Reaction to Soviet Prices: ‘Horrible!’ : Economics: The government’s increases take effect. Despite plan to flood markets with goods, there is little to buy.

One of the grimmest days in Soviet consumers’ lifetimes dawned Tuesday as their government, trying to squeeze more output from the collapsing socialist economy, boosted prices on a wide array of food and consumer items by 200% and more.

“It’s horrible, horrible! It’s disgusting!” retired teacher Tatyana A. Shcherbakov exclaimed, shaking her head after seeing the new prices displayed by state-run Moscow food shops. “In all my life, I have never experienced anything like this. . . . Pensioners will simply have to stop living.”

As of Tuesday, eggs doubled in price, the cost of a loaf of wheat bread tripled and a man’s T-shirt became almost four times as expensive.

By decree of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, some products and services--from vodka to electricity and gasoline--were frozen in price. But on scores of others, from women’s slippers to automobiles, the government imposed hefty increases.

Wary of an outburst of anger from a populace who last saw such broad-based increases three decades ago, Soviet officials talked about “saturating the market” with products to dampen people’s ire and to prove that higher prices would, in theory, carry a silver lining--more choices of things to buy.

But despite such plans, store shelves in Moscow were as bare Tuesday as before.

In Kiev, the largest city in the breadbasket republic of the Ukraine, six large food markets had no fish, cheese, cereals or noodles, the government daily newspaper Izvestia reported.

If the first day of price increases was intended to sell consumers on the virtues of a freer market, it was a patent failure. At 2 p.m. at the meat counter in Moscow’s dirty and dreary Supermarket No. 69, there was no beef, no mutton and no pork, just boxes of dried Siberian dumplings called pelmeni-- which, at 2.25 rubles, were three times as costly as before.

“The people who lived well before will keep on living well,” scowled Lidia Sergeyenva, 68, after buying a box. “It’s on our backs, the simple people, that they put this burden. And we, the working class, are supposed to put up with it. This is perestroika? “

Scores of other stores--from a shop selling beekeeping supplies near the Lenin Hills to the Marina department store--closed either for want of anything to sell or in order to conduct “inventory”--the repricing of wares in accordance with new government directives.

Fueling consumer anxiety was the approach of Easter, celebrated according to the Russian Orthodox calendar Sunday, and the desire of millions to lay out a festive holiday spread.

“We put out sausage that is three times more expensive, and I thought the demand would drop. But people are buying as much as before,” marveled Valery D. Gorbunov, director of a gastronom, or state-run supermarket, in southeastern Moscow.

Despite compensatory measures by the government, the price rises will painfully cut into the buying power of most people. With a monthly wage of 267 rubles, or $152 at the vastly inflated official commercial exchange rate, the average factory worker before Tuesday could have bought two pairs of women’s lined boots with his monthly earnings.

Now he will have to work a whole month, plus four additional days, to afford one pair at the increased price of 325 rubles ($186).

Soviet authorities, including Gorbachev, were openly apprehensive over the public’s reaction to the price increases, which were more than three years in the making and are a key component of Gorbachev’s campaign to transform the country’s central-planning system into something approaching a free market.

“The president is naturally concerned and worried,” Gorbachev’s official spokesman, Vitaly N. Ignatenko, told a news briefing on Tuesday. “We expect it (the public’s reaction) to be serious, but this is natural. We would hardly expect a jubilant reaction.”

Kremlin officialdom calls the price boosts indispensable for bringing consumer prices into line with production costs and allowing farms and factories to turn a profit. Ignatenko defended them as “a method to create incentives.” But he carefully noted that they are only an initial step in a program being hammered out by the Soviet Cabinet of Ministers to overcome the country’s multifaceted “crisis.”

The Soviet government program--which will include as-yet-undisclosed measures for stabilizing the political situation, stemming the rise in the crime rate and reinvigorating the economy--should be decided on after another week’s worth of deliberation, Ignatenko said.

Gorbachev’s spokesman was voicing the “macro-economic” view. On the streets, harried consumers chastened by more than three years of economic decline and dwindling food supplies saw things in a much darker hue.

“How are people going to live?” asked Galina Ocheyan, 65, as she pointed at a loaf of bread known as a baton in a Moscow bakery. Once 25 kopecks, the loaf found on many Soviet dinner tables will henceforth cost 60 kopecks--240% as much.

Soviet citizens are supposed to receive compensation payments to ease the bite of the price rises, but many officials say the payments will only sugar-coat a bitter pill. In one Moscow official’s view, a typical shopper will spend the entire monthly compensation payment of 60 rubles ($34)--in as little as three days.

On the eve of the price increases, Gorbachev--perhaps to alleviate the beleaguered Soviet consumer’s lot, perhaps as a grandstanding populist gesture--called on authorities nationwide to make sure that prices charged do not exceed levels set by the Soviet government.

Whatever his motivation, the price rises--like an unpopular 5% sales tax imposed in January--are widely seen as Gorbachev’s doing.

In one Moscow food store on Tuesday afternoon, someone wanted to know if, in keeping with Gorbachev’s most recent decree, the shop was exercising its right to sell goods for less than the maximum price.

“Don’t mention the president in here!” a saleswoman snapped.