Moscovites Short of Bread for the First Time in Years

Soviet citizens are used to waiting in line for bananas, paying under the table for meat and using ration coupons for sugar. But bread, that staple of the Russian diet, was always fresh and plentiful.

Now that has changed. On Monday, Soviets lined up for bread at stores across Moscow for the first time in years.

Many were grumbling, blaming President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms for shortages of a growing list of products that includes tobacco, paper, cheese and gasoline.

Russian bread, which is chewy but wholesome--and cheap, because of government subsidies--had been one of the few products Soviet consumers could count on. The last time people remember long bread lines was under Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, who was ousted from power in 1964.

“That’s perestroika --we’re not moving forward, we’re going backward,” said Viktor Lyubeznov, a 52-year-old electrician who went to four Moscow bread stores before finding a loaf.

“Now we think freely, we speak freely, but the economic situation is more severe than ever,” said Irina Samoruppa, 65.

The shortage could undermine support for the political and economic reforms--known as perestroika --initiated by Gorbachev.

Inside Moscow’s Bread Store No. 150 on Monday, tempers flared as customers accused saleswomen of saving the last few loaves of white bread for themselves.

Outside, people stood in clusters, commiserating and arguing.

“Never in my life have I ever had to search for bread before,” said Anatoly Znamensky, a 66-year-old retired taxi driver. “Vegetables, fruit, cheese, butter, meat--they appear and disappear. But with bread there was never a problem, until now.”

“Everything will be fine,” said Samoruppa. “It isn’t possible for this to continue very long.”

The bread shortage, which began late last week and worsened over the weekend, appeared to be limited primarily to Moscow, although bread rationing has been introduced in Tarusa, a small city to the south.

Newspapers said the capital’s bakeries were unable to keep up with the sudden rise in demand when residents returned from their traditional August vacations.

The problem is not a lack of grain. A record harvest is expected this year. The Soviet newspaper Izvestia said the bottleneck is Moscow’s central bread bakeries, which have undergone little expansion or modernization since the 1950s, when the population was about half the current 8.8 million.

The shortage could be especially hard on the city’s retirees. Some receive pensions of only $48 to $96 a month and survive largely on bread, which costs between 11 and 18 cents a pound.

The lack of bread comes on the heels of a summer-long shortage of tobacco, which led to street demonstrations in Moscow and strikes in other Russian cities.

In addition, gasoline has become hard to find. Hard cheese has virtually disappeared from stores in Moscow in recent weeks. As school reopened, shelves were bare of the notebooks children are required to use in class.

Of all the shortages, however, bread is potentially the most politically troubling, if only because of its historical symbolism. When Lenin returned from exile to lead the revolution in 1917, his slogan promised communism would bring “Peace, Land and Bread.”