"Motherland's bins" - why create a strategic reserve and is it used?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Every person has heard that there are such "bins of the Motherland". And although everyone at an intuitive level roughly represents what it is and why it is needed, few people know the juicy details about this mysterious place.

In fact, the "bins" have a long and very rich history. Moreover, storing a huge amount of various goods for a long time is a true "technological art".

How are material values stored?

New technologies were introduced into the organization of storing strategic reserves back in the Soviet Union. Several universities dealt with this issue at once.

Nevertheless, the basic principles of storing the most important goods for the Motherland have not changed over the past 90 years. The formula developed in the past is fully valid for today. The most important criterion is the room temperature. It should be 10 degrees Celsius above zero. The reserves are stored underground in a deepening up to 150 meters.

Reserves employees closely monitor the appearance of various pests (insects and rodents) and immediately eliminate them. A separate official is responsible for each section of the strategic warehouse.

The access regime is reminiscent of those that operate at important factories: you can enter the reserve only with documents. Both at the entrance and at the exit, the person is checked. All warehouse premises are monitored from cameras by the security service.

Average shelf life of food products: 2 years. After that, they are sent for sale, and new fresh ones are brought to the place of old products, which will soon start to deteriorate. Machinery and equipment are kept in reserve for an order of magnitude longer: 10-15 years.

Where is all this located?

It's time here to quote Ostap Bender performed by Andrei Mironov: "Can I still give you the key to the apartment where the money is?"

In the vast majority of cases, the location of warehouses with "bins of the Motherland" is a state and official secret. To date, Rosrezerv has more than 150 plants and over 10 thousand storage facilities on its balance sheet. The overwhelming majority is concentrated where there is permafrost - in the Arkhangelsk region, Yakutia and Vorkuta.

How did the “bins” appear?

The state reserve is one of the legacies of the "bloody regime". Initially, construction of specialized storage facilities began on the basis of old adits in the late 1930s.

The very idea of the need to form strategic reserves of the most important goods for the army and the population was voiced in 1931, when the Soviet authorities established the Committee of Reserves under the Council of Labor and Defense.

Next, on its basis, a research institute was also created, whose tasks included the development of methods for long-term storage of food and equipment. Literally everything that the country may need in the onset of a "rainy day" is stored here: from sewing needles and bread to construction equipment, machines and machine tools.

Have "Motherland's bins" been used at least once for their intended purpose?

Yes, and more than once. In reality, strategic reserves are used constantly. For example, in modern Russia, food, medicines and equipment are extracted from them when humanitarian aid is sent.

Also from here they take supplies in case of rendering assistance to regions affected by natural disasters. The most striking case of the use of "bins", of course, was the Great Patriotic War. Stocks from these warehouses helped a lot in evacuating industry in 1941 and putting it on a war footing in the shortest possible time.

In addition, during the war years, industrial goods and raw materials were extracted from here for the production of weapons and equipment. And most importantly, millions of tons of food were taken from strategic warehouses, which made it possible to avoid famine in 1941-1945. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the earthquake in Armenia also became other striking examples of the use of "bins".