Net Sacks
(Net bag)


In the Soviet Union in Leningrad many products were in shortage. (In other places in the Soviet Union the situation was worse. Sometimes all products were in shortage.) In that situation when those products appeared in the shop there formed a long line and those quickly sold out.

There was another situation. All products of one kind had a constant government price, but very often they had different quality. In the shop a few customers bought a bad product, in another shop many customers bought the same good product. In the last situation they organized a long line and bought that good product in large quantity.

In the Soviet time, if you bought something in the shops, the salesperson never gave bags for purchases. (He did not have them.) If you bought meat, kielbasa, butter, etc. it was covered in paper.

All old women and men all the time walked with a shopping bag. They would go to a shop, especially if they saw a product in short supply. For young men and women carrying shopping bags was not so good, as they did not look so nice on the street. Many of them had special net sacks.

They took their net sacks with them. The empty net sack a man could fit into his pocket and a woman into her handbag. If people saw there might be a shortage of a product they would rush to buy those products quickly. The net sack permitted them to buy and carry, for example, 10 kilograms of potatoes (25 lbs). The sales person packed them loosely in the net sack. (The same situation also occurred for buying apples, etc.)

In Russian language 'String bag' is 'avoska'. The root of this word is 'maybe, perhaps'. You could translate: perhaps [buy some product.]
In America I don't see net sacks. The sales clerks pack up their purchases in plastic bags.

American food processors use preservatives in most of their foods; so packaged foods have a long shelf life. Russians, at the other hand, had to throw out (discard) many food products, which did not sell quickly.

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