USSR cuisine: catering, ideology, technology

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

Matryoshka is, in my opinion, the most successful comparison for Soviet cuisine. A kind of "matryoshka", consisting of many nested elements. So let's try to collect it, starting from the very core. And gradually, little by little, adding new figures and clothes, we will try to put together a single image of this phenomenon.

I think I won't be mistaken if I say: as in any kitchen , Soviet cuisine was based on its characteristic products and recipes … Arose on the basis of centuries-old Russian cooking, it adopted the entire grocery and recipe set that was established by the beginning of the 20th century. But she took it not mechanically, but by passing it through a kind of sieve. What was this selection?

• From the very beginning, due to ideological considerations, all the exquisite cuisine of high society was removed. At the same time, the pressure on this part of Russian gastronomy was so great in the first years of Soviet power that later, even with all the desire of the authorities to create for themselves a kind of an analogue of the high society cuisine, nothing worthy came out.

• Chronic food shortages have led to the washout of many products. Moreover, not only some expensive, exotic goods (for example, capers, hazel grouses or sturgeon) disappeared. In practice, sometimes even the products included in the basic basket of the national cuisine - buckwheat, butter, river fish - disappeared.

• Almost complete isolation from the foreign market - mainly due to the shortage of foreign exchange, to which later were added ideological reasons. The consequence of this was the disappearance from the sale of everything that was not produced in the USSR, with the exception of Finnish salami, Viola cheese, Yugoslavian ham and Polish frozen vegetables. The bulk of imported products were destined for the Soviet food industry, which turned them into familiar to the population coffee with almost no caffeine, sausage with almost no meat, seasonings with almost no aroma.

• The emergence of new products uncharacteristic for the historical Russian cuisine - corn, ocean fish and seafood, crabs, designed to fill the deficit of the basic products of the national cuisine - meat, river fish, fruits and vegetables.

• A gradual decline in fresh produce of all categories due to chronic deficiencies in the trading and distribution system. An increase in contrast to this in the share of canned food and semi-finished products. After the Soviet food industry mastered the technology of tomato puree and pasta (in the 1930s), fresh tomatoes practically disappeared from general food recipes for sauces, pickles, soups and borscht. The mass consumption of ready-made factory mayonnaise also fits into this trend.

• Due to the decrease in the share of river fish and meat in the diet of the population, there was an increase in the consumption of cereals. Creation of new types of cereal products - "Artek" cereals, puffed and crimped corn grains, artificial sago. A sharp increase in the share of first potatoes, and then - pasta in the diet of mass food.

• Replacing natural cooking fats with artificial modifications. Margarines and other kitchen fats have completely replaced butter from public catering and have pretty much replaced high-quality vegetable oils.

The next step in understanding Soviet cuisine, the next figurine of a nesting doll, is its consideration as a broader subject: not only products, but also typical cooking techniques, food processing technology, the type and nature of food, norms and customs of serving dishes. And already from this point of view, Soviet cuisine was a much more distinctive phenomenon. And it's not that I praise her. And only that our 20th century cuisine had a very individual character, sometimes without any analogues in the world. What were these features of it?

• The catering orientation gave the kitchen the character of an industrial production, which led to the loss of the individual attitude of the chef to the client. And the preparation of any dish for a hundred or two portions has created an appropriate culture of cooking and attitudes towards it.

• The fight against theft in canteens and restaurants led to the unification of recipes, devaluation of the art of cooking, which consisted only in the exact adherence to the established norms of investments and recipes.

• A clear Soviet menu was finally established: salad, soup, main course, dessert (coffee, compote). Any intermediate types of serving (hot snacks, cheeses, fruits) left the mass cuisine for the selected gastronomy of good metropolitan restaurants and ceremonial receptions.

• Snacks were increasingly simplified to slicing sausages, cheeses, balyk, canned fish (sprat, sardines, herring), etc. With the disappearance of products, such homemade snacks as roast beef, boiled pork, and offal dishes naturally disappeared.

• The widespread use of the ordering system in enterprises and institutions "undermined" holiday home cooking, which more and more often boiled down to cutting sausages, placing canned food on plates and kneading products with mayonnaise (Olivier, herring under a fur coat, meat salads).

• The first courses in mass cuisine depart from the national historical tradition. Kalya and botvinya practically disappear from the mass nutrition. And not because there are no products or it is difficult to cook. It's just that at some time they did not get into the chosen catering format. And vice versa, the Soviet era is the flourishing of borscht, pickle soup, hodgepodge, noodle soup. Which, in general, can also be understood - simple accessible products, expressive dishes. Plus - it is also a way to dispose of the remains of unused products in hot dishes, satiety and calorie content.

• The assimilation of national dishes in everyday life and public catering (primarily in Central Asia and Transcaucasia) has become a powerful tendency, somewhat devalued, however, by the quality of products and ignorance of the specific cooking techniques of these peoples. At the same time, it was the Caucasian cuisine that became synonymous with the festive table for many under the USSR due to its brightness, sharpness of taste and general exoticism.

• Preservation of "live" Russian cuisine only in everyday life. And we are not talking here about some unique dishes such as nanny, gingerbread or cranberry liquor. It was cereals, pancakes and pies in the mass catering that were prepared very badly. Only the home kitchen kept the "grandmother's" recipes, in fact developing the historical tradition of the people.

But the most interesting features of Soviet cooking await us when considering its next "level" - socio-cultural and psychological. Indeed, our cuisine is a significant part of the culture of the Soviet people in the 20th century

• The undoubted politicization of the Soviet cuisine. In this, it sharply differs from pre-revolutionary cooking, which has never been particularly associated with any events in political history.

• This politicization became, in turn, a consequence of the paternalistic role that the Soviet state assumed. It is known that Nicholas II, during the general population census in 1897, answered about his profession - "the owner of the Russian land." Moreover, in the official doctrine, the peasantry has always been the “breadwinner” of this land. And only the Soviet government assumed the role of not only the owner, but also the breadwinner. Responsible for the food and happiness of all the people entrusted to him. In essence, this was only a special case of the universal rule - the Soviet government considered itself responsible for all areas of the life of its citizens.

This tendency was very vividly described by Alexander Genis.“Contrary to all traditions,” he noted, “The Book of Delicious and Healthy Food” treats cuisine not as a private, family business, but as the most important function of the government.”

• The thesis about the scientific nature of Soviet cooking was used as an argument for the state's intervention in the field of nutrition. It was proclaimed: only doctors and nutritionists are able to correctly develop a menu and monitor the preparation of healthy dishes. And only the chefs of state canteens and restaurants should prepare them correctly and present them to the consumer.

Of course, the reader may object: before that, they say, we talked about subject concepts - products, dishes, recipes, about everything that could be seen, touched and appreciated the taste. Indeed, now we have entered the shaky ground of the mythologization of Soviet cuisine. And to make this conceptual level of it more tangible, let's try to figure out a few things. To begin with, you should clearly understand for yourself that there was no single Soviet cookery. And where, in fact, was it to come from? Even the centuries-old Russian cuisine was riddled with contradictions. For some reason, until 1917, dozens of its subspecies quietly existed within the framework of the all-Russian cuisine: peasant and merchant cuisine, the cuisine of elegant St. Petersburg restaurants and Moscow taverns, catering cuisine (in that sense) and home cuisine of the middle class, the cuisine of schismatics and Orthodox Christians. This is even if we do not take into account the differences in geography (say, the Russian North and the Don, Siberia and Polesie), as well as the presence of a huge number of national characteristics.

That is why when we compare two phenomena - Russian cuisine and the Soviet influence on it - we become more and more aware of the transitory, temporary significance of the latter factor. Indeed, no matter what twists and turns have happened to our cooking for hundreds of years - the introduction of Christian fasts and meat-eaters, the Mongol ruin and Asian influence, the wars and catastrophe of the early 17th century, the schism and Peter's transformations, the total "Frenchization" of metropolitan gastronomy and the introduction of potatoes, the struggle of Westerners and Slavophiles, the development of national cuisines - not to list everything. And nothing, coped.

Therefore, returning to the "layering" of Soviet cooking, it should be borne in mind that this is just a continuation of a trend that has developed in our cuisine for centuries. In our opinion, the nationwide Soviet cuisine is a kind of myth. This is the absolute that the official propaganda was striving for. In reality, however, the kitchens of various social groups remained. Something in them was in common, something - only at the level of stereotypes.

What were these kitchens? Obviously, from pre-revolutionary times, with a few exceptions, peasant, village cuisine has been preserved. Those who respected religious traditions carefully tried to preserve them (and they did not fight with them in the kitchen household even in the most severe years). Urban cuisine has changed significantly - due to the introduction of catering, new products, approaches to nutrition. But still there was social differentiation: the food of factory workers was different from the table of people of free professions. The kitchen for a wealthy public was formed at the expense of people involved in the distribution of products or resources, from the head of the food store to the minister (and, by the way, there is still a big question, which of them had a more varied and rich menu). The diplomats who returned home nurtured a sad parody of European delicacies from hand-made products, the creative intelligentsia gradually gravitated towards "merchant traditions", the petty nomenclature respected the distorted and perverted understanding of "high" restaurant fashion.

Each Soviet social stratum was proud of something of its own and, at the same time, common - a sense of being chosen, unique in a single Soviet system. Another thing is that not every person understood the entire illusion of this "luxury". That is why Pavel Nilin's essay, written in all seriousness (!) In the 1930s, today gets a rather humorous sound: necessity. And since we have destroyed parasitic consumption, luxury goods become the property of the entire population. […] People now want to have not just boots, but good boots, not just a bicycle, but a good bicycle. For the builders of Magnitka and Kuznetsk, Dneproges and Uralmash, the authors of grandiose things have the right to a luxurious life."

And here we come to another "unspoken" feature of Soviet cuisine. This time, it is more of a socio-psychological nature. Both food and gastronomy were the very "beacon" that unmistakably allows you to determine the social status of the interlocutor. The brilliant scene from the novel by Yulian Semenov "Seventeen Moments of Spring" is not copied at all from the Nazi reality of 1945. Remember when Stirlitz happens to be in the same compartment with the Wehrmacht general: "You have no cognac." - "I have brandy." "So you don't have salami." - "I have salami." - "So, we eat from the same feeder."

The theme of the "feeding trough" in the USSR is, as in the novels about Harry Potter, the name of "the one who cannot be named." Parallel (state-owned) distribution systems for products and goods were created in the late 1930s, and by the end of the 1970s they are flourishing. However, they are in the "gray zone". That is, some people know about them, many have guessed, but in details everything is known only to a select few. The notorious food coupons in the "Kremlin" canteens on Serafimovich (in the House on the Embankment), Rybny Pereulok and on Granovskiy Pereulok (now Romanov Pereulok) cover only 5-7 thousand people of the highest apparatchiks of the CPSU Central Committee, Council of Ministers, heads of ministries and departments. But the fame of them goes "all over the great Russia."

Naturally, similar systems are being created in territorial regional committees, district committees and councils, where “the chimney is lower and the smoke is thinner”. I confess that in the mid-1980s, together with my father, who was part of that “chosen circle,” I had the opportunity to visit these establishments, which have long been called “distributors”. So, the assortment exhibited there corresponded only to today's regional metropolitan store. For example, on Granovsky Street, trade was organized in a room with an area of about 300 meters, where in 5-6 rooms (you can't call them the halls), respectively, sausages (from the Mikoyan special workshop and Finnish salami), 15-20 types of canned food, were presented, raw meat, dairy products, bread and groceries, sweets, tea, coffee, beer and wine and vodka products (20-30 varieties of vodkas, cognacs, tinctures).

The benefits of using such an establishment were several things. Firstly, there was a limited, but high-quality and stable range of products. The main thing was a little trick. The prices of these products were fixed at the level of the 1930s. Each person "admitted" to the establishment received a book with tear-off coupons in the amount of about 150 rubles a month (at least, the minister had, say, twice as much). On them, he could either have lunch in the dining room, or take "dry rations" food in the store.

It is clear that 99% preferred the latter option. As a result, a person bought products in short supply at prices about 2 times lower than the state ones. That made it possible to save up to a quarter of the salary per month, plus not worry about the family's food. How ridiculous these privileges of the "nomenklatura" of the 1970s and 1980s look in comparison with the secret and obvious multimillion-dollar "ration" of today's ministers!

Another integral socio-cultural feature of Soviet cookery is the use of a specific Soviet aesthetics.… By the way, maybe that is why everything Soviet today evokes such nostalgia, even among young people who have not found anything Soviet in their life. But this is today. And then aesthetics was a powerful tool for the dissemination of thoughts, habits, ideas. Countless posters and advertisements, magazine illustrations and food labels all created a unified background for healthy and balanced eating. Many already then understood that this was a kind of parallel reality that had little in common with socialist reality. But the ideological pressure was strong, this fictional world was created by all Soviet art.

A banal example of the film "Kuban Cossacks" (1950) was called upon to "construct" a kind of beautiful life where smart and strong people work on a millionaire collective farm. Where the charming chairman performed by Sergei Lukyanov, rubbing heavy ears of wheat in his hand, walks through endless fields. And he competes at the fair with another chairman - Marina Ladynina - who has richer goods: geese and pigs, watermelons and rolls.

By the way, pay attention. The aesthetic exploitation of culinary images in the USSR was not uniform over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was the Russian avant-garde, Mayakovsky's advertising poems, posters in a bright brutal style: "Worker, fight for a clean dining room, for healthy food!", "Down with kitchen slavery!" and other topics were aimed not at promoting food or food products, but at improving general life and habits. It was this priority that was the main one in the work of the Soviet authorities.

In the late 1930s, the tone of propaganda changed. In fact, until the mid-1950s, it was the apotheosis of grocery advertising. Which, in general, is quite understandable. The beginnings of a new way of life have more or less taken root. But another topic - the role of the state in the nutrition of the population - has become predominant. The government and the Communist Party are the real breadwinners of the people. And the food industry, wisely managed by them, is an inexhaustible source of food and goods.

Please note: each poster must indicate the department responsible for the release of the goods.

"It's time for everyone to try how tasty and tender the crabs are!" - a young woman convinces us from the most memorable poster of the 1930s by A. Miller. During these years, Soviet buyers got acquainted with a variety of new products through advertising: fresh frozen vegetables and fish, pasteurized milk in glass bottles, food concentrates for instant cereals, soups, jelly and confectionery products, mayonnaise, ready-made dumplings, and sausages.

The 1960s radically changed Soviet culinary aesthetics. Rather, they simply sharply curtail it. There are fewer and fewer advertisements for wines, semi-finished products, in general - for the entire product line. The few exceptions are products that are being intensively introduced by the authorities, designed to reduce the emerging shortage of everything edible. Under Khrushchev, it is the ubiquitous corn, the "queen of the fields" and the source of everything progressive in nutrition. Under Brezhnev, ocean fish and seafood became a forced alternative to traditional dishes in the context of a chronic crisis in agriculture.

And in the 1970s and 80s, there was complete silence on the front of the culinary and food aesthetics. Occasionally erupting product motives are either an endless battle for the harvest, or a fight against "thugs" in production, or a tortured criticism of "materialism" and philistinism. These Soviet euphemisms for the simple human desire for a normal, secure life.

A normal life … But it is precisely this concept that completes the very mystery of the Soviet cuisine, over which we are pondering now. It is it to the end and folds this same nesting doll. Our kitchen was one of the elements of the propaganda of the Soviet way of life. It was designed to show how happy the common man lives in the USSR, how nutritious and healthy the products he consume, how beautiful and rational his life is.

Until a certain moment, it worked. After all, the everyday life of any society is out of sight. And in this sense, not every Soviet citizen could guess how Americans and French live and eat there. Plus, let's put it bluntly, a very small part of the Soviet people considered food at that time as something worthy of a conversation. That is, as long as everything with food was more or less bearable, the problem was not in the spotlight. It was only when total scarcity combined with disillusionment with social ideals that the Soviet model began to lose and lose its popularity.

Ultimately, it was this competition - two worlds, two lifestyles - that buried the entire Soviet system.