Valuable Waste: Soviet management of food scarcity in the early 1930s

ABSTRACT

Stalin’s “Great Break” of 1928 threw the Soviet population into a period of extreme material shortages. As hunger swept over the country, waste and its management became a central concern of the Party-State. This article situates food waste as a systemic feature of the Stalinist regime, providing fresh insights into both Food and Soviet histories. It explores the large campaigns that were launched to educate the Russian public about the need to minimize food waste in the 1930s and traces the uncertain rise of state canteens: eateries that were promoted as a rational and modern way to produce and distribute food throughout this period. In practice, as this article will show, these efforts to curtail waste and alter food behaviors were largely unsuccessful. Poor transport and storage conditions led to the deterioration of large quantities of food. But because of the severe shortages, spoiled food was frequently prepared and eaten by consumers regardless, leading to regular bouts of food poisoning for which cooks and canteen managers were blamed. All the while, Soviet political elites continued to perform their power and (relative) opulence by wasting their own food behind closed doors. In Soviet society, food waste was both a disgraceful practice to be avoided and a subtle symbol of wealth, prestige, and power.

KEYWORDS:

• Soviet Union
• waste
• Stalinism
• violence
• collective catering
• canteens
• thrift
• embezzlement

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the organizers and the participants of the conference “Waste Not, Want Not: Food and Thrift from Early Modernity to the Present” at the University of Cambridge for their insightful comments. The feedback from the anonymous reviewers proved to be incredibly useful. Special thanks to Stephenie Young, Mayhill Fowler, Eleanor Barnett and Katrina Moseley for their careful and patient reading and editing of my text. This research was made possible by The Centre de Recherches en Histoire des Slaves (CRHS), the SIRICE laboratory (UMR 8138), and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Notes

1. Joseph Stalin published, on November 7, 1929, an article in the Pravda under the title “Year of the Great Break: toward the 12^th anniversary of the October Revolution.”

2. Sanchez-Sibony, “Depression Stalinism.”

3. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 4. Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 69–73 She underlines multiple forms of Peasant Luddism.

4. The state-led colonization in Kazakhstan killed more than one-third of the Kazakhs (at least 1.5 million) and caused the loss of 90 percent of their animals. Cameron, The Hungry Steppe.

5. From 1932 on, the city of Nizhniĭ Novgorod on the Volga was renamed Gorʹkiĭ.

6. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.

7. Harris, The Great Urals.

8. The most notable famines took place in 1921–22, 1932–33, and 1946–47.

9. The literature on the 1932–33 famine is so vast that it can’t be summarized here. A good panorama may be found in Andrea Graziosi, “Introduction.” The whole special issue of Nationalities papers is worth reading.

10. Hessler, History of Soviet Trade.

11. Osokina, Our Daily Bread.

12. Evans, Campbell, and Murcott, “Pre-History of Food,” 7.

13. Ibid., 8.

14. Gille, “From Risk to Waste,” 28.

15. Ibid., 29.

16. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization; Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization.

17. Ticktin, “Political Economy of the USSR,” 27.

18. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 134.

19. Ibid, 174.

20. Gille, “From Risk to Waste,” 31.

21. My arguments are broadly valid throughout the Soviet Union. We need, however, to be cautious about this. Writing Soviet history with Russian eyes has been very common since most historians of the Soviet Union do not always master other Soviet languages than Russian. In this paper, I rely on sources from Soviet central and local Russian archives, i.e. from the former RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic).

22. Borrero, “Communal Dining,” 163–64.

23. GASO, f. 183, op. 1, d. 46, 15.

24. Goldstein, The Kingdom of Rye, 4

25. CDOOSO, f. 6, op. 1, d. 535, 47.

26. The State of Nutrition, 145.

27. Ignatov, “Organisation of Collective Catering,” 123.

28. Borrero, Hungry Moscow, 143. The quote is from an official newspaper published in Petrograd in 1919.

29. F. Sh, Obshchestvennyj stol, 61.

30. Many studies from across the world emphasize this point. Bouchet & alii, La Gamelle et l’outil. Detchev, “Public Catering,” for Bulgaria. Hayes, “Did Manual Workers,” for Britain.

31. Nérard, “Pouvoir Manger,” 207–208.

32. Osokina, Our Daily Bread, 61–70.

33. It is difficult, in the Soviet system where prices were arbitrarily fixed, to talk about the cost of a meal. In the canteens, it was usually low: 25–30 kopecks.

34. Workers’ reluctance to the use of canteens, which has been noted during the Civil war and the first wave of expansion of collective catering, persisted. As soon as the rationing was abolished in January 1935, canteen attendance fell sharply (by up to 50 percent) once again. GOPANO, f. 2, op. 1, d. 3073, p. 21–22, for example.

35. Usually, workers had one meal a day at the factory canteen. But there are many exceptions to the rule: in some places, two meals were available.

36. Nérard, “Variations,” 38.

37. This idea can be found in other countries thanks to widespread hygienist theories. For the British case: Long, “Cantines d’entreprises,” 69.

38. RGAE, f. 484, op. 15, d. 2, p. 4.

39. Allen, “Berlin in the Belle Époque.”

40. Bird, The First Food Empire.

41. Epshtein a leading specialist from Moscow cooperatives underwent an US trip in 1927. RGAE, f. 484, op. 15, d. 11.

42. Fitzgerald, “Blinded by technology.” Stephen Kotkin speaks of the “Soviet Cult of America:” Kotkin, Magnetic Moutain, 363.

43. Narpit, for example, hired a US engineer in 1931, ending the contract in November 1931. RGAE, f. 484, op. 15, d. 27, p. 10–17. Thanks to Anna Safronova for drawing my attention to this file.

44. Zhuravlev, “Malen’kie li͡udi,” 118. This was a general phenomenon not limited to collective catering.

45. The professional journal Narpit regularly published photos, article on these machines, and even advertising as the organization was reselling them to the canteens.

46. Great Soviet Encyclopedia, s.v. “Pitanie (obshchstvennoe).”

47. RGAE, f. 7971, op. 1, d. 394, 25. There are several references to such hostility in the professional press, printed by the Narpit.

48. CDOOSO, f. 4, op. 9, d. 149, 27.

49. CANO, f. 5944, op. 1, d. 1073, 172 or CDOOSO, f. 4, op. 9, d. 934, 16.

50. Private ragpickers were chased away. The whole Stalin’s Great Brake was made under the government.

51. Shits, Dnevnik Velikogo Pereloma, 166.

52. Gran and Nérard, Rêve plus vite, 105–109.

53. Zapoleon, Inedible animals.

54. Great Soviet Encylopedia, s.v. “utilizat͡sii͡a).” See also Pravda, May 9, 1930.

55. Progressively, the Stalinist authorities would focus on sabotage and wrecking-type explanations. If something doesn’t work and objective reasons are not to be taking into account, then the only explanation is the conscious sabotage of the polity.

56. The Politburo of the CPSU, the highest political organ in the country, talked several times about collective catering. But all authorities, at regional, local and even factory level, have addressed the problem.

57. GOPANO, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1877, 3.

58. GOPANO, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1877, 13.

59. RGASPI. f. 17, op. 163. d. 1005.

60. GOPANO, f. 2, op. 1, d. 1877, 5–6.

61. There are no cases of missed meals in industrial cities, as far as I know. Canteens always provided food, sometimes late, clear soup, small portions, poor quality.

62. Gladkov, Pis’ma, 98.

63. CANO, f. 5944, op. 3, d. 41, 1.

64. CANO, f. 5944, op. 3, d. 41, 8.

65. CANO, f. 3485, op. 1, d. 614. See also GOPANO, f. 30, op. 1, d. 38, 96.

66. On food poisoning and the history of salmonella infections, see Hardy, Salmonella Infections. Especially, chapter 9 on sites of infection.

67. The (bitter) irony is that on the same week workers of this factory fell also sick due to the damaged fish soup.

68. CANO, f. 3485, op. 1, 616.

69. CANO, f. 3485, op. 1, d. 614, 63.

70. Nérard, Cinq pour cent.

71. A new law had been passed in December 1933.

72. CANO, f. 4570, op. 1, d. 279.

73. Ibid, 93.

74. This infamous law provided the death punishment, or 10 years of labor camp in certain cases, for stolen state or cooperative property. On this law, see Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 111–129.

75. CANO, f. 960, op. 1, d. 150, 36.

76. Introduced at the end of the XIXth century by Thorstein Veblen, the notion of “conspicuous consumption” is useful to understand a consumption which is not limited to the satisfaction of needs, or even to pleasure, but which demonstrates power and social prestige.

77. Magness. “Conspicuous consumption”

78. Haroche. “Position et disposition”

79. Kondratieva. Gouverner et nourrir, 31–49.

80. Gille. “From Risk to Waste,” 33.

81. Ibid., 31.

82. Eric Batstone, in his sociological study of the eating habits of big bosses and factory workers in British car industry, makes a similar argument. Batstone, The Hierarchy of Maintenance. On eating at work, see also Bouchet et al., La Gamelle et l’Outil.

83. RGASPI. f.17, op .3, d. 924.

84. CANO, f. R-245, op. 2, d. 108, 57.

85. CANO, f. R-245, op. 2, d. 108, 10, 12, 33.

86. Gille. “From Risk to Waste,” 31.

87. This makes a huge difference with the Chinese case. During the Great Leap forward, the Chinese authorities also developed communal dining. For some historians, waste and overconsumption aggravated the famine. Chang and Wen, “Communal Dining,” 21–22.

88. GOPANO, f. 2, inv. 1, d. 1877, p. 4.

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François-Xavier Nérard

François-Xavier Nérard is an Associate Professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He specializes in Russian and Soviet history. He wrote on Soviet social history of the 1920s and 1930s and on memory of the Stalinist terror. His last project deals with material culture in the USSR and focuses on collective catering and canteens during the Stalin Industrial Revolution.