Belarus's 1.97 Euro Meal: A Social Achievement or Soviet Nostalgia?

Belarus's 1.97 Euro Meal: A Social Achievement or Soviet Nostalgia?

What does it cost to eat in Belarus? Seven rubles, or roughly 1.97 euros for a first course, main, drink, and dessert in any state-run canteen. This news has reignited discussions about the real cost of living beyond the former Iron Curtain. The accompanying photo, however, tells a different story: packet soup, pork meatballs with mashed potatoes, and an item some call industrial cookies while others see as cottage cheese. It is cheap. Whether it is delicious depends on hunger and nostalgia.

What the 7-ruble meal includes and why it is compared to Spain

The exchange rate used is 3.5 Belarusian rubles per euro, making the 7 rubles equivalent to 1.97 euros. With discounts for factory workers, these state canteens are presented as neighborhood services and direct heirs to Soviet cafeterias. The comparison with Spain is immediate: for two euros, critics argue, one gets a tapas here, and any social canteen surpasses this tray. The most frequent criticism is not the price, but the food. Nothing fresh, no fruit, no vegetables, just ultra-processed protein and packaged starch. Such a menu in a Spanish school would have dominated the news; in the East, it is defended as a social achievement.

Cheap for tourists, expensive for local salaries

One participant calculates that the average Belarusian salary does not reach 500 euros, while the Spanish average exceeds 2,000. This is the crux of the matter: two euros are pocket change for a visitor with euros in their pocket, but a full meal for someone earning 300. The Spanish average is also scrutinized. In response to the 2,000-euro figure, it is argued that most employees earn between 1,000 and 1,500, and the tax burden is not the same in Minsk as in Madrid. The breakdown by brackets completes the picture: of the 22 million employees, 25% earn more than 31,500 euros gross annually, and 10% earn more than 42,000. With these figures, the menu stops being a bargain and becomes arithmetic.

Coupons, mandatory minimum spending, and the cat food can anecdote

Those who traveled to the Soviet bloc remember another story. In 1980, a participant recalls, upon entering those countries, one had to declare the number of days of stay and accept a daily minimum spending: you were given strips of coupons for that value, and a large portion went away at the first dinner. People, they add, looked unwell, dollars and marks were sold on every corner, and decent restaurants with venison, wild boar, caviar, and champagne at bargain prices were for tourists. The anecdote that rounds out the picture is that of pilot Viktor Belenko, who defected to the West with a MiG-25 and bought a can with a cat drawing, believing it was tuna. It was cat food. He said it tasted better than the canned goods he found in the USSR.

Those who have traveled through the country with a camera offer the friendly reverse side: for about 5 euros, one can eat until bursting in a modest establishment, repeating the second course, and hotels are cheap. Another experience insists that in Minsk, one eats well and cheaply, with local fruit and forest blueberries at bargain prices, a side effect of sanctions with Europe.

Why Eastern nostalgia does not translate into votes?

This alleged longing has a name in East Germany: ostalgie, with businesses replicating East German foods. From there to the ballot box is a long way. Thirty years after the fall of communism in the Soviet sphere, parties that claim it obtain residual results where they stand, one interlocutor maintains, and in several former Soviet countries, they are directly prohibited. The counter-argument is that nostalgia is real and that in Russia, support goes to whoever is perceived as a restorer of lost national pride, even if they do not claim the socialist economy. Whether the Kremlin is a continuator of the USSR or crony capitalism with another wrapper is a discussion that no one closes.

The debt figure neither side uses well

According to percentages cited by a participant, Belarus has public debt around 40% of GDP, compared to 115% in Spain. If measured by external debt to GDP, it is 66% for Belarus against 111% for Spain. The difference allows two opposite readings: either the Belarusian public sector is better managed, or it dedicates far fewer resources to its population. Both fit in the same graph, and neither leaves the one boasting about canteens in a good light.

The question remains whether the merit of the menu lies in cooking cheaply or paying little to those who cook. Neither of these two things appears in the photo.