Posted 31 июля 2020,, 12:20

Published 31 июля 2020,, 12:20

Modified 24 декабря 2022,, 22:37

Updated 24 декабря 2022,, 22:37

They prayed to it and threw it out to the pigs: how the cult of the bread was organized in the USSR

They prayed to it and threw it out to the pigs: how the cult of the bread was organized in the USSR

31 июля 2020, 12:20
Despite the intensified propaganda of the sanctity of bread, the inhabitants of the Soviet Union treated it with the disdain.

The famous and uncompromising fighter against Soviet mythology, Maxim Mirovich, dedicated his next post to the Cult of Bread in the USSR, recalling the posters that were hung in canteens during the Soviet era: “Bread is the head of everything!”, “Bread is our wealth, take care of it!”, “Take bread for dinner in moderation! Bread is a jewel, don't litter it!"...

The author sees in this cult a "trace reaction of "populism"" which was popular in tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century, but the cult itself appeared only in the USSR and set out to impose on people another "supreme authority" that everyone would worship. Along with, by the way, space flights!.. A strange combination. It is interesting at the same time that the populists, with all their love for peasant life, did not give bread any special status, which arose only in the Soviet Union.

Why? First, according to the blogger, general Soviet poverty was influenced: in many places bread was the only product that allowed the authorities to avoid hunger and riots. The authorities, so to speak, fulfilled their minimum obligations to the people in this way: “There is bread - you will not die of hunger! Even this would not have happened under the tsar. Secondly, because of the same poverty, propaganda presented the universal provision of bread as a kind of great achievement of a great state. The children were described in detail the process of bread production, they drew cars full of grain, they depicted store shelves bursting with loaves of bread.

All this sounded like something completely extraordinary, so the pioneer child involuntarily began to think that he was living in the best country in the world - in other countries, children are starving, they do not eat their fill ... Bread thus became almost the highest religious an authority to be worshiped. And the punishment for his disrespect could be war and hunger. That is why strange prohibitions were born: bread should never be thrown away, and in extreme cases, if it is already moldy, you can crumble it to birds...

This cult was promoted in almost every children's publication.

Here, for example, the magazine "Funny Pictures" the summer of 1979 is entirely dedicated to him, and this is done according to all the canons of a religious cult.

First, the myth of the Miraculous Creation:

Then the spells of happiness that this Deity brings to any home:

Then the game "Happy Harvest" depicts an ideal world ruled by Bread:

And then the Bread Paradise itself, where everyone who professes this cult will go:

There is also hell, where can we go without it, it is waiting for disobedient people, and it was created based on Andersen's fairy tale "About a girl who stepped on bread": "... and Inge became an idol. Her arms and legs were petrified, and fat spiders braided them with their webs. And flies with torn off wings were crawling over the face...".

It's funny that the planting of the cult of bread was combined with the following facts: in the villages and villages of the country, so sour "selp" bread was sold that they bought it in huge quantities for feed to livestock - mostly pigs. And in cities, despite all the warnings, bread was often thrown away as soon as it began to stale.

And the funniest thing is that the cult did not apply to other food products at all: thousands of tons of fruits, vegetables and potatoes rotted in vegetable warehouses, and then engineers or librarians were sent there for “subbotniks” so that they sort and throw it all away. Nothing is sacred!

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