Q: What did Romanians use for light before they had candles?
A: Light bulbs.
Or
Q: (to Czech) DO you consider the Russians your brothers or your friends?
A: Brothers. You can choose your friends.
One slice-of-life story I recall from a reporter in Russia in the Soviet days, mentioned that when it started raining in Moscow, everyone pulled over to put their wipers on. They kept them in the glovebox, because replacements were impossible to find and if left on, they were stolen.
A man is standing in line for hours and hours to buy food, and finally he snaps, saying, “That’s it - I’ve had it! I’m going to go to the Kremlin and shoot Brezhnev.” Half an hour later he reappears and glumly goes to the end of the line. “I thought you were going to go shoot Brezhnev?” someone asks. “I was,” he replies. “But that line was even longer.”
Another Sovet era joke:
“Ludmilla, Pravda says that by the year 2000, every soviet family will have a color TV and a jet plane!”
(Ludmilla): “great, then when we see tomatoes are for sale in Armenia, we can jump into our plane, fly there and buy some!”
When I studied in Leningrad in 1989, all the university students had to do a “kartoshka” (potato) stint, which meant missing class to help bring in the harvest. My boyfriend at the time had served in Afghanistan, and he flat-out refused, saying he’d given enough to his country and wasn’t going to pick any damn potatoes. Later on, I had a client who had been pregnant during kartoshka time, so she was allowed to do office work instead so someone else could go out and pick potatoes.
Also, in fall 1989 there were notable shortages of various basic foods, particularly fresh fruits and veggies (unless you had the cash to buy them on a private market, which was out of reach for many - for example, a kilo of tomatoes could cost 20 rubles, which was half the average monthly student stipend). As I had dollars and was therefore comparatively rich, I used to buy apples, etc. and have them around the dorm room for Soviet friends to snack on. Even basics like cabbage bought in state-run stores were half-spoiled by November.
Also, I still have my leftover ration coupons: tea, sugar, laundry detergent, and soap (rationed items varied somewhat by city). My Ukrainian roommate’s mother came to visit and stocked up on butter; she said they hadn’t had butter in their town for months.
I knew someone who went to the Ukraine on an agricultural tour in the 80’s. He was at a huge collective farm during wheat harvest, with several combines working in concert. Then they all stopped at the same time because it was quitting time. The workers treated it like factory work, while every other farmer in the world knows you harvest as long as there’s light to work by.
When I was in the former Yugoslavia in the 80s the problem wasn’t production, but distribution. There was lots of good food being grown on the farms. The system to get it to the city markets was terrible. Enterprising people like some of my friends andrelatives would would drive out into the countryside, buy a bunch of stuff, take it back to the city and sell it. This was illegal and we had no permits or formal regulation, but the police didn’t care as long as they got their bribes.