I had some online arguments with some western communist about the life in Soviet block.
I will summarize my experience in '80 communist Romania and explain how we got food
We got the vegetables,cheese and live chicken from peasants that grow them on their small gardens,around their houses , so they had between 500m^2 to 2000^2.
Also the sheets who herded sheep were not colectuved and they were free to sell their cheese.
This small commerce with food was tolerated by communists because in the '40 and '50 we had a famine that we overcame it also with help of USA.
The Romanian communist were not idelogues like in Soviet Union they were pragmatic. I think Romanians don't buy too hard in ideologies and they are rather pragmatic.
These peasants compensated for the lack of supplies in state stores.
As for meat state store you could rarely find pig feet, chicken feet, wings and neck. Stuff you don't feed a dog today.
The eggs were rationed,cooking oil was rationed, 1-2 l/month, sugar was rationed at 1 kg/month.
Everyone had a ration card for these products.
Potatoes were not rationed but they were low quality, what cannot be exported.
In my town the bread was not rationed, but you have to stay in line to get it. I heard that in some cities even the bread was rationed.
In Bucharest and Sibiu, there were less rationalisation, for example you could buy eggs without ration card.
The agricultural production was highjacked by the state to get dollars, the agriculture was mechanized and chemicals were used.
It was a story that whole train full of apples was reject from a western importing country because it was full of chemicals, no apple was rotten.
While the country food was exported and we had to stay in line with our ration cards, the paisants with their small gardens feeds us.
The Romanian soil and climate is good for agriculture.
If you didn't he have big expenses and you had a surplus , you could sell it on a market with completion from traders or food importers, you could have a decent life
The Romanian paisant owned a small radio and not a TV because at TV you would see only propaganda.
He didn't had a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner.
Few had refrigerators , most of people used caves in basement for cooling.
He used fire wood, and water from the well.
His children went to the city.
And as woman tod me: it is not a sinn to steal from the state.
So some grain from state farms was used to feed paisants chicken, if that wasn't possible, bread bought from city was used, because villages were not supplied with bread.
He didn't had acces to chemicals for plant and animal treatment, so his food and our food from market was bio.
After the liberalization in '90, traders pushed away the paisants from markets, imports suplimented and replaced some foods.
The small producer is too old to sell in market and the one who sells in market uses the same chemicals as in other countries.
In conclusion, a large class of paisants with small gardens, who lived like in '20, feed us preventing a famine like in Russia or China. Because scarcity they could not use chemicals, and their food was safer.
The tolerated open market with an unwanted protectionism provided us for a short period of time with bio food.
This was done by accident not by design.
If the peasants would have been protected against rapacious traders and imports this could have developed in something good. Imagine 50% of your food being bio.
But this wasn't sustainable market and political pressures ended small lot agriculture.
