A MOSCOW MARKET

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3240, 9 December 1930, Page 3

A MOSCOW MARKET

WARES AND PRICES AT SUKHAREVKA. In these days, when almost everything in Russia, from the amount of coal to be mined to the number of kinema performances to be given is planned theoretically at least for years in advance, the Sukharevka Market remains a& a last citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here the law of supply and demand works unchecked, and the prices of the Sukharevka are a fair measure of what is most lacking in the co-operative stores. Picking one’s way through, the mud which is a prominent feature of this open-air market in the rainy Moscow autumn, one stumbles on what looks like a huge bazaar of boots and shoes, writes the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. For shoes,

mostly well worn, prices range from 35 to 60 roubles (nominally £3 10s to £6); but the high boots which are useful in Russia, especially in the country districts, cannot be bought for less than 100 roubles, even when they have obviously been used. All over the fairly wide area of the market people are informally trying on the shoes and boots and chaffering about the price, with frequent interjections of a quite unprintable, but very characteristic Russian oath, which seems to be a sign not of anger, but of earnest bargaining. This brisk footwear trade is a result of a shortage which has caused the authorities in Moscow to ration the sale of boots and shoes rigidly, promisingone pair to every toiling member of the city’s population by the end of the year. THE EIGHTEEN- PENNY EGG. Side by side with the dealers in boots and shoes there is a . consider able number of pedlars of old clothes, mostly Tartars, who for some reason have largely monopolised this occupation in Russia. In general the Sukharevka Market has rather an international aspect: besides the Tartars there is a number of Jewish traders, while Russian peasants here and there offer a piece of bread and cheese for 70 kopecks, or a hardboiled egg for 35. (The chief Moscow food market is in another part of the city). A few Russians of the class known as “former people,” in the sense of being formerly well-to-do, offer moth-eateir lace or worn-out shawls for sale, but the day when objects of genuine value could be “picked up” in the Moscow market has passed. Predatory-looking gipsies, who are conspicuous in the market without seeming to pursue any definite business, suggest that it is advisable to keep a hand near one’s purse. . . There is a fairly lively trade in cigarettes, of which there is a shortage. Some enterprising speculators have acquired boxes of a cheap grade of cigarettes which cost 35 kopecks, and which are sold in limited quanti-

ties to workers in factories and employees in State institutions. In the Sukharevka these command a price of a roule. A bar of chocolate costs a rouble and a-half, or nominally more than six shillings. One sees a variety of miscellaneous articles; the inevitable Russian “primus,” or oil stove, old pillows, pieces of cat fur and dogskins. A VANISHED TRADE. Although the general aspect of the market is one of sordid poverty it is not altogether lacking in gaiety. Here and there accordians are playing, and a photographer offers as an inducement for prospective sitters the prospect of being photographed in the striking Caucasian native costume, dagger and all.

For a time the Sukharevka was the scene of a contraband trade in something more valuable than any of its visible wares; in the ration booklets which give the holders the right to buy limited quantities of foodstuffs and clothing at moderate prices in the co-operative stores. But if any trade of this kind is still going on it must be very surreptitious; the watchful Ogpu arrested a number of speculators of this type, and in one of its laconic bulletins announced that six of the main speculators had been sentenced to “the highest measure of social defence,” i.e., shooting, and that “the sentence had been carried into execution.”

“There are now nine aero clubs in New Zealand,” said Wing-commander Grant-Dalton, speaking at the reception in Wellington to Mr. Oscar Garden, “and anyone over 18 in this hall can learn to fly at a cost of about £35 spread over two or three months. You will see in the paper that England has placed an order for 200 Hawker Hornet machines. Do you know what that means? They are for the defence of London. They are what are known ae interceptor flighters—and the sooner you people learn to fly the sooner you will be of use to the defence of New Zealand.”