Communist Quality: Dairy Production at the Leningrad Dairy Combine, 1965-1982

ABSTRACT

Throughout the twentieth century, particularly post-WWII, dairy became a staple part of the “modern” diet throughout many parts of the globe due to new technologies in pasteurization and production. Dairy’s significance was felt in the Soviet Union as well, which used food to improve the standard of living and open another avenue of competition with the West. This study makes two main arguments: Soviet dairy and its ideas of quality were modern in their belief in scientific controls and implementation of new technologies but were distinctly Soviet in that state and scientific actors were the ones to define what was quality in dairy production. While consumer concerns were embraced, they were to be rationalized and filtered through the rational actors in the ministries and enterprises. Using quality reports from the Leningrad Dairy Combine and the Soviet Ministry of Meat and Milk Production, along with articles from professional journals from 1965–1982, this study highlights how Soviet officials had to contend with the Brezhnev era’s focus on consumer abundance while ensuring it remained rational. To reconcile these factors, the Soviet Union sought examples of quality dairy products from foreign countries both in the socialist and capitalist blocs while the Leningrad Dairy Combine tried to address subjective factors of quality like color in “tasting commissions” and address the causes of complaints from the ministry and local shops. However, Soviet consumers were never involved in these processes, setting Soviet dairy, and by extension, Soviet modernity apart from other dairy-rich societies in the West.

KEYWORDS:

• Soviet Union
• food history
• milk
• socialism
• quality
• production
• enterprise

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the feedback of my numerous former colleagues from my time as a MA student at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. Particular thanks to Elena Kochetkova for helping advise me on this project and providing invaluable feedback. The reviews from the two anonymous readers for Global Food History were very productive. I would also like to thank the archivists and librarians at the Russian State Archive of the Economy, the Central State Archives of Saint Petersburg, and the National Library of Russia for their assistance during the time of restricted access due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notes

1. Barbano, “A 100-Year Review,” 9894–97; Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk, 4–7.

2. Valenze, Milk, 268–78.

3. Lunt, “Food in the Rus’ Primary Chronicle,” 21, 28.

4. Hartley, “‘A Land of Limitless Possibilities,’” 4–11.

5. Smith, “From Gruyères to Gatchina,” 5–13.

6. Strauss, “The Soviet Dairy Economy,” 284; Gronow, Caviar with Champagne, 116–18.

7. Péteri, “Nylon Curtain,” 113–15.

8. Kochetkova, “Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union,” 32–33.

9. Kochetkova, “Making Food Modernity,” 2–6.

10. Tverdyukova, “‘It is best of the accessible,’” 179–81.

11. Gray, “Soviet Utilization of Food,” 1.

12. Ibid.

13. See Valenze, Milk; Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk; Atkins, Liquid Materialities; and Scholten, White Revolution.

14. David-Fox, Crossing Borders, 48–49; Oushakine, “‘Against the Cult of Things,’” 200–206.

15. Kähönen, “Optimal Planning, Optimal Economy, Optimal Life?” 23–41; Strauss, “The Soviet Dairy Economy,” 280–86.

16. Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era, 1–9.

17. Valenze, Milk, 274–83; Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk, 121–24; Gray, “Soviet Utilization of Food,” 1.

18. Kähönen, “Optimal Planning, Optimal Economy, Optimal Life?” 24–32.

19. Ibid., 27, 32.

20. Rogov and Gaidykova, “Kachestvo Produktsii v Tekhpromfinplane,” 31–39.

21. Klimenko, “Uvelichitʹ Proizvodstvo, Uluchshitʹ Kachestvo,” 2–4.

22. Ibid., 1–2.

23. Krasheninin, “Zakonchennye Raboty po Syrodeliiu, Rekomendovannye dlia Vnedreniia,” 5.

24. Klimovsky, “Regulirovanie Molochnokislogo Brozheniia i Viianie ego na Kachestvo Syra,” 8.

25. “Milk and Milk Products,” GOST 9225–84 § (1986).

26. Klimenko, “Uvelichitʹ Proizvodstvo, Uluchshitʹ Kachestvo,” 3.

27. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 3008, l. 269.

28. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 7364, l. 160–165.

29. Boor et al., “A 100-Year Review,” 9938–43.

30. Dylanian, “Puti Povysheniia Kachestva Shveitsarskogo i Sovetskogo Syrov,” 12.

31. Ibid., 12.

32. Kochetkova, “Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union,” 38.

33. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 3008, l. 101.

34. Autio-Sarasmo, “Technological Modernisation in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia,” 81–83.

35. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 6164, l. 2–5.

36. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 6164, l. 20–22.

37. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 6164, l. 25.

38. Scranton, “Managing Communist Enterprises,” 528–35; Greene, “Selling Market Socialism,” 115–26.

39. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 219, l. 61.

40. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 3009, l. 4–11.

41. Fedorus, “Sovershenstvovanie Organizatsiiu Zagotovok Moloka,” 1–4.

42. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 3009, l. 45; TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 271, l. 34.

43. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 219, l. 61.

44. Kravets and Örge, “Iconic Brands,” 205–9.

45. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 281, l. 1.

46. Gosudarstvennye Standarty Soiuza SSR, Moloko, Molochnye Produkty, 3–6.

47. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 41, l. 17.

48. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 41, l. 17.

49. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 41, l. 17–19.

50. Gosudarstvennye Standarty Soiuza SSR, Moloko, Molochnye Produkty I Konservy Molochnye, 5.

51. Lahne, “Sensory science, the food industry, and the objectification of taste,” 1–8.

52. Prokhorov, “Vkus (Fiziolog).”

53. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 41, l. 17.

54. Heymann, “A Personal History of Sensory Science,” 215–19.

55. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 193, l. 5–6, 12, 62, 66; TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 223, l. 51.

56. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 280.

57. Kochetkova, “Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union,” 38–40.

58. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 193, l. 5.

59. Kochetkova, “Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union,” 43–51.

60. Weimar and Blayney, “Landmarks in the U.S. Dairy Industry,” 11.

61. Fitzpatrick, “Supplicants and Citizens,” 78–87; Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era, 86–88.

62. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 193, l. 5–66.

63. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 223, l. 20.

64. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 282, l. 3–4.

65. Nikula and Tchalakov, Innovations and Entrepreneurs in Socialist and Post-Socialist Societies, 30.

66. Gray, “Soviet Utilization of Food,” 15.

67. RGAE, f. 477, op. 1, d. 3008, l. 261.

68. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 41, l. 17.

69. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 193, l. 59.

70. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 271, l. 14.

71. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 4, d. 79, l. 29.

72. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 271, l. 9.

73. TsGA SPb, f. R-9607, op. 3, d. 281, l. 1.

74. Strauss, “The Soviet Dairy Economy,” 281.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donald Morard

Donald Morard III is a PhD student at McGill University whose research is focused on Soviet food production, with a particular focus in the Soviet Northwest in the period of late socialism. His current project focuses on Soviet Estonian agricultural reform in the 1970s and 80s and how it failed when scaled to an all-union implementation.