It so happens that the bleak depiction of Moscow reminded me of Prague and Czechoslovakia in general. I visited there as a young undergraduate.
Fruit was scarce. Luxury goods were scarce. I purchased a sweater in a "Tuzex" store---a store where goods could only be purchased with foreign currency. And, of course, you must know that waiting in lines was common.
You might as well call all of that "austerity". Of course the austerity that people suffer from today does not hit consumer items so much as, say, health care and education. The so-called communist lands had universal health care, and education was free. (Of course there were entrance exams for the universities, and there was a rigid censorship of what was taught.)
(Don't get me wrong. Universities may have been free, and the censorship was not trivial. You might read, e.g., Kundera's "The Joke" for a depiction of the insanity of it all. The censorship and paranoia cannot be justified, but so far as causes go, it is worth pointing out that more or less the entire capitalist world (Europe and North America) were hostile toward Russia. The atom bombs were dropped on innocent civilians--something Truman lied about--in order to show the Russians that (so to speak) "We mean business"......AKA The so-called Cold War started with a horrendous war crime by the USA.)
Capitalist Austerity does not aim at Ipads (produced in miserable conditions by poorly paid Chinese and other peoples) or numerous other non-essentials of the capitalist consumerist society.
But if you need an operation! Or if you would like to attend university, forget it! Can't be done.
but I read that the US government has no problem with loaning money to Greece--in the form of high tech weapons.....
It makes me sick.....
Footnote: What they used to call "communism" was no such thing. To start with, communism is supposed to be a society without classes, but as a small group within the Soviet Union or CSSR were granted privileges and had more power than ordinary citizens, those societies were never communist (or socialist). Along the same lines, the USA is not today (and never has been) truly democratic. The ordinary person has little power. When wages were higher people didn't stop to think about this. Now that wages are declining and public services are being cut, people are unhappy. But no major decisions have ever been made with the good of the majority in mind or with genuine input by the average citizen. (Not the creation of the internet, or decisions about war, or the decision to destroy public transit.....) The highest form of democracy would allow citizens to make decisions; it would be only a fall-back, weaker, version (and still better than what exists in the USA) if decisions were genuinely made with the good of everyone in mind.....
After-Thought about "An Englishman Abroad":
So far as the story itself goes, what is striking is that Coral Browne relates to Guy Burgess as another human being. She is not bowled over or seduced by the ideology of "communism" versus the "free world". She retains a sense for their common humanity and ignores the ideology. I also enjoyed her ability to recognize typically English bullshit and call it by its proper name. (See, e.g., Kate Fox Watching the English.)
Link
"An Englishman Abroad" at Wikipedia:
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