Without "Madonna" nowhere! Soviet Union period 1985-1991
Let's start with this photo. One of my favorite recipes from the book "Schoolchildren's Nutrition" is "Fungus Salad". The daughter, and then the granddaughter, loved him very much. Moreover, salad bowls under it are still from that distant, Soviet time ...
Memories of the past. Publishing material "Kitchen in the USSR: how to choose a wife-cook and take a queue at the store in the morning" Aroused the keenest interest of VO readers, so we continue the theme of memories and the theme of food, although today from a slightly different angle. That is, what the food supply in the USSR became from 1985 to 1991 will be told, but as illustrations, photographs of dishes will be given and a little about it will be told. Let this be a kind of story within a story.
It should be said that the dishes in the USSR were of high quality. Especially made in old factories, still tsarist times. Here, for example, is a butter oil intended for pickled and salted mushrooms. There they were served on our table. And in childhood I loved her very much and always imagined that these were real mushrooms and that I collected them ... Children's fantasies - they are!
So, the last material ended with the fact that with the coming to power of M. S. Gorbachev in 1985, hopes really revived in people: the relatively young initiative general secretary, who finally replaced the “crowned elders”, may indeed do something. And then there was talk about "a lesson in truth", "socialism with a human face" ... In a word, people began to hope that now everything will be fine. People in general too often hope for the best and talk about it loudly, instead of just waiting a little and watching how it comes out in practice.
And this plate for fruits from the Dulevo Porcelain Factory is simply luxuriously decorated. However, there is nothing superfluous on it. We had good artists-designers responsible for the production of tableware. Very good!
As for me, I personally had no time to think too much. In June, after passing the last exam of the candidate's minimum, I was enrolled in the postgraduate study at Kuibyshev State University, where I should have arrived on November 1, and before that work at my institute. But my wife and I were so curious that we went to Kuibyshev before going on vacation to see where I was to spend the next three years. We looked at the hostel, went shopping, and there was both, and even ... chocolate mushrooms in multi-colored metallized pieces of paper - that is, something that was no longer in Penza. "Well, you can live here!" - we decided and so we left.
China supplied a lot of dishes to us. Here are the remains of a large tea set - my age, just made in China. I liked him very much, I drank tea only from him, but in the end there were very few items left of him. It's a pity…
Well, on November 1, I was already there, checked into a rather miserable room and ... the very next day I faced the problem of food. Everything that we saw in the summer suddenly disappeared somewhere, or rather, in four months, so I had to cook semolina for myself for breakfast. However, there was another reason for this. From all the experiences associated with admission, I developed severe gastritis with zero acidity, so I constantly had to drink pepsidil with food - that still muck, an analogue of gastric juice, produced from pig intestines. The attempt to dine in the student canteen failed immediately, so for all three years I not only collected material and wrote a dissertation, but also cooked like a chef. The fact is that, besides me, there were three or four postgraduate students living in the graduate student block, I made friends with two, and since we were all family people, sophisticated in life, we quickly calculated that if there is a person willing to cook for everyone, then this is more convenient than having everyone cooking for themselves or eating in the student dining room. We decided to add up to some extent for a month and assigned responsibilities. So I got rid of washing dishes and peeling potatoes, but I had to cook three times a day.
And here is this tea cup and a plate of the famous "Kuznetsov's" porcelain. Year of release - 1912. She survived the war, the revolution, and ... perestroika. Haha, and still alive. Porcelain - the thinnest, will give odds to Japanese. That's even how ...
By the way, we ate in the most dietary way, therefore, probably, graduate school and passed for us without any particular harm to health. All products, except butter and milk, were purchased from the market. Well, the menu was like that. For breakfast, often semolina porridge, but not just, but with raisins, prunes, dried apricots. Milk noodles (not salted) and milk rice porridge. Omelet, scrambled eggs, stewed vegetables, croutons in tomato, "bull's eye" - the same croutons from a roll, greased with tomato sauce, but with a hole in the middle, where the egg was poured, and then it was all baked, and a real "eye" was obtained ... cheese cakes, pancakes, pancakes with jam. For lunch: rice soup, pea soup, noodle soup, fresh cabbage soup - all in meat or vegetable broth. For the second - mashed potatoes with meat from the soup, stew with vegetables, sometimes (rarely) sausages from the regional committee's canteen. Then tea, and for dinner - "tea with a bun", kefir and ... that's it!
However, I also have Japanese porcelain. Mom gave it to the wedding in 1974. Japanese, tea and coffee, with geishas on the bottoms of cups and hand-sculpted dragons on the walls and saucers. Moreover, all dragons are different, and some of the parts are made of white porous clay and absorb spilled coffee. From this, after a couple of years of operation, the cups look very old, and this is just what the Japanese appreciate. The irrigation was fired in a coal furnace. Here and there, tiny particles of coal adhered to it and melted into it. The funny thing is that she bought it at the "push" in Rostov from a merchant sailor fleet for only ... 80 rubles!
This is what this Japanese head looks like at the bottom of every cup, tea and coffee!
Other graduate students from home brought who what. Someone meat (those who were from the village), others - jam, some homemade pickles. The fish helped us a lot. The fact is that then at the tram stop with a fork at the KUAI and the "Ravine of the Underground Workers" they put a huge iron tank and sold live carp from it until the very frost. I bought them, wrapped them in foil and baked them in the oven. Delicious and hassle-free! A popular holiday dish we had was a pumpkin kebab. The meat is lightly fried with onions and tomatoes, the rice is boiled until half cooked, then all this is put into a gutted and salted pumpkin from the inside, the hole is closed with a pumpkin lid again, after which it is baked in the oven for about four hours over low heat. Very tasty, and the pumpkin itself can be eaten instead of bread!
And this is Venetian porcelain - a coffee set, bought in 1976. Mom then called me by telegram to Rostov. Like, my father got sick, went to the hospital, I sew up with preparations for the winter - come. I arrived and the first thing I did was to “push” to buy my wife jeans - “simple” (for 250 rubles) and corduroy (for 180). It was then that I saw "this", and they only asked for 320 rubles for it, so I didn't even bargain ... The year of issue, by the way, was 1870! He brought it, took it out, we sat down around him, sit, watch and rejoice. And then I bought her jeans in Penza ...
During all three years, quite often we managed to feast on buckwheat porridge. The fact is that among the graduate students at our department stories The KPSS was the daughter of the second secretary of the OK KPSS - a very nice girl, kind and sympathetic, to whom we visited, and she ... always treated us to crumbly buckwheat porridge. We even called her Buckwheat Porridge by a sinful deed and periodically decided which of the three of us to visit her.
A Bavarian beer mug from some German museum. It has an icon on it. But she came to us in the USSR. When, how, it is not known ... Inside on the bottom is a scene of a drunken gulbisch in a tavern, and it's amazing how this is done, because a stamp was needed for this, and the neck is already the bottom!
Again, it is interesting that at that time many bars and cafes opened in Kuibyshev itself, serving delicious ice cream and desserts: whipped egg whites with sugar, various fruits and crushed nuts. And when we wanted something sweet, we usually went to such a bar and ... treated ourselves.
Many will probably be surprised: where did the money come from for such a good life? And this is where it comes from: graduate students who worked before entering graduate school in their specialty were paid not 75, but 90 rubles, this is, firstly, and secondly, we all lectured through the Knowledge Society and the RK KPSS. 5 rubles a lecture seems to be a little, but if you read 20 lectures a month, it comes out decently. In addition, I also conducted television broadcasts on local TV, and since there were more people in the Kuibyshev region than in the Penza region, the fee was also higher - 50 rubles instead of 40. And then there were articles in newspapers, articles in magazines, so that a month sometimes more than 200 rubles came out, which allowed not only to eat from the market, but also to send money home and even put it off for a summer vacation by the sea. Of course, without wine and barbecue, but still by the sea!
But this thing for today is perhaps no less unique. Silver cup holder dedicated to the launch of the third artificial Earth satellite into space. It turns out that there was such a tradition at that time. My grandfather bought and left us as an inheritance ...
However, in 1986 the food situation got worse. Then coupons for sausage were introduced in Kuibyshev. They were regional and semi-monthly, and the head gave them to us. hostel. And there was a problem with them ... You go into the store: there is a sausage and there is no queue. But ... not your area, so walk by. You go to "your store" - there is a sausage, there is a queue to the door, and you hurry to the archive or give a lecture. And then the 15th comes, and you throw away all the unmarketable coupons! Interesting, by the way, was that sausage. Very tasty on the first day, with garlic. But, after lying in the refrigerator overnight, she lost all her freshness and taste, and a strange green ring appeared on her cut ... The black cat that lived on our floor did not eat this sausage under any circumstances.
A standard set for tea for many Soviet families: a glass in a glass holder, a Chinese teapot with a ground stopper, and a teacup with a plate overlooking Moscow. Well, what about without such a cup? "Moscow is the capital, my Moscow!"
In the same year, they called me from Minsk and said that my book "From everything at hand", which I offered to the publishing house "Polymya", was being prepared for publication. But that the publishing house has a lot of questions and comments to the text, so I urgently need to come to Minsk and solve everything on the spot. It was December, but with a delay of a day on the Krasnoyarsk-Minsk plane, I still got there. There was no limit to surprise: in Kuibyshev there was snow up to the waist, a blizzard was sweeping, and then there was a light frost, and there was no snow at all, and even the Svisloch River, on the banks of which the house stood, where the First Congress of the RSDLP took place in 1898, was not frozen!
A very simple herring was bought by my grandmother in the 30s
But this painted one was already bought by my mother in the 50s ...
They settled me in the hotel "Minsk", in a junior suite - to the envy of the whole line of business travelers in the lobby. In the morning I went along Masherova Avenue to look for a publishing house - and immediately caught my eye: the traffic lights are red, there are no cars, there is a crowd at the crossings, but no one is crossing the roadway! Suddenly someone ran alone. Immediately after the shouts: "Russian, Russian!" "However, - I think, - it is not necessary to do that!"
Somewhere in the mid-70s, it seems, so, in the USSR became very fashionable sets "Madonna" produced by the GDR from painted porcelain, made antique. Well, my mother went, got in line, went to roll calls for three days and nevertheless bought the Madonna table set. Joy knew no bounds! “Now we have Madonna. Then, in the early 90s, we found the same tea set and bought it before the set. And then somehow, in our time, I see - it is being sold again. I looked, and instead of painting "decal", I even feel my finger by touch. But the price is sky-high. “The real Madonna,” the saleswoman tries to sniff at her, noticing that I’m interested. I answer: "This ... did not even stand next to the real Madonna!" And she is offended, because she was told that she is "real". Had to explain the difference
It was daybreak, but it was still early. I decided to have breakfast, but where? I went into the first store I came across, and there ... bottled milk and various things, sour cream, varenets, fermented baked milk, sausages, homemade cheese, Russian cheese and - what surprised and delighted me most - boiled blood sausage. I bought Borodino bread, fermented baked milk, homemade cheese, blood sausage: “Would you like to warm it up? Let's do it now! " After my Kuibyshev, I almost lost my speech. He nodded, grabbed all this food - and to the bank of the Svisloch. I sat on a stone, I eat, I drink. Beauty! Then a policeman walks by ... He saw that I had kefir and went on.
A surprisingly large number of dishes have been preserved in our house since tsarist times, from grandfather, from grandmother, from their relatives. Perhaps that is why it is easy for me to write historical novels about the early XNUMXth century. I lived among the things of that time. For example, a pre-revolutionary plate
And this is her brand
I went up to the publishing house, got to know each other, and work began with us. And then - then tea. Well, here I started to share my impressions and talk about our sausage with a green circle. And they don't believe! I give them a roll of coupons for half a month. Publishers are shocked. "How so? We live in one country! "
It seems to be a very simple dish. But what an elegant, restrained beauty!
And it turned out to be done in Poland. Here is his brand. And how it got to us in Penza, no one knows. I remember him from early childhood
They gave me a job for the night, to do it in the morning. At the hotel I say to the maid: tea with lemon in the room every hour. And they wore it unquestioningly all night until five in the morning! And I already forgot the taste of lemon! They were very expensive in Kuibyshev on the market ... Persimmon was even cheaper.
Another purely museum plate, which is more than 100 years old, but we still use it all the time.
Her brand!
Began to leave - arranged a farewell tea party with cake "Minsky". I didn't eat better cake then. Well, I arrived ... and my visit to the abundant Minsk became for a long time a topic for discussion both at the department and at my home, because I brought both tights and something linen to my wife and daughter ... in a word, I returned as if from Oz. And my scientific advisor listened to me and opened in front of me the text of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of 1943 on measures to help regions and republics suffered from German aggression, and points his finger at the text, and it says: “Return the evacuated cattle according to the payroll ". That is, the cattle were evacuated to the Penza, Ulyanovsk and Kuibyshev regions in running herds. At the same time, the death rate reached 50 percent or more. Then the cattle were handed over for meat for the army. Then, in taking care of the affected regions, they returned all of it according to the lists (!), Laying the foundation for a flourishing agriculture in the liberated regions and robbing the collective farms and peasants of these three regions and several others to the bone. Well, the new machines supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease, equipment, timber, cement, brick - everything went there in the first place. "Showcase of the post-war rise of our socialist economy!" They took all the guests from abroad and showed them everything, but in Ulyanovsk they showed only the house-museum of V. I. Lenin ... “This is how it all started,” said my supervisor.
A lot of dishes were brought by our soldiers from defeated Germany as trophies. This simple plate, for example, just needs to be turned over ...
It is interesting that when in 1990 my second book (“When the lessons were done”) was published in the same publishing house and in the same Minsk, and I was again called there to work on it, the food supply there became worse at times. Blood sausage disappeared, shelves with cheeses and dairy products were emptied, natural flax products disappeared, and Minsk cake disappeared. “Oh, how bad our food is now,” the publishers complained to me. That is, the problem of food has become common for our entire country.
... how will this mark appear on her! And how did she get into our family? Grandfather did not serve in the army, neighbors did not serve. Unless my grandmother bought it at the market. But why? We had enough of our own, Soviet dishes. Amazing ...
Well, in my own Penza, where I returned after defending my dissertation in 1988, I found a way out for myself, as, in fact, many others have found it. Since I again began to broadcast on local TV, every week I received a ration there worth 4 rubles. 50 kopecks It included chicken, a pack of sugar (rice, semolina, millet), and a can of tomato sauce. Or mayonnaise or green peas. In principle, it was possible to take two rations, if someone refused his own, and this happened. Plus, again, the market from which everything else came, and, of course, the city of Moscow was the source of supply.
But this Dulevo teapot did not even have to be photographed. Found his photo in the catalog of the Dulevo Porcelain Factory!
But even there, the same cheese in the Cheese store on Gorky Street began to be given only a pound, although, fortunately for me, this rule did not apply to Roquefort. "The whole village" in line was choking for the "Russian" cheese. Well, in "Eliseevsky" there were literally queues for everything. And again the quantity of goods on hand was limited.
This is how we lived, and then we arrived from Anapa in the fall of 1991, and the TV was "Swan Lake". But what happened next is a completely different story.
To be continued ...
- Vyacheslav Shpakovsky
- Kitchen in the USSR: how to choose a wife-cook and take a queue at the store in the morning
Cookbook of the Country of the Soviets. Food in stores and at home.
As it was in the USSR. The taste of our childhood
Back to the Land of Soviets. Bra for a boy
Back to USSR. Information for Soviet children
Archival affairs: NKVD on peasants and Stakhanovites
Archival affairs. From “class alien” to “loss of party intuition”
Back to USSR. Mosaic of memory
By the wave of our memory
Information