>>95736
Meh, besieged Leningrad high rank party members could get things like elite mutton from the Caucasus while literally the next building people ate 125 grams of bread made mostly of chaff daily, because they have since already fried all the cats or rats or dogs. Working in Party cafeteria or shops got you access to scraps and leftovers while others had to subsists on road dust or cannibalism, or have some skill valuable to high-ranking Party members. I've read a story from grandkids of such a woman who had a reputation to do great nail care, so high ranking Party members' wives paid her with potatoes or even meat leftovers, hence she and her kids survived (the husband got drafted and died early in the war iirc).
There's a picture of a menu from the Siege time from one of the State workers cafeteria having said mutton in stock, with much other meat or pastry to choose from. So making most of the city dwellers subsist on chaff or rats wasn't necessary. Except why do this if there are no incentives to actually feed them. If they can't rebel with weapons or stop working (capital offense, skipping work or being late punished by death under Stalin, prison labour later) or leave the country (death for attempts to leave the USSR), why feed the proles above most basic subsistence.
So there was an abundance of meat products in the USSR. The thing is, only high ranking Party members had access to them, by design. Others by design could leave secret time capsules in buildings they built, complaining how they could not afford a piece of beef in years due to "Brezhnev shipping free food to niggers in Cambodia".
There was that story when a KGB worker got rewarded with free sausages and brandy and was riding back in a suburban train in early 80's, as I recall. He got stopped by the police on made-up charges, had his foodstuff "confiscated" and himself brutally beaten to death in the precinct, even though he stated multiple times that he was a KGB worker and hence was openly above the law. Neither did he technically do any crime, he was just riding home with foodstuff. The policemen chief later verified that the dead guy had real KGB documents, so they just dropped him near a, ahem, closed dacha cooperative for KGB worker families south-east of Moscow, ironically close to where I live now. Yes, gated communities with trespassing punishable by death in Communism, what else is new. KGB got wild, soon they found the culprits and executed them.
Three things to note:
1. Being a KGB or Inner Party member got you free meat and VIP alcohol in a country of people subsisting on cheap men cologne for spirits and grass for food working 6 days a week for the privilege. Like real Communist abundance of any foodstuff, just for the right people only.
2. Having a sausage or brandy bottle in open carry could get you robbed and brutalized to death by the police of all people. The KGB guy forgot where he lived from all the privileges and status of his profession.
3. These policemen could easily rob and brutalize common people by scores, which they probably did, and nobody bat an eye. Accidentally rob&kill a fairly low-ranking KGB worker and all hell is loose, but only then and no earlier.
>>94853
OP, take a good read of some Real Communism That Was Really Tried. The communist state monopoly on violence lead to common Soviet people treated worse than shit on plan and on principle, and you want me to feel bad for Western cows or something.