Ration Eggs, Flour and Meat, Mayor of Leningrad Urges

Leningrad’s reformist mayor urged the City Council today to ration eggs, flour, meat and other necessities, saying it is the only way the city will get through the winter without hunger and unrest.

“The entire country is introducing ration cards, and we unfortunately cannot avoid it either,” Mayor Anatoly Sobchak said.

Soviet television showed shoppers in Leningrad, the country’s second-largest city, waiting in 500-yard-long lines for such ordinary items as butter, milk and chocolate.

“Citizens standing in queues since morning want their representatives to take faster and, most of all, more decisive actions,” the television announcer said.

A few items are already rationed in Leningrad, but the new plan, if adopted, will be one of the most comprehensive rationing plans in the country.

Leningrad officials said the council is likely to make a decision Thursday.

Sobchak suggested that without rationing, public anger over shortages could endanger President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms.

“Democracy is facing a hungry winter,” he said. “It is crucial for democracy to survive this winter. The only solution I see is to introduce ration cards now.”

Moscow already has rationed sugar and cigarettes, limiting residents to 4.4 pounds of sugar and 10 packs of cigarettes per person in November.

Moscow’s City Council is expected to expand its ration system to include meat, butter and flour starting Dec. 1. Soviet newspapers have given varying accounts of the amounts of those items that Moscow residents would be allowed to buy.

Local officials in other cities have rationed meat, vodka, butter and similar staples.