Fake shine and real poverty of the Soviet New Year's table

In LiveJournal mirovich . media blogger Maksim Mirovich , who ranks second in the ranking of Belarusians LJ , tells in detail about what the Soviet table was like on New Year's. To the bewilderment of the author, a tangible part of the country's population is still nostalgic about the "soviet New Year's table".

Now, at least two hours before the New Year, you can go to the store and buy whatever your heart desires, and in the USSR, preparations for the New Year began almost in the summer. Soviet citizens saved jars with green Globus peas on the mezzanine and carefully kept a green jar with red caviar in the refrigerator.

It is curious that even propaganda publications from the “Books about tasty and healthy food” series did not greatly embellish the squalor of the Soviet New Year's table, it was simply depicted in bright colors and did not look so depressing, the publication notes.

“This is the power of art. But let's analyze what was on this table".

"1. Small Moroccan oranges, bought by pull or in a long line. One had to run after such oranges or tangerines - they were often “thrown out” on sale by the New Year, and huge queues were immediately lined up for them. Have you ever wondered why many people say “Oh, my New Year is associated with the smell of tangerines, this is the smell of the holiday”? - just because on all the other days tangerines were not available, it was a New Year's exclusive. On all other days, the house smelled of boiled sausages at best.

2. Brisket brisket. There were simply no normal meat products in the USSR - for example, I learned about what fillet ham is only in 1993, when it appeared on the shelves. Before that, Belarusian meat processing plants worked in the same mode, but Moscow raked out all the products - there was absolutely nothing on our shelves. Something meat could be snatched at the market - most often it was such a pork belly, as in the photo. In fact, it is the food of the poor, which lies proudly on the scooped festive table.

3. Salad "Olivier", where without it. The popularity of Olivier in the USSR is explained quite simply - it was prepared from "underground" vegetables for long storage, such as potatoes, carrots and beets, plus boiled sausage, Hungarian green peas "Globus" and mayonnaise were added there - products that were just "thrown away" before New Year. The salad is actually heavy, unhealthy and not very tasty - there was simply no way to make a normal salad, like a shop or a Greek salad in the USSR - there were no products on the shelves. With the so-called "herring under a fur coat" - exactly the same story.

4. Red caviar, most likely brought back in June with the words "don't touch, it's for the New Year." Fans of the scoop here from time to time flaunt the Soviet abundance of food - so caviar, which is now in any quantity in any store, was in short supply in the scoop and was bought for the New Year in the fall or even in the summer, after which it was saved as Kashchei saved an egg with his death.

5. Cheap Soviet alcohol - vodka "Russian" and a burda called "Soviet champagne". The scoops do not know that in the entire civilized world the word "champagne" can only be called wine produced in the French region of Champagne, all other similar wines can only be called the word "sparkling". Instead, they made the scoops some kind of carbonated drink, called it "Soviet champagne" and drew an incredible number of medals on the bottle - the author of the article sums up.

He also gives a description of one of the photographs of the "classic soviet New Year's table".

Here you can see the very "Soviet champagne", however, for some reason the medals were removed from the label. A little closer to the edge of the table you can see a bottle of Georgian brandy "Gremi" - in a scoop, a "five-star" brandy was considered good, although in developed countries normal cognacs do not have any "stars", and their aging is at least 10-20 years.

A little to the right we see a bottle of the Hungarian liqueur "Ruby" with a strength of 25%, on the label of which they painted three berries and told about "centuries-old traditions of growing cherries on the plain between the Danube and the Tisza". In the USSR, this was considered almost an elite drink and it was definitely obtained "through pull." To the right you can see a bottle of another sparkling wine - judging by the label, also made by the socialist camp, most likely Hungarian.

An important point - all this "wealth", most likely, was collected for a whole year in a bar of a furniture wall, after which it was proudly displayed on the New Year's table. On the table you can also see a box of Gracia chocolates from the German company Mauxion - a similar set of chocolates, which can now be bought in any crappy stall, was then worth its weight in gold. And also, pay attention to the can of Nescafe instant coffee proudly standing on the table - according to modern concepts, it is generally strange to put it on the table, but in a scoop where there was no coffee at all - it was an indicator of wealth and prosperity.

Actually, there is nothing else on the table. There are a few more oranges, a couple of some dry cakes and sliced bread from that very nearby store. Apparently there was nothing else in the store...

Meanwhile, the author of LiveJournal foto-history published three pictures with a reminder of how sometimes Soviet citizens had to get their own food.

Photos taken in October 1967, photo by Vitaly Gumenyuk. "In the USSR they could do this - they brought potatoes / cabbage by a dump truck, dumped them into the mud and began to sell from this heap. People take it, but in the store, vegetables are even worse, if they are there at all. And not only vegetables were dumped into the mud. Meat too - if, of course, it was on sale...".