Queuing as a fact of life

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 20

Queuing as a fact of life

From

TREVOR FISHLOCK

in Moscow for the “Daily Telegraph”

QUEUES are news today because of Mikhail Gorbachev's indignation about the persistence of this great Russian institution. The infantry down at the. consumer frontline smile wryly at his apparent anger over one of the disagreeable facts of Soviet life. I queue, therefore I am, is the philosophy. Life is short, a Moscow writer observed last week, queues eternal. Mr Gorbachev was plainly touched by a factory worker who told him she spends two or three exhausting hours a day, after work, standing in lines. “And this, comrades,” he said to the party Central Committee, “this is Moscow, where everything can be purchased. People have to stand in endless queues. How can we tolerate it?”

It is true that everything can be purchased in Moscow. In shops reserved for the privileged of the party, the bureaucracy and certain professions, there is good meat, wine, fruit, clothing and electrical products. But many of the things on the shelves are simply not found elsewhere.

Mr Gorbachev, trying to reduce some of the privileges, risks causing resentment in a gargantuan bureaucracy jealous of its valued perks. An economist reminds him that another stirrer, Mr Khrushchev, was ousted partly because he attacked the privileges of the elite. In “Pravda” a few days ago the wife of a middle-ranking official defended perks. Her hard-working husband jolly well earned them, she said. For most people there is no escaping the queue. With Mr Gorbachev’s complaint in mind I went on a Moscow queue tour, noting that a slightly tongue-in-cheek writer in the latest “Liter-

ary Gazette” grades queues under the headings: “quiet, noisy, enraged, organised, disorganised. He describes them as the best place for the exchange of news and rumours — and effective advertising. He is right. Every Russian knows that if you see a queue you join it first and ask what is on sale later. Men and women carry string bags because they never know when they might spot a queue. And whatever is on sale will be a welcome prize.

I called at a private enterprise sausage shop. The sausages are expensive at up to about SNZ36 a kilo and are especially soughtafter because there is not much decent meat in Moscow. Women at the head of the queue had been waiting half an hour. Prices are ridiculous, they said, but you cannot get good sausages in the cheaper state shops. As for queueing, you get angry sometimes — it is such a waste of time — but “queueing is a way of life for us.” They were right about the State shops. In one I visited (a queue waited for refunds on empty bottles) there was poor quality beef and pork, not much cheese and no sugar. The shoppers were interested that Mr Gorbachev had complained about queues, but doubtful that things would improve in the foreseeable future. “Don’t ask me about queues,” a woman said. “Ask him.”

Many queuers are what Muscovites call paratroopers — people from outside the city, where shortages are more acute, who take coach excursions to the Big M. There were quite a few paratroopers outside a shoe store. Shoes were SNZ9O to SNZIBO a pair. A girl of 19 told

me she wanted shoes for her wedding and was ready to spend SNZ3OO of her savings. She was resigned to queueing. A natural part of life, she said. A wine shop queue started forming at least an hour before the 2 p.m. opening. Soon it was 50 metres long and in the control of a policeman. There was no vodka. People emerged with two bottles of wine apiece. There was a long line at a shop selling children’s clothing, a short one outside a book shop, queues at restaurants and a long-suffering line outside a public lavatory. In many shops people queue to choose what they want, queue for the cashier and queue again to pick up their purchases. There are also the unseen queues, long waiting lists for cars and television sets. People' sometimes have to check in daily, just to keep their place on a list which might have thousands of names. A Russian queue is a living organism, a metaphor. In the faces of its component parts you may see resignation, but also the stoicism of people whose history has been hard. A good queue has its own etiquette, a communal spirit and breeds jokes, often jokes about queues. But shopping can fray nerves. In one shop I saw a. woman punch a jostling man. He was not even her husband. “You mustn’t think shopping is all misery,” a woman said. “When you queue for a long time, perhaps struggle to keep your place in freezing weather, and finally buy what you want, you feel a great sense of achievement, .of elation.” She had a point, I suppose. No British woman coming out of Safeway looks ecstatic.