Growing up in Russia in the 90s | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

interesting article on survival after the economic collapse

a excerpt

To survive people resorted to subsistence farming. Everybody had a "dacha" - a small plot of land, sometimes with a summer house, sometimes not; whoever didn't have one rushed to get it. A plot of land just over an acre, planted compactly with all kinds of things, plus a smaller plot of potatoes, fed the family of four through the year. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage etc were pickled and canned; berries and apples were made into jams and "compot" -- a kind of boiled sweet drink; potatoes and root vegetables were stored in a root cellar.

Those who before the default had put their money into tangible media, were able to do better financially. Foreign currency which retained its value was a popular choice. Also, it had proved useful to have at hand some valuable everyday items, such as alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate, followed by soaps, cosmetics, etc. These weren't used as much for bartering as a currency of its own for services rendered.

As I was thinking about this topic, I was struck by the following realization, counterintuitive but supported by evidence. The limiting factor in the survival, on both the level of the individual and the community, was not the ability to produce your own products and not even the available resources or lack of them. It was transport and infrastructure - the ability to trade, deliver your surplus elsewhere and from there get other things you need.

This is why rural areas and small towns in Russia took a very hard hit in the 90s, and may never fully recover, as some say. One would think it should be exactly the opposite - people would have gone into the remote villages and live off the land and the woods. However, even in the most self-sufficient household one cannot produce or make everything needed. And being in a remote location makes it difficult to deliver surplus to others in a timely manner for trading or exchange, especially with the roads being as atrocious as they were (a problem endemic to Russia, but can be an important factor elsewhere as well). Plus, as the government budgets dry up, the collective farms go bust, the village school is closed, the general store (already empty) is closed; there is no library, no cars and no gas for them, no TV reception - in short, absolutely nothing to do other than to drink yourself into oblivion, making bad home-made vodka from your decaying surplus grain. The sense of community is gone, people flee like rats from a sinking ship. The "dachas", mentioned earlier were a different matter - they were clustered in suburbs and used by town dwellers and they were flourishing, but in the villages there are still many deserted houses to this day.

A similar thing happened in small towns. For example, in the town where my relatives had resided (population 15, 000), the only industrial enterprise - an assembly line for radio-transmitters - had closed; the rest of the industry (a bakery and a milk and cheese processing facility) served local needs only. In a town such as that, the roads are better and one can bring in things to trade - but one can only sell as much as people can purchase, and people can't purchase much since there is no other way to make money besides the meager salaries of teachers and doctors. Again, the sense of community weakens, people begin to leave.

http://www.sott.net/.....-the-1990s