Muscovites Hoard Goods as Consumer Crisis Grows

MOSCOW —  It was fear that drove Valentina Grebenschikov to stand in line to buy two packages of imported razor blades for which she had no use, the same anxiety that made her, for the first time in memory, salt away in her cupboards extra sacks of flour and rice against Moscow’s long winter.

It was fear, she explained, of ever-emptier store shelves, of rumors of total government rationing of food and energy, of a downward spiral in day-to-day living conditions that shows no signs of abating.

“It has gotten more difficult in the last two months. There are shortages in practically everything right now,” said Grebenschikov, a 44-year-old economist and mother of two. “So, for the time being, I buy anything that’s available.”

In Moscow, the city to which much of the rest of the country travels for shopping sprees, a firm conviction has grown this fall that for the consumer things are worse than almost ever before.

Ask for anything from shampoo to shoes, and the salesman is likely to reply “ Nyet .”

While long lines and empty stores have long been an inescapable part of life in the Soviet Union, staggering shortages today in what always have been considered the basics are sparking unprecedented panic buying, Muscovites say.

And as people grow more worried and anxious, they also grow increasingly disillusioned with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, the restructuring of Soviet society, which has been unable so far to improve their economic plight.

“Gorbachev says we are on the verge of a crisis, but he is wrong. We are already in a crisis,” said 34-year-old Tatyana Otson ofKiev, who came to Moscow to buy winter clothes for her three children. “I’m not worried about me. I’ll survive. But I am worried about the future of my children.”

Gorbachev himself acknowledged that, despite a 10% increase in consumer goods available for sale this year--three or four times the annual increases of the past--”our shops are empty.”

“Sales are up 10%. There is too much money chasing the goods,” he told journalists at a U.S. trade show last week. “We did not pay sufficient attention to this new development at the right time, and this has caused many uncontrolled problems and uncertainties.

“Customers are hoarding these days, and of course there are shortages,” he continued. “For us today, the market is our No. 1 problem.”

The shopping hysteria and hoarding of the last several weeks have magnified shortages in a broad range of consumer goods that initially were caused by a breakdown in the transportation network and a dip in production in some industries, according to Soviet economic analysts.

Other factors cited as possibly contributing to the barren store shelves are outright sabotage by conservative opponents of perestroika and the raised expectations of consumers, who are buying more of certain products than they ever did before.

Glaring shortages in basic items such as soap and matches are caused primarily by panic-buying, according to Mikhail L. Berger, one of the country’s most respected economic commentators. Berger, who works for the government daily Izvestia, points out that production of these items is no less than it was before and generally is greater.

Fear of the loss of basic, everyday goods became widespread in Moscow last month when families, returning from vacation, found no school notebooks on sale for their children. The absence of something so commonplace, which had always been available, set off alarms.

Many Muscovites say that, in preparation for winter, they are now storing nonperishable food, just in case. Here their voices often trail off, but the implication is clear. What if there are shortages in the critical items, things that have always been available except during times of war?

“I personally feel a sinking feeling, almost a physical sensation of going under,” Berger said in an interview. “People like me don’t have any trust any more, any faith that the government is going to get them out of this. They aren’t confident that what they see on the shelves today will be there tomorrow. So, almost without thinking, they just buy.”

Economist Grebenschikov is a case in point. She saw a line outside her office and found out people were waiting to buy the imported razor blades.

“They were just snapping them up,” she recalled.

So, although her husband has a full beard and the family does not even own a disposable razor, she found herself rushing downstairs when the line had shortened to buy some blades to take home. “Maybe we will give them to someone as a gift,” she said, “or trade for something we need.”

Irina Popov, 29, is another example. She was standing in a long line in GUM, the Soviet Union’s largest department store, just across from the rust-colored Kremlin walls, waiting to buy an iron for 7 rubles--or about $11 at the official exchange rate.

“Sure, I already have an iron,” she said with a smile. “But what if it breaks? I always try to buy extras. I’ll probably buy two today.”

Soviet officials, for their part, pin primary blame for the shortages on the distribution system.

More than 2 million tons of imported goods bought with scarce foreign currency are sitting in Soviet ports waiting to be unloaded, First Deputy Premier Lev Voronin told the Supreme Soviet, the country’s Parliament, earlier this month.

That includes about 25,000 tons of food, which is rotting where it sits, as well as spare parts for trucks that are broken down and thus cannot be used to unload the trains and ships, Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov noted later on national television.

Strikes, including a three-week walkout last summer at the country’s biggest coal field, also hurt. Power stations have 4.5 million fewer tons of coal on hand than at this time last year, Voronin said, warning that rationing of heat and electricity may be necessary this winter.

“I have an image that we are riding in a communal taxi cab and the meter is ticking away and when it stops, we will all stop,” Berger said. “But right now I hear that ticking all the time. It drives me crazy.”

But why are failures in the transportation system so much greater this year than last? One word is on nearly everyone’s lips. At first it was only whispered in the streets and hissed by people standing in lines, but last week the Communist newspaper Pravda asked on its front page “Is this sabotage?”

Many people in the capital believe that conservatives who oppose Gorbachev are purposely making things difficult for consumers so that public frustration will grow and perestroika will fail.

Pravda, in its brief front-page article raising the possibility of sabotage, reported that 13,500 freight cars packed with much-needed consumer goods were waiting in railway yards across the country, and the paper wondered why they were not being unloaded.

“Pravda correspondents saw with their own eyes unloaded freight trains that had brought to Moscow imported furniture, cosmetics, coffee, tea, soap, shampoo, washing powder and Soviet-produced television sets, refrigerators, batteries and cigarettes,” the newspaper said. “More goods are stored in depots or are simply outside without anything to protect them from the weather.”

Berger discounted the sabotage theory, saying that although the population is eager to find a villain, the country’s economic woes can be more closely linked to what he referred to as a mentality of dependency dating from the time of the czars.

“People are used to being told by Moscow how much sugar they should put in the cake they bake in Vladivostok,” he said, referring to the Pacific port city in Siberia. “In the past, everything always had to be resolved in one place, in one building, practically in one office.

“Now that Gorbachev is encouraging them to work on their own, people simply are producing less,” he said. “The ruble doesn’t buy them anything, so they don’t feel any motivation.”

Because there is so little to buy, people rarely take a shopping list with them when they go to the store. It is less frustrating, they say, simply to scout out what is on the shelves.

But even that is often tricky. Asked to name the items currently unavailable or in short supply in GUM, deputy director Svetlana N. Shevyakov laughed. It would be easier, she said, to list the goods that shoppers are able to find in the store.

“Just now, you can buy costume jewelry, purses, fabrics, plates and cups,” she added, but all winter clothing was “deficit,” the word used for “in short supply.”

Shevyakov noted, however, that higher consumer expectations have contributed to the problem because Soviet people are seeing for the first time, because of Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or greater openness, the wide range of consumer goods available in the West.

“A man used to want one pair of shoes for autumn and one pair for winter. Now he wants three pairs for each season--and he can’t find them,” she said.