I was born in USSR and it collapsed when I was seven so my memories of it were at the very end when things were tough and scarce. I remember school books that were still about Lenin and Stalin, and we would write essays about Labor day parades and red hammer-and-sickle flags during our English classes, it sounded funny even for us first graders.

Yet, whatever little was available was cheap, we would have deficit problems but not financial ones unless you were trying to buy something that was smuggled into the country, like jeans.

We would take flights to Kazakhstan where my grandma lived, no borders no visas obviously. They lived on their own land there and were much better off in terms of food availability (Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).

Then we reached the point when food stamps had to be distributed and it was outright scary. I remember standing by our front door crying, because my mom gave me a bread stamp and sent me to get some bread, and I lost the stamp on the way and couldn’t bring myself to go back home. Eventually I was absent long enough for her to start worrying and she opened the door to go out and found me there sobbing.