Soviets to Get Leftovers From West Berlin’s Cold War Food

A huge stockpile of food built up by West Berlin in case of a Cold War crisis will be sent to help the Soviet Union, the power that once blockaded the city.

In one of the ironies of post-Cold War Europe, Berlin said Tuesday that it is ready to send 300,000 metric tons of food and other supplies worth $480 million to its former enemy.

The only outstanding question is how to move the goods from 280 warehouses around the city to their destination.

“The big problem will be transporting it in winter as the cold could destroy the tinned food,” said Juergen Weide, a department head at Berlin’s Economics Senate.

Soviet media reported that severe shortages of meat, potatoes and dairy products are hitting the nation’s industrial heartland and the battered economy is reeling because of a wave of hoarding, bartering and rationing.

The reports painted a grim picture of what everyone expects to be a long, hard winter across much of the country, already torn by political and social unrest.

Leningrad, birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution and the country’s second-largest city, has approved a rationing plan, and Moscow is expected to follow suit.

Sales in the two cities, and many other regions, are already limited to buyers with residence permits.

Mounting food problems, sparked by the breakdown of the old distribution system and the lack of a replacement, pose the most fundamental threat yet to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform drive, bogged down in its sixth year.

West Berlin established its emergency stockpile in 1953, four years after enduring a yearlong blockade by the Soviet Union and its East German ally.

The stockpile, which was due to be dismantled following German unification last month, was large enough to supply the daily needs of West Berliners for up to a year.

It includes items ranging from 10.9 million cans of sardines to 18 million toilet rolls.

A German Red Cross delegation will leave today for talks in Moscow on an aid program.