TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0481> <title> 1981: The Struggle To Survive </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1981 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> January 4, 1981 MAN OF THE YEAR The Struggle to Survive </hdr> <body> 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 faced: 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 wash 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 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." </body> </article> </text>