What things and technologies the USSR either stole or somehow borrowed from the “decaying West”. The USSR borrowed design and technology, tyr children’s toys and even “spied” the plot of many children’s fairy tales from Western authors.
We will encroach on the most sacred – on “the very” Soviet canteens, as well as on Soviet ice cream and a whole bunch of other products you know very well. You will still laugh, but Soviet canteens, and Soviet ice cream, and Soviet champagne with tomato juice and mayonnaise are actually not “Soviet” at all, but the most American ones, and in today’s post I will tell you in detail about this, writes Maxim Mirovich on Facebook.
“Those very” Soviet canteens.
“Oh, what was the public catering in the USSR, what the canteens were!” – fans of the USSR often like to repeat. He came, ate borscht with black bread, ate cutlets with mashed potatoes and washed down with dried fruit compote – and happiness. They say that for only one invention of the Soviet canteen one can be grateful to the Union.
In fact, “those very” Soviet canteens, like many other things from public catering, were simply borrowed from the West, and this happened in the mid-fifties. In 1958, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev visited the IBM plant in the USA – the Americans invited the Soviet leader in the hope of cooperation in the IT sphere, but what impressed Khrushchev most of all was not the computers (in which he still knew nothing), but the factory canteen.
The IBM canteen contained everything that is so well known to us from Soviet canteens – self-service, conveyor delivery of dishes to visitors, glass shelves for bread and salads, plastic trays, light tables and chairs (convenient for cleaning) – All of this has long existed in the United States and was, in fact, transferred to the USSR in the form of “those” Soviet canteens that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Somewhat earlier, some cooking technologies were also borrowed from the United States – for example, cutlets were not fried, but baked on large baking trays, which was convenient for “conveyor” lunches.
In general, as you can see, “those very” Soviet canteens were not invented in the USSR.
“That same” Soviet ice cream.
For some reason, the most successful “brand” with which the USSR is closely associated is “that very” Soviet ice cream made “for guests”. Yesterday, in one of the stores, I just photographed one of these – it was in the same shape as in the USSR, it was made from some kind of a hedgehog and palm oil and has a shelf life of several years.
The shovel image is perfectly complemented by some stylized bullet holes on the foil and the militarized name – “45 caliber”. Interestingly, the 45th caliber refers to the American weapons classification system, and I cannot call it anything other than a “Freudian slip” – after all, “that very” Soviet ice cream was not invented in the USSR, but was brought from the USA …
It happened in 1936, when Anastas Mikoyan, then the People’s Commissar of the Food Industry, visited the United States with the aim of “seeing what they have there and then doing the same with us.” Mikoyan stayed in the USA for several months and brought a lot of interesting things from there – machines for machine production and baking of cutlets (hello, “Soviet canteen”), as well as machines for the production of ice cream, this is what Mikoyan wrote in his memoirs – production and make ice cream cheap and affordable. Demand for it is ubiquitous, it is now eaten with pleasure at home and on the street, in cinema and theaters, in summer and winter. As a result, we brought from the USA all the technology of industrial ice cream production. “
So you get it? “That very” Soviet ice cream, which the fans of the USSR are so proud of, was actually exported in the form of a finished production cycle from the United States. Mikoyan even personally selected “the most delicious varieties of American ice cream” for their production in the USSR – they were cream and milk ice cream, popsicle, crème brulee, vanilla and popsicles. In addition to production, Mikoyan borrowed the entire cycle from the Americans in general, including the street sale of ice cream from special refrigerators.
“That same” sausage for 2.20.
“Soviet Doctor’s” sausage has become a separate meme, which among the fans of the USSR wanders from blog to blog and from forum to forum. Fans of the Union breathe as they say about the taste of “the same Doctor’s”, for a kilogram of which it was not a pity to pay even 2.20. After that, they must agree that a modern sausage made “not according to GOSTs” cannot be compared to “the one from the USSR”.
The fact that “especially high-quality Soviet GOSTs” is one big myth, but within the framework of this post something else is interesting – it turns out that “the same Doctor’s” was brought by the same Mikoyan from the same USA. During his long trip to the States, Mikoyan (due to the specifics of his position) visited, basically, all kinds of food complexes, canteens and related industries – and having familiarized himself with the taste of boiled sausage, he ordered the purchase of equipment in the USA and (again, according to American samples) create branches of meat processing plants in the suburbs – and having familiarized himself with the taste of boiled sausage, he ordered the purchase of equipment in the USA and (again, according to American models) to create branches of meat processing plants in the suburbs – it was there that the “same” boiled sausage began to be produced.
In the Soviet Union, only the name “Doctor’s” was invented for the sausage, supposedly this was to emphasize its dieteticity and usefulness.
“Those very” mayonnaise, champagne, biscuits, chocolate, sweets, tomato juice …
… All this, which makes up the lion’s share of the diet of the “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” (the first edition was published in 1939) was also brought by Mikoyan from the USA to the USSR – in the country of the “victorious proletariat” and had never heard of such things, preferring in the “post-revolutionary twenty years” to be engaged mainly in the construction of tanks and the GULAG.
Interestingly, the very “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” does not say a word about the fact that Soviet citizens should thank the Americans for all these new products – it was American scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who invented, developed the production cycle and began to sell all these things, and then the USSR simply “took over” them – having bought ready-made equipment and technologies. A few years later, the USA also fed the USSR with Lend-Lease during the war, but now it is not customary to remember this – as you know, “stupid Americans” live in the USA …
