The issue of the cost of food today is very relevant. A few years ago, going to the polls, the candidates assured that they would return the sausage at 2.20. It was almost the first point of their program. Now the situation has changed a little, but the prices of the 70-80s in the Soviet Union cause nostalgia for some, and annoyance for others.

There is a constant comparison of those prices and modern ones. This does not take into account the level of wages, the cost of products, which has increased many times due to world prices for petroleum products and fertilizers. And if we take into account that all agriculture was subsidized, then the prices in stores and on the market become clear.

It should also be noted that there were at least three categories of supply. The capital provided for everyone. Industrial centers were in the first category. Their stores always had a lot of different goods. In regional centers and large cities, the choice was limited. Provision of small towns, district centers and, moreover, villages proceeded according to the residual principle. Today, many people remember how they went to industrial centers for sausage, fish, and canned food. Commuter trains even got the name "sausage trains".

And so imagine, we are in the Soviet Union in the stagnant Brezhnev times. We have to set the table for a family holiday dinner. First, let's go to the bakery. We take a white roll for 20-24 kopecks, rye for 16, a long loaf - 13 and buns, depending on the size, from 4 to 20 kopecks.

In the meat and dairy store pork 2.00 - 2.20, beef - 1.90 - 2.00, lamb - 1.80. For jelly, you can take pork legs at 0.32 - 0.60, beef 0.20 - 0.30, chicken at 0.90 - 2.30 per kilogram. In the neighboring department we buy milk for bottling at 0.22 or in a package at 0.34 kopecks per liter, a half-liter bottle of kefir for 0.30, after handing over an empty one for 0.15. 400-gram jars of condensed milk for 0.55 are lined up on the shop window. Of course, all these products could be purchased on the market, but all this would cost at least twice as much.

Before we go further, we will stop for a drink of kvass. We will give 0.03 for a glass, and 0.06 for a glass. Or vending machines with sparkling water will attract our attention - a glass with syrup 0.03, without syrup - 0.01. The range of ice cream was much smaller than today. It cost customers 0.07 - fruit, dairy - 0.10, creamy - 0.13, ice cream - 0.15, popsicle - 0.22.

If you're lucky, the Ryba store will please you with live carp 0.75 - 0.80, fresh-frozen sturgeon 5.00 - 9.35, but more often frozen hake 0.20 - 0.40, salted herring by weight 1.30 - 1.54, ivasi herring - 3.00, sprat 0.30 per kilogram.

In the "Gastronom" in the "Grocery" department, we will try to buy buckwheat - 0.52, granulated sugar - 0.90, flour - 0.46, coarse rock salt - 0.10 per kilogram. A pack of Indian tea was 0.90, a can of instant coffee was 6.00.

From confectionery products, we will buy a pack of Strawberry cookies - 0.26 and a pack of Yubileiny - 0.28, Belochka sweets - 3.40, Kara-Kum - 4.00, a box of chocolates from 1.90 to 8.26.

For the traditional Olivier salad, you need to take boiled sausage 2.20 - 2.60, a jar of mayonnaise - 0.33, a dozen eggs 0.90 - 1.20, a jar of peas - 0.39.

From canned food, sardines were popular - a can of 0.60 - 0.72, canned cucumbers and tomatoes - 0.40 - 0.50.

The student's breakfast most often consisted of a cup of tea, bread and butter, squash caviar at 0.42 or canned food "Tourist's Breakfast" 0.33.

From drinks, we give preference to wines: dry Moldovan 2.10 - 2.70, Georgian 3.00 - 4.00, Bulgarian 1.70 - 2.30. Fortified fruit and berries 1.10 - 1.80, grape - 2.30, vintage 2.88 - 4.24. We will spend from 4.40 to 13.60 for cognac "Three Stars", 3.50 - 5.00 for vodka 0.5 l, beer - 0.37 half a liter. The price included the price of a container of 0.12, which could be immediately returned or exchanged with an additional charge for a drink.

The state price of vegetables was as follows:

potatoes 0.12 - 0.15, cabbage 0.08 - 0.10, beets 0.09, onions 0.10-0.12, watermelon 0.05-0.10, apples - 0.20 - 0.50. But in the trading network, unfortunately, everything was of very poor quality. Agricultural products could also be bought at the collective farm market. The prices were set by the farms, so the cost was 2-3 times higher.

On the kitchen table is the Book of Tasty and Healthy Food. It gives a complete picture of what the consumer basket of a Soviet person contained. In 1973, when, according to the beautiful announcers of Soviet television, everything that was planned to be fulfilled was overfulfilled - the bins of the motherland were bursting - the Soviet man had everything he needed. “And be sure to bring meat so that you have something to feed you ...” - From a letter from my grandmother from Crimea to Moscow before our annual summer visit. There was no meat in the store - it's true. But dairy products even then in the Crimea were tastier than in Moscow. The refrigerator of a Soviet person always had fresh food, because the Soviet worker ate every day, after hours of honest work. Going to the store with a string bag, he could always choose between four or five varieties of white bread. As well as bagels, bagels, the taste of which, by the way, can never be felt anywhere else. No tasty bread on the shelves. And black fresh bread made from rye flour filled the whole bakery with its smell. Sausage at 2.20 and 2.80 - boiled - with or without fat. Butter by weight - hung on a piece of kraft paper - the highest grade and "Vologda" - special. Sausages. Chicken - still wrapped in kraft paper, with an uncircumcised head sticking out. The taste of the healing broth of the times of the USSR from chicken - the current one can no longer be achieved, even by draining the water several times - it smells like fish, but not a bird. In the sausage department of a Soviet store, when there was something, it smelled delicious. Krakow sausage - with garlic, liver sausage - in natural bung. In a grocery store, potatoes were dumped out of a device that looked like a garbage chute. And yet, despite the clumps of dirt and rot, it was delicious. Today we traveled to several markets and shops - to buy a child a potato that looks like a potato, one that germinates as expected and spoils because it is not pumped up with any chemical sludge. Somehow a beautiful tomato lay in my refrigerator for 4 months. After 2 - I washed it thoroughly and put a puncture. But it didn't spoil... The foodstuffs in the USSR were of very good quality. On them, the simplest - cabbage, beets, cucumbers, borscht on stew grew several generations of healthy Russian people. No one even thought of any transgenic gastronomic lawlessness. And now, buying quality meat, butter, milk - reminds me of hunting. Basically - all the shops in the USSR were with counters. The lack of a range of products was masked by slides, pyramids of canned products. Pyramids of sprats in tomato, stews, condensed milk, oh what was condensed milk. Sunflower oil was poured into bottles from devices resembling “lagidze waters”. Only in the mid-70s did supermarkets appear - on the principle of supermarkets. Many products in the USSR were in short supply, but living in Moscow, we suffered less from their shortage. I can't say that my relatives in Ukraine and Moldavia suffered conscientiously by subsistence farming. On the contrary, they treated us with amazingly delicious gifts. Each republic of the USSR had its own gastronomic devices. My father traveled around the Union a lot. From Astrakhan he brought caviar and incredibly tasty fish. From Moldova cognac - canisters. From Georgia Suluguni and Khvanchkara. In winter, there was a melon from Tashkent on the table - ripe and red. For some reason, only in Italy I managed to remember its taste. Maybe not everything was on the table of a Soviet person, but what was - not only satisfies hunger, but also left a pleasant aftertaste, and did not raise doubts about naturalness.

Victoria Maltseva

In the USSR, people ate a little differently than now. In order to stock up on groceries, it was necessary to run around different stores, stand in lines, agree to postpone the scarce goods, and only after that it was possible to come home and pamper your stomach with cherished purchases. The author of this post, who himself remembers how things were in those days, decided to talk about the topic of food in the USSR.

Food in the USSR was more than food. After the hungry post-war years, the opportunity, not just to get food, but to please the family and guests with something tasty and original, turned home cooking into creativity. Yes, the assortment on store shelves was poor. But, in the USSR, there was something that is difficult to explain to those living in a world of abundance - there was an "art of getting scarcity" ...
I have repeatedly met the opinion of citizens of mature age, saying that in the past, under the USSR, food was more natural and tastier. People complain: "Now the oil is odorless and tasteless, mustard is without bitterness, everything is cholesterol-free, sugar-free, salt-free... Why!!!"
And even though earlier I had to chase after products, now they say everything is not right at all, there are all sorts of additives, and in general there is no natural one - everything is chemistry. And if in the USSR the party and the government did not like us so much, then they would immediately provide us with the same chemistry, in the same volume as now ...
Let's try to figure out what's the matter here?

These are abacus, nee Abacus. It was used in Soviet trade and public catering instead of calculators and other bourgeois excesses, there were also crackling cash registers based on an adding machine, with a pen in case of a nuclear war ...

Everyone who worked in trade, public catering, food industry enterprises endured so much
that was enough, not only for his family, but also for all his acquaintances and relatives.
There was a kind of cooperation "you - to me, I - to you", even a movie was made about it.
And in order to buy something in the store "just like that", you had to be in time for the "delivery" and stand in line.

The food service was almost the same...

Bagels for some reason were in short supply, especially simple ones and with poppy seeds.
I must say that vanilla drying was not in short supply.

Every autumn, hordes of marauders ravaged our advanced village in a single impulse, strongly initiated by the district committees, everyone from a student to a professor went to help the village ...
But first of all, of course, the army and students ... However, the potatoes still rotted in the fields.

And this is the famous "culinary school" ..

There were special service shops where they were attached to buy goods. There were "holiday sets" at the enterprises, those who ruled them - lived, that is, ate, better than others .... In orders, sometimes there was half-smoked, less often smoked sausage, sometimes (I never got it) red caviar.

The feasts were very popular, including for the sake of eating, and of course, drinking.
And so the food was simple and rather monotonous. And here is a typical table of that time ... And on it:

Olivier salad with mayonnaise but not with meat as in the original, but with boiled sausage,
which one they got, Hungarian peas from the order, and the greens are already modern ...

Herring under a Fur Coat...

And of course the blue bird - the queen of the Soviet feast - chicken.

And for tea - homemade cake "Napoleon" with custard.

Until now, in the older generation, especially among fazenda owners
Home-made canned food is extremely popular... However, in the countryside this is not a whim.

And this is a twisting machine without it you can’t close the lid ...

And pickles for vodka ... However, everyone is different ...

And with the help of this device, they took out the lids of the jars from boiling water.

In order to talk about the "spins" that the hostesses did, one must be a poet. And the haciendas! Is it possible to compare the taste of those from the garden, tomatoes and cucumbers with those that we buy today?
Of course it’s impossible, but the trouble was that there were few of these revolutionaries of tomatoes, and there were few cucumbers, in any case, among my acquaintances, only one family had many of them, but they LIVED in the garden ... Including their children, who had problems with time for games.

Instead of expensive chocolates, you could buy Hematogen for 11 kopecks.

And next to Gum and Tsum, they sold ice cream in almost the same crispy glass as now ... But expensive 15 - creamy, 19 - ice cream.

And this creamy 9 in a waffle cup. Lost nature...

In the summer, kvass from a barrel was popular, they went for it with cans, less often with jars in string bags. Three-liter jars were very much appreciated.

The problem of packaging in general was very painful. . And not only by the way wine and vodka.
It was collected and carefully handed over. There was even a joke about the derivative of booze, on the returned dishes ...

Such that something decent and without a queue - I don’t remember ...
And pay attention to a specially sewn bag.

Half a kilo in one hand ...

Vegetables and fruits were in abundance "according to the season", and bananas are a rarity even in Moscow.
In December, Abkhazian blue-green natural tangerines appeared ...
So why is it tasteless - you ask - now, and not then? Like it was then that there were no pickles?
But because, firstly, there is caviar in every store, as well as 40 varieties of sausage at least. Having put caviar and sausage on the table, you no longer prove your belonging to the "elite" ... It's just that you have money, but not much, otherwise you would have booked a hall or a table in a restaurant ...
Yes, and there is nothing special about ham or salmon - you go, buy, eat.
It became boring, then, against the background of cutlets for 7 kopecks and soup from the soup set - smoked sausage and Olivier salad, yes, this is a holiday, and now for breakfast "again this caviar."

Food has lost its sacred meaning. And the stomach is no longer the one whose liver is naughty, or stones are anywhere ... The girls have become older, again ...

The ration card system in place during the war was abolished in 1947, the government carried out a monetary reform, and the economy of the USSR began to gradually recover. The products were mostly domestically produced. At the beginning of 1949, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was created, which included all the countries of the socialist bloc, including the GDR. From the CMEA member countries, the USSR began importing a variety of products, including foodstuffs ...

The first of the countries not included in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which began to supply its food products to the USSR, was Finland. In 1956, the Valio concern began to supply Viola cheese to the Soviet Union - even then, a blonde was depicted on a small round jar, which can be seen on the packaging to this day.

After the cheese was eaten, the jars were not thrown away, but were used to store various little things - the packaging was very outlandish.

Now the Valio company has come under sanctions, but the cheese can still be seen on the shelves - only the production line in Finland itself, which worked for the Russian market, was stopped.

The company's products manufactured at a plant in Russia are not subject to sanctions (the same applies to all other foreign manufacturers that have their own production in our country).

Help from social bloc countries

In the 70s, the USSR had a fairly large assortment of products from abroad (mainly, naturally, from the countries of the social bloc). Frozen vegetables and fruits of the Polish company Hortex were sold - all of Moscow gathered for them in a company store not far from the Akademicheskaya metro station.

Canned vegetables were imported from Bulgaria, produced by the Bulgarkonserv firm: eggplant caviar, beans in tomato, even cabbage rolls. Sometimes on the shelves you could find Bulgarian Turkish delight.

Both companies - both Hortex and Bulgarkonserv - exist to this day. Hortex came under sanctions, Bulgarkonserv continues to supply products to Russia - the embargo does not apply to conservation, which the company specializes in.

Canned food was also imported from Hungary to the Union, and corn in cans from Romania. From that region, wines were also imported to the USSR - Yugoslav or Hungarian, which were considered a scarce product and made a splash at any feast.

Among the imported canned food, there was the popular Hungarian green peas from Globus. These preserves were the standard of taste and quality, and some considered Hungarian peas to be much tastier than fresh from the garden.

Sausages with green peas were served in almost every Soviet canteen, but getting imported peas was a special, incomparable success.

Now canned food brand Globus can be found on store shelves. The head office of the company is located in Budapest, but in Russia there is a manufacturing plant in the Kuban.

It is worth mentioning the sausage separately - it was a kind of symbol of prosperity and economic stability, a symbol of the flourishing prosperity of the country of workers and peasants.

In the late 50s, sausage in the USSR became one of the main components of the meat diet: there were many varieties of inexpensive Soviet sausages in stores.

But in the early 70s, when problems began in the meat industry, traditional sausage recipes began to change towards combined meat products. During production, more starch, flour and other non-meat ingredients were added to the sausage.

Then the Servelat from Hungary began to be supplied to the USSR, but only officials and especially valuable employees of enterprises got it. The Hungarian Servelat was given “on order”, it appeared very rarely in ordinary stores.

banana republics

In the mid-1950s, bananas began to be imported to the USSR from friendly African and Asian countries. At first, the main suppliers were Vietnam and China - the leaders Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh paid for food supplies, including military loans issued to them by the Union.

Due to problems with transportation, bananas were delivered in good condition only to the eastern part of the USSR, and in Moscow and Leningrad they could be found quite rarely and occasionally.

After the outbreak of the Vietnam War and the Soviet-Chinese conflict in the late 60s, bananas began to be shipped not from Asia, but from friendly Caribbean countries, in particular, from Cuba and Ecuador. Queues lined up behind them, although the price for exotics was quite frightening - 2 rubles per kilogram.

So that outlandish fruits would not rot, they were brought into the country while still green: Soviet citizens wrapped bananas in newspaper and put them in a dark, dry place so that they would “ripen”.

Purchases from the USA

In the early 60s, due to the inefficiency of the development of virgin lands and a number of other economic factors, the USSR was forced to turn to the West for help. In 1963, wheat supplies began from the USA to the Union. Grain was also purchased from Australia, Canada and France.

Sugar and soybeans were also bought abroad. In the mid-70s, due to problems with the livestock industry, beef imports began for the Soviet meat processing industry. The import of foreign meat was gaining momentum, and poultry products were added to beef - frozen chickens and chickens.

In 1990, the last year of the existence of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev signed an agreement with George Bush Sr. on the supply of frozen chicken legs to the country - those very famous "Bush legs".

There were a lot of horror stories about them - in particular, it was believed that American hams were very unhealthy and stuffed with antibiotics and hormonal drugs.

Various jokes and anecdotes about "Bush legs" were incredibly popular, and the phrase became winged. Now, due to sanctions, the import of meat products from the United States, including chicken legs, is completely prohibited.

The era of "Birches"

One of the main sources of scarce foreign goods was the Beryozka store - the first stores of this trading network were created in 1961.

At first, "Birches" were only in Vnukovo and Sheremetyevo, then two stores opened in the capital's hotels "Ukraine" and "Leningradskaya"; later "Birches" appeared in Leningrad and the capitals of the Union republics.

Shop "Birch", Sheremetyevo Airport. Moscow 1986

At first, the shops traded in high-quality Soviet goods - they were sold to foreigners for the currency that the USSR always needed. Fur coats, caviar, vodka and small souvenirs like nesting dolls or Dymkovo toys were in demand among visitors.

Prices for goods were much higher than in ordinary Soviet stores, but the country badly needed foreign currency.

Visitors to "Beryozka" were also Soviet citizens who went on business trips abroad and brought currency from there. From the mid-60s, trade with compatriots was carried out for cashless payments: foreign currency was transferred to an account with Vnesheconombank and then exchanged for special certificates (later - checks), which were paid at Beryozka.

The prices in the price list were also shown in receipts. These checks were the subject of massive black market speculation until the late 1980s.

Later, imported goods appeared in Beryozka, which a simple Soviet person did not even dare to dream of. Here is what was written in the "Price List for Groceries" of one of the stores:

"... There is a wide selection of Soviet and imported goods: Russian vodka and tinctures, Scotch whiskey, English gins, cognacs (...) French."

At the entrance to the store of scarce imported goods, there was often a guard who asked for checks - so that ordinary Soviet citizens would not go to Beryozka like a museum.

This privileged supply channel, which supplied foreign food along with Japanese equipment and French coats, was often used by Soviet officials.

Since 1992, Beryozka again began to accept cash foreign currency instead of Soviet checks, and by the mid-90s it was closed, as it became unprofitable.