In March 1979 a shopper in Washington DC would have had to work 12.5 hours to afford a generic ‘basket’ of basic foods (sausages, milk, eggs, potatoes, vegetables, tea, beer, etc). A similar basket would ‘cost’ 21.4 work-hours in London, but 42.3 work-hours in Moscow, despite high levels of subsidy.15 Moreover the Soviet or East European consumer had to spend many more hours finding and purchasing foods and other goods. Measured in time and effort, if not in rubles or crowns or forints, life under Communism was expensive as well as exhausting.
