[softbuilder]

This raises many questions for me, having only a superficial understanding of the Soviet Union. A restaurant seems inherently entrepreneurial. Were they created by individual initiative or committee? Who did they serve? How did they weather shortages? Etc..

[rasz]

State owned or incorporated as Worker Cooperative.

Here a humorous sketch from a 1980 comedy Miś by Stanisław Bareja criticizing living conditions under Iron Curtain.

Milk mar 'Apis' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-viM9WyGss

Milk bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_mleczny

>Polish cafeteria which during the Communist era provided government-subsidized traditional Polish cuisine at low cost. The name comes from cheese cutlets, which were often sold when meat was rare.

[softbuilder]

The screwed-in bowls and chained spoons, great stuff. :)

[culebron21]

As one born in the USSR and economist, I can give some brief description.

The economy was like 20-40 ministries, formed like Korean chaebols -- with many in-house services to compensate for their poor public counterparts. Like kindergartens. Or own housing -- to get an apartment (for rent) from the municipal authorities, you'd be in a long queue with some people more equal than others, and corruption, and normally you'd get one by retirement. So enterprises built it for their workers, in some exchange with the construction enterprises (idk which ministry they'd belong, probably dispersed among many entities).

You probably can imagine a huge Google -- where departments can't trade on a free market with each other -- but with a lot looser control and more corruption, which created some black market.

For example, I suppose, restaurants must have belonged to the retail ministry. Under the minister himself, there was the republican department with its manager, the regional, and the municipal one, and only down there was a "Restaurant #5 <<Sunflower>>" (#5 in the retail department of city X), and its director. This made him like CEO, but in reality it was like small group manager in a big hierarchy.

Just as in any big capitalist corporation, such a manager is risk averse, because failures lead to being fired, but sudden big profits go in the corporation pockets, not manager's.

But if you add some corruption, you could be an entrepreneur in a way: make good services (expensive) => be popular among the elites => have some high-profile friends to protect in case of turf wars (e.g. city's Communist party 1st secretary (president) is your friend => city's retail department can't fire you) => exchange some services/goods/commodities beyond the counter (as it was said "from the back door of the shop"). (Black market prices were high, so you could easily sell something elsewhere and put the nominal amount of cash in the box.)

Regarding the shortages issue, they existed for the buyers at the front door of public retail. Retail & restaurants managers exchanged the stuff (they were supposed to sell to the public) between them to fill the gaps.

[szszrk]

Private companies existed, although there were less. IFAIR restaurants as you may know were less common. Usually in hotels, next to train stations, in gov buildings, tourist shelters and so on. Often run by gov-owned networks. You required a nice place to drink vodka while discussing how to screw others, right? If you had dollars you could buy some western goods in state owned stores.

There were some bistros-like places, where menu was simplified and there were no waiters. We call them Milk Bars, you know, pierogi and soup. It's actually sad there is a shortage of such cheap places nowadays.

Larger work places often had their own cafeterias with basic food for employees. Schools often as well. You didn't really go to a restaurant just to eat. There had to be a reason.

They handled shortages by connections, cheating and poor quality.

Can't really tell who used restaurants as I was too young, but recall official events like wedding parties were a thing. Party members, politicians, priests and crooks had to drink somewhere as well. I recall it was customary to do business using vodka as well, more than modern sales dinners - get shitfaces and yell at each other before shaking hands. It was a thing also after communism, but less so. If you had a deal to make, it was almost expected to discuss that with way too much vodka. Normalization of alcoholism is a stench that we still try to wash off.

I don't miss those times, I still can smell those cheap cigarettes that everyone smoked EVERYWHERE. No-one cared if children were there. Not having money was less of a problem, empty stores were. If you didn't knew a lot of people, you had nothing. You had disgusting green bathroom with tiles like a hospital, for 30 years. Yet you were happy, at least they delivered tiles that one time and your friend told you quickly.

[culebron21]

I must notice that in the USSR, private companies were allowed only in 1988, 4 years before its end.