After 45 years of Communist rule most Russians are resigned to living in the nonAffluent Society, but a growing number seek to beat the system in various ways, many ingenious and crooked.
¶ In the Moscow region, speculators welcomed the government's recent 30% price raise in the cost of meat. One result that astonished the authorities was that villagers began buying enormous quantities of bread, whose price had remained unchanged. In a typical village, bread sales in state stores abruptly rose to eleven tons a day, or well over 3 lbs. per...
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