More Smokes, Crabby Folks

For once the news was good: 2 million imported cigarettes had been unloaded over the weekend in the nicotine-starved Soviet capital.

Muscovites rushed out this morning to buy them. But many kiosks sold out by afternoon, leaving desperate smokers who have already lived through a monthlong shortage even angrier.

“My God, this is the fifth time I have stood in a cigarette line, and I have nothing to show for it,” said one distraught woman after a kiosk closed.

One man was lucky--he reached the open kiosk window and because he was on crutches, he was allowed to buy seven packs instead of the normal limit of five. But he was hardly in a better mood.

“For the past three or four days I have been smoking cigarette stubs I collected on the street,” said Vyacheslav Borisov.