Shopping for Food

The center of activity in any Soviet city was the marketplace. The market opened around six in the morning, when women on their way to work would stop to buy fresh produce for the evening meal. Later in the day the old grandmothers, the babushki, would appear for their shopping. Even after the advent of self-service grocery stores, prudent Russians still carried an expandable string bag at all times. The bag was jocularly referred to as an avos’ka, a “just-in-case”—just in case something good should appear at the market or on the street that day.