TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81.2

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 6KB | 109 lines

                                                                                January 4, 1981 

MAN OF THE YEAR

The Struggle to Survive


As the year dragged on, one of the main causes of Poland's
resentment of the government was the ceaseless, wearing,
frustrating day-to-day struggle to find enough food, clothing
and staples. A report, drawn from a number of TIME
correspondents, on what the Poles have faces:

The lines would begin to form at dawn. As winter drew on, the
people would bundle up in layers of thick clothing and stand
silently huddled together, shifting from one foot to the other
to try to keep warm. Outside of food stores the queues would
often stretch for 50 yards or more. The ordeal was particularly
hard on elderly couples and on young mothers who had to find
someone to care for their infants at home.

To ease the strain, apartment complexes formed associations
whose members took turns standing in lines for the group. Some
stores honored what was called the "night list"; shoppers
reserving a place in the next morning's queue by signing a piece
of paper attached to the door. Still, to be on the safe side,
many Poles showed up at 5 a.m. Families with zlotys to spare
began hiring pensioners who had time on their own to stand in
the hated queues that curled through the gray streets of Poland.
some parents even "rented" their young or disabled children to
shoppers who used them as an excuse to jump the lines.

But even after waiting for hours, Poles might enter a store and
find it cleaned out. Meat was in particularly short supply,
especially the pork that Poles consider to be a staple of their
diet. In Warsaw, just before the imposition of martial law, the
entire stock of one butcher consisted of half a dozen large
salami sausages, which housewives eagerly bought in slices. The
hooks that in better times had held dangling sides of beef and
pork were being used by one Warsaw butcher with a green thumb
as supports for a philodendron that was growing across the
ceiling.

Soap was in such short supply that a doctor complained in a
weekly newspaper that physicians were unable to was their hands
properly. New mothers were discharged from hospitals after only
a day for fear that their babies might contract an infection if
they stayed longer. Indeed, because of the poor diet, the lack
of medicines and even rudimentary hygienic supplies, the
population was suffering from an epidemic viruses.

As the value of currency plummeted, Poles bought almost anything
they could find. The reason was simple enough. One man's
expendable Chinese rug might turn out to be another man's
treasure. The result: a primitive system of barter. A cab
driver with a can of oil could trade with a cafe manager for a
pound of coffee. A pair of leather boots would get a sack of
potatoes, and a bottle of vodka was pure gold. A Warsaw
schoolteacher marveled when one enterprising boy in her class
announced that he was willing to trade girl's boots that his
family had snatched up in the frantic buying binge for a pair
he could wear. He closed the deal in minutes.

In the scramble for dwindling food supplies, more and more
urban dwellers traveled into the country to deal directly with
farmers. Although such exchanges were illegal, they traded
scarce items like cigarettes for eggs and other staples. The
workers at a mine, for example, might decide to deal in bulk,
exchanging a ton of coal for two tons of potatoes, and a group
of friends willing pay $8 in zlotys per kilo of port would split
the cost of an entire pig.

Fearing the worst, many Poles were hoarding just about anything
they could get their hands on. Some cupboards were jammed with
food, and bathroom shelves were piled high with toilet paper,
as if the nation was preparing for a long siege.

Poland turned into such a seller's market that many private
entrepreneurs accepted only dollars that could be used on the
black market at 17 times the official rate (33 zlotys for $1).
When a man asked the price of eggs that an old woman was
peddling in Warsaw, she curtly replied:  "I will only sell for
hard currency. My daughter is getting married and I have to
buy vodka. Ten cents an egg."  Few Poles had any dimes to
spare, especially when the price, converted into zlotys at black
market rates, proved to be five times what people used to pay
in stores. The enraged customer put his foot down, literally,
stomping the old woman's basket of eggs to the cheers of
bystanders.

For Poles ready to make a deal at any cost, one place to go was
Warsaw's bustling outdoor market in the Praga district, across
the Vistula River from the historic Old Town. As the political
crisis developed, eggs sold for the equivalent of 50 cents each
in zlotys in the Praga market. One brawny peasant woman pulled
a live chicken from a sack, killed and plucked it on the spot
and sold it for $15 in zlotys. When a photographer approached
an elderly woman selling two packets of butter, however, she hid
her face in her hands with embarrassment. She was dealing with
her monthly ration. A striking blond woman with three pairs of
Western-made blue jeans hung over her arm also turned away,
saying:  "I am ashamed to be here."

Many Poles had no choice. When a young man was asked why he
was peddling a rug rolled under her arm, he pointed to a crack
in the sole of his shoe. A young father standing in the snow
with a cardboard carton containing two live rabbits explained
that he needed to buy baby food for his infant son. Said a
woman office worker:  "It has always been necessary to know haw
to get around the system, but today it is essential. I don't
know how people survive by following the rules."