All of this seems miniscule except for the cigarettes.
You can trade the cigarettes, vodka, half the meat and half the sugar in the black market to get more of everything else.
I got to know a few elderly people here in northern Ontario who grew up during the war years. They didn’t exactly have to ration things but things were definitely in short supply. So they ended up just either not drinking as much or giving up smoking because they were luxury items … then use your savings to buy more of everything else.
And as an Indigenous person … my parents grew up with very little. But you could live for months if you had good supply of flour, lard, sugar and tea. There is even a drink we made called tea ploss where you just made really strong tea, then mixed in flour, lard and sugar to make a quick energy drink without much fuss in the cold wilderness. Supplement all that with wild food and you had a healthy long term diet.
You can trade the cigarettes, vodka, half the meat and half the sugar in the black market to get more of everything else.
Worst part about rationing in most systems (including this one) is that you still have to pay for the rationed goods - so black market trading at a profit is difficult.
Which, one supposes, is half the point, after all.
And as an Indigenous person … my parents grew up with very little. But you could live for months if you had good supply of flour, lard, sugar and tea. There is even a drink we made called tea ploss where you just made really strong tea, then mixed in flour, lard and sugar to make a quick energy drink without much fuss in the cold wilderness. Supplement all that with wild food and you had a healthy long term diet.
Honestly sounds like the same basic idea behind pemmican. High calorie density foodstuffs like that astounded the Europeans when they started actually talking to the Native peoples in the Americas. Both pemmican and jerky were considered indispensable innovations, and such energy-dense foods are really underrated as indigenous American contributions to modernity.
That being said, as someone who doesn’t like tea, lard, or even modern energy drinks, I think I’ll pass on the tea ploss… XD
That enables for profit. If you can get only 0.5L of vodka legally, and I can get 0.5L that I don’t want, I can buy it at market value, and sell it to you for profit. You will pay extra above the market because that’s your only way to get it. And even if I had to pay to get it in the first place, because of rationing, I could get it at some market value
All the sizes seem meager except for the cigarettes.
How many packs of cigarettes did the average person smoke per month?
In Poland?
It’s a commonly held belief that smoking is a cure for cancer.
Probably also a treatment for being cold, fever, cough, breathing problems,…
Back in those days? A pack a day was not that uncommon.
I need vodka for the other 29 days too.
Well, look at you, still got vodka by the afternoon of the first day.
Where potato?
Unrationed. You’ll be eating a lot of them in the coming months, most like…
In the vodka.
Growing in garden.
Twelve packs of smokes, but only half a liter of Vodka? Prisoners probably got more.
Interesting, no eggs
They may not have been rationed (ie one could buy them as long as they had the money and the patience). This only shows rationed items.
Title needs to be edited then.
It’s a recurring problem with ration images - I had this song-and-dance with the British WW2 ration pic too. But I don’t know how to express it concisely for more people to understand if they don’t already understand that most rationing systems do not ration everything.
“Items affected by rationing, Poland 1980s. (Monthly)”
Changed the title.
I like it.
This guy3 rations. (or at least talks about it well!)
Why was Poland rationing in the 80s?
It was still part of the Eastern communist bloc / Soviet Union “satellite states” at that time.
What shocks me is there being more sugar than flour.
Economic mismanagement.
Brazil didn’t have rationing, only hyperinflation and scarcity. I remember my family teaming up with others to go to a farm and have a bull butchered and split the costs, as that was the only practical way to have some meat at a decent price.
That’s a lot of sugar for a month
For cups of tea? Probably.
For baking and making wine and spirits? Probably not.
It was used a lot for breakfast. We dipped bits of bread into milk, then dipped that into the sugar
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