Word: pushkar
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Dates: during 1991-1991
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Nothing causes more alarm for Russians than the prospect of a bleak winter without food. Famine has recurred with frightening regularity during seven decades of communist rule. "Hunger did not start with perestroika," explains Dmitri Pushkar, a deputy on the Yaroslavl regional council, who monitors food supplies in the countryside. "It began with the coming of Soviet power." Vadim, a local taxi driver, puts it more bluntly: "I remember the postwar famine of 1947, when we had nothing to eat but nettles and goose feet. So what else...
City dwellers get little sympathy out in the provinces. "Muscovites talk about a crisis because they are finally going hungry," contends Yaroslavl Deputy Pushkar. "But this is the way the rest of the country has always lived." Olga Ivanova supplements her meager monthly pension of 205 rubles ($2.28 at the current tourist rate) by selling eggs on a Yaroslavl street corner. She vaguely recalls buying smoked ham in a state-run shop six or seven years ago, but the only meat available now sells for 40 rubles (44 cents) for 2 lbs., or 20% of her income, at the free...