and specialty repair shops along the streets of Moscow. Watch-repair shops are among the most common, but others handle only shoes, television sets or even handbags.

Not that the presence of a repair shop necessarily solves the problem.

In a corner of Marina’s kitchen is a useless washing machine. She explained that it broke down “about two years ago, and the repair shop couldn’t get the part it needed.”

Now she periodically hikes up the snow-covered hill behind her apartment to a laundry to wash sheets. In the bathroom of her home is a basin where she scrubs the family’s clothes by hand.