Yes, communism was a disaster. But I’m rereading the Little Prairie books by Laura Wilder and it’s amazing the joy they took from cooking - even when they were on the point of starving as in The Long Winter. But, I suppose they were free in mind and body, and that’s what makes the difference.
That's my plan for Christmas vacation - just got them all from Amazon! I haven't read them in decades - looking forward to traveling back to a simpler (even if difficult) time (while in front of a warm fire with a big box of Cheeze-its!).
Food availability, rationed though it became, was a double edged sword. I had Hungarian friends in Canada during the Cold War who had Hungarian friends who had emigrated to the West successfully, then turned around and gone back to communist Hungary.
They could not handle the unaccustomed stress of living in a society where it was possible to become unemployed. In Hungary, they were guaranteed a job of some sort and were so terrified of losing their means of sustenance in a free world, they gladly went back to communism. So the fear of the inability to get food drove them back into scratching for food.