One of the simplest ways to tell that Russia has not yet developed a market economy is that you never know what you are going to find in the stores.


Or, put another way, you can never go looking for something in Moscow in the expectation you will find it. Nothing in this nascent consumer world is that predictable yet.


This is not so much a criticism as a mere observation. In the bad old days, the unpredictability of the Soviet food chain was a way of life. You never knew what you would find at the store, but you always went anyway. You would take a big avoska (that omnipresent, netlike bag that takes its name from the Russian word avos, meaning "perhaps") and case the stores, marking your place in this or that line for whatever was on offer: sausage, cheese or Bulgarian tomato paste. Russians in those days never said they had "bought" a chicken or a hunk of tender meat; rather, they would say they had "managed to get it" (dostal), as if doing so were a heroic feat.


Now the lines are gone (mostly) and the shops are full (again, mostly). But the spirit of avos, of the haphazard search and the chance find, remains.


I went to my local shop the other day looking for bread and apples. I came home instead with crabmeat, a fragrant bunch of coriander and two cans of coconut milk. There was no bread, and the store was not expecting any until the next day. They did have apples, but they looked so wizened that even the vendor advised me not to buy them.


Certainly cans of coconut milk are a far cry from the days of snaking lines for fatty sausage. But supplies are still erratic, giving the shopping experience that familiar hunter-gatherer feel of Soviet days.


My store is frequently out of bread, but the other day they had stacks of army rations described as NATOvsky nabor -- "NATO selection." Butter suddenly appeared out of nowhere a few months ago, and then just as quickly disappeared. The coconut milk had vanished by the time I went to get more. But the store has had boxes of tiger prawns for months.


Many Russians are confused by these imported goods in strange packages with descriptions in indecipherable languages: The store offers not-so-frozen pizzas from unrefrigerated counters, for example. And I, a woman who bought squid once at Stockmann thinking it was a tasty haddock, can sympathize.


You have to scour the shelves because nothing is where you expect to find it: A buffet counter with sodas and snacks also sells men's deodorants -- a particularly unsuccessful combination that tends to turn the thirsty customer away.


Unfortunately the Soviet myth persists among shopkeepers that whatever they put on the shelves the hungry masses will buy. Never mind if only one shopper out of a hundred can afford those tiger prawns. And these stores rely on a notoriously weak Soviet-era distribution system. Shops like these are not supplied by huge private warehouses that have trucks stocking them day and night with regular supplies.


One day Moscow will be the kind of city where you can make a grocery list and then head off to the store to buy it all. But in a city that can't even keep its gas tanks full, that is a little too much to hope for just yet.