The following quote is from a section on food shortages in a book on the Soviet economy:
"Why there is no fish ... I can't imagine," wrote one indignant citizen to Anastas Mikoyan, head of the Food Ministry, in 1940. "We have seas, and they are still the same as before, but then you could have as much [fish] as you wanted of whatever kind, and now I have even forgotten what it looks like."
Industries and agriculture in the former Soviet Union were state-controlled and the economy’s resources were allocated by a central agency, Gosplan. In the above passage, the citizen cannot understand why there is a shortage of fish although the country possesses the same resources that it did before the economy transitioned to central planning. What could explain this outcome?