Zoya Zarubina

Under Soviet communism, obtaining food was a major occupation for most families. Even relatively well-placed families had to spend a significant amount of time standing in lines at the poorly stocked state stores, oftentimes to buy what was available rather than what was needed. As a result, bartering became a national pastime as well as a way to procure the necessary items.

Zoya Zarubina was a Soviet intelligence officer during the Cold War. One of her major accomplishments was translating from English into Russian the blueprints for making an atomic bomb that the Soviets had obtained from spies. In this selection from her memoirs, she describes how her grandmother helped get the family through the 1930s, when famine plagued the entire nation, and how her grandmother taught Zarubina to barter and to shop in state-run stores.

"Once when I was very...