Catering for communists : de-Stalinization and the socialist food service industry in the USSR

Abstract

In the Soviet planned economy, lunch too was planned. This dissertation studies Soviet policies with regards to the socialist food service industry (obshchestvennoe pitanie), a network of state-run food service enterprises. It zeroes in on the Soviet government’s engagement with this sector during the years following the death of dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953. It shows that the official agenda of deStalinization had consequences for food service in the USSR—the network of canteens was expanded, self-service was introduced, and the culinary cadres was professionalized. As such it contributes to the burgeoning field that studies consumer culture in the USSR. Historians in this field have long argued that one aspect of de-Stalinization was a “consumerist turn” on the part of the Soviet government, which consisted in the latter’s prioritization of the production of consumer goods and services over heavy industry. However, historians have yet to study what institutional changes this led to. This dissertation offers an institutional perspective and approaches the socialist food service industry from the view of the Soviet central government. It treats food service enterprises as political institutions that served multiple ends: allocating efficiently scarce foodstuffs, keeping workers’ bodies healthy, and liberating women from domestic work. The dissertation demonstrates that these three goals had motivated Soviet authorities to organize and maintain a food service industry since Russian Civil War. After Stalin’s death, however, the improvement of food service became a centerpiece of the policy to increase the standard of living in the USSR and garner political legitimacy for the post-Stalinist leadership. The dissertation relies on a variety of sources, many of which have not been used in previous historical research. It pieces the history of the socialist food service industry together from magazines, newspapers, handbooks, recipe books, stenographic reports of speeches, archived policy documents, statistics, and photographs.