Many great and unexpected political changes have taken place in recent years, perestroika in the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance, but no one has ever paid attention to the connection between such events and peoples dissatisfaction with food. Meanwhile, the connection has existed forever.

Let me explain my point in the example of Germany before it was united. When Eastern Germans had an opportunity to go to West Berlin supermarkets, they would buy bananas and pineapples in huge quantities, only to sell them in Eastern Germany ten times more expensively. People in Soviet countries were eager to pay ridiculous amounts of money for bananas and pineapples because that was the only way they could obtain them.

Comparing Eastern Germany with its Western counterpart, we could see a huge gap in the living standard just looking at the food stores, with western supermarkets full of various delicious products, and Eastern always empty. It is only natural that people were dissatisfied, and that the dissatisfaction eventually led to a great social explosion.