This is actually an altered version of a joke told by Russians during that time:

>Stalin is dead and things have begun to lighten up a bit relatively speaking.
>
>An old couple live in an apartment in Moscow and she sends him down to buy some meat for supper. After queueing for the obligatory three hours he gets to the counter and the woman says 'No more meat, meat finished'.
>
>He cracks and starts raving 'I fought in the Revolution, I fought for Lenin in the First World War and for Stalin in the Second World War and we are still in this shit?'
>
>One of the leather-jacketed brigade takes him on one side and says 'Look old man you know you can't talk like this. Just think, a few years ago you would have been shot for saying these things.'
>
>The old man trudges home. His wife seeing him empty-handed says 'Run out of meat again have they?'
>
>He says: 'It's worse than that, they've run out of bullets.'