Word: bread
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...perestroika has so far meant only harder work for little measurable reward. Consumers may soon have to pay more for some of the necessities of life if Gorbachev follows through on his plan to trim or eliminate many state subsidies. The Kremlin boss rightly complains that the subsidies on bread, for example, make it so cheap that children sometimes use loaves as footballs. But a higher price for bread, while it might be fully justified by production costs, is likely to cause strong discontent...
...Gorbachev family probably avoided the worst of the suffering: it was on the winning side. Mikhail's grandfather Andrei helped organize the Khleborob (bread producer) collective farm in the year of Gorbachev's birth. Andrei's son Sergei drove a combine for a nearby government machine-tractor station. $ But Mikhail could hardly have helped hearing tales of the disruption that continued during his infancy. As General Secretary, Gorbachev has defended the collectivization and even the repression of the kulaks (well-off peasants), who were deported or executed as class enemies. But perhaps because of boyhood memories, he has criticized...
...government really did want a reading on popular sentiment, the mystery is why it handled the referendum campaign so ineptly. Just weeks before the vote, authorities announced price hikes on consumer goods for next year averaging 40%, including 110% increases for food staples like bread and milk. A wave of panic buying swept the country as consumers began hoarding goods of all kinds. The approaching increases only confirmed the public's growing conviction that reform was primarily an excuse for a fresh round of price hikes. The choices posed by the referendum, said a construction worker outside Warsaw last week...
Most Gazans must earn their meager daily bread in Israel. Some 50,000 jam the 44-mile route to Tel Aviv each dawn to sweep streets and haul garbage and build houses. By supplying Israel with cheap labor, Gaza has virtually eliminated unemployment. Even so, Palestinians deeply resent the forced dependence. "We are enslaved," says Rashad Shawwa, 79, mayor of Gaza, who was twice removed from office by Israeli officials. "We have become the servants of Israel...
...food vanished first. As word spread that the government was drastically raising prices, panicky shoppers snapped up sugar, flour and cooking oil by the crateload, quickly clearing grocery-store shelves. Decorum went next. Chanting "Down with prices!," 5,000 striking steelworkers hurled tin cans and hunks of bread at officials in the southern city of Skopje in the first organized labor protest to hit Yugoslavia since it became a Communist country, in 1945. Cowed officials promptly doubled some wages. In a no less startling outburst, the press and even some Communist leaders intensified calls for the resignation of Prime Minister...