Is that true? That seems at odds with what the article says.
> What’s more, until the death of Stalin, black and red caviar was very inexpensive and accessible. Actively farmed in the Caspian Sea, it was one of the country’s top exports. But whereas in tsarist times caviar had been willingly consumed, Soviet people didn’t really get it. Some posters even exhorted: "Make yourself eat caviar."
Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access?
> Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access?
It this case, the workers probably had access to the foods, but there are a lot of assumptions in that sentence that don't apply to the Soviet Union.
At one point, the Soviets decided that western ads were insidious propaganda that needed to be countered, and decided that every company must spend one percent of it's budget on ads. Don't make anything for consumers? Doesn't matter, still need to spend that one percent advertising to them. Either make ads for things no consumer is interested in, or just invent products that don't exist.
Then once the tv ads were done, the people in charge of tv scheduling didn't care one bit about where the product was actually available. People living in Estonia grew up frequently seeing ads for orange juice that was only available in Ukraine.
In general, when western people look at the USSR they see a state where everyone does exactly what they are ordered to do, and assume that they were following a coherent plan of some sort. Lol no. The guys giving the orders, and the guys giving those guys orders, were all just following the letter of their orders too. The place where the original plans come from were so far removed from facts on the ground they might just as well have been on Mars.
Regardless, a huge portion of the soviet population was constantly exposed to it. For example, all the people living near the borders who could watch foreign tv.
West (Finnish) TV was only visible in Tallinn and, maybe, north/west bits of St. Petersburg/Leningrad. Southern Lithuania and Kaliningrad had access to Polish TV, but that wasn't exactly "foreign". That's a pretty small part of population.
Foreign radio was somewhat better. But even that was accessible mostly in Baltic States and was worse and worse going east towards biggest population centers. Those who listened were mostly listening to political programmes (Radio Free Europe and Voice of America) at night hiding from their neighbours.
The biggest exposure was sailors bringing stuff from West. Plastic bags with West brands were a fashion item. If we count seeing those bags as exposure, then yes, most people would see such bag once in a while.
That worked for some radio, although you either had to be uncomfortably close to the border, or the radio had to transmit to the USSR intentionally, like Radio Free Europe. They used signal jammers to jam most of foreign broadcasts but you can't jam everything everywhere. Anyway, even then if you got caught listening, you could face some consequences for anti-soviet behavior. All it needed was one nosy neighbor snitching on you, and commieblocks had notoriously thin walls.
As to TV, the USSR and its allies used the SECAM D/K standard that was incompatible with most of the Western world, except France. So maybe East Germans could catch something but it's doubtful. The only people who could maybe have a PAL/NTSC TV would be sailors, truckers, airline personnel who could smuggle something in, however, such a TV would have no other purpose on the USSR apart from watching foreign broadcasts and later contraband VHS tapes. So again, if you get caught, anti-soviet behavior, consequences, and your smuggling career and any chances of getting a visa are over.
Depends where and when, in late 80's it was different, at least here in Czechoslovakia. No jamming and color TV's made here had both SECAM and PAL decoders. Probably they wanted to export them. We got one in 1988 and watched austrian TV in vivid PAL colors, it was noticeable difference from czechoslovak SECAM broadcast.
Listening/watching itself was probably okay, but if you carelessly spread the information you would Have Problems.
Finnish TV was easily accessible in Tallinn. Not sure if they broadcasted special SECAM version or if PAL adapters were widely available in black market.
Or put up posters to make it look like it's accessible.
Sort of like making ads for personal cars. You couldn't buy one without a special permit. And queue for a regular citizen was next-to-eternity. But ads still were made.
Overfishing may have been an issue too. Soviets weren't exactly concerned about ecology.
