"In the weeks before and after the 1991 referendum, when Ukrainians voted to leave the Soviet Union, precipitating its quick disintegration, I went to the state shops to queue for cheap, rationed, often scarce items such as bread and hard cheese; the market was a place of plenty and, for locals, high prices."
"Row upon row of countrywomen in aprons sold huge jars of sour cream, chalk-white towers of cottage cheese wrapped in muslin and pots of horseradish in beetroot juice, alongside vendors from the Caucasus offering persimmons, pomegranates and fresh coriander, and pickle merchants with buckets of Korean carrot salad and wild garlic stalks."
"All this is still abundant in Kyiv, still locally made, but packaged and stacked on supermarket shelves by big firms. Nobody's selling homemade sour cream now, there's only one pickle seller, and the meat counter is no longer quite the shrine to pork fat it once was."
In November 1991, the author drove from Edinburgh to Kyiv and rented a flat near Volodymyrskyy market during Ukraine's transition from Soviet rule. The market then thrived with private vendors selling homemade dairy products, vegetables, and imported goods, contrasting sharply with empty state shops rationing basic items like bread and cheese. Upon returning decades later, the market appears neater and quieter. Traditional products—sour cream, cottage cheese, horseradish, and pickles—remain abundant but now come from commercial producers and supermarket chains rather than individual farmers and vendors. The shift reflects post-communist economic transformation and modernized food distribution systems replacing the old Soviet state shop model.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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