Opinion: why you shouldn't miss the Soviet New Year's table
'04.01.2021'
Source: Maxim Mirovich
Maxim Mirovich writes in his блоге about the New Year's table in the USSR. Was the Soviet New Year so soulful, as is customary to remember? Were those treats so tasty that many still feel nostalgic about them? Further - the opinion of the author.
Let's discuss the Soviet New Year's table, which many, for some reason I do not understand, consider almost ideal and continue to feel nostalgic for it. Personally, for many years now I have not been celebrating the New Year at the so-called "classic" so-called New Year's table - replacing it with something lighter, like sushi and a couple of Mediterranean salads - which is what I wish for you.
In addition to the quality of the food itself, the soviet New Year's table was also simply miserable and poor - now, even two hours before the New Year, you can go to the store and buy everything you need - and in the USSR, they began to prepare for the New Year almost from summer , accumulating jars with green peas “Globus” on the mezzanine and carefully keeping a green jar with red caviar in the refrigerator.
So, in today's New Year's post - a story about the poor Soviet New Year's table.
What did the table itself look like?
First, let's remember what the Soviet New Year's table itself looked like - not in the sense of a set of products, but in the sense of a piece of furniture. In the vast majority of cases, the so-called table-book was the so-called New Year's table.
Most often, the table-book was kept on the balcony or behind the closet, from where it was pulled out with considerable difficulty for the New Year and some other upcoming feasts. However, smaller-scale feasts were often held in the kitchen, and the table-book was usually pulled out on New Year's - this was part of the Soviet New Year's ritual.
Actually, the presence of such a thing as a table-book in most Soviet families already speaks of a rather low standard of living in the USSR - if in the USA the average family had a house on a couple of floors and many rooms, where there was necessarily a separate dining room, and a separate living room - the Soviet "middle class" usually huddled in a family of five in a tiny two-room free Khrushchev house.
On the subject: Opinion: why the 'special soulfulness' of the Soviet people is a myth
The “big” room in this Khrushchev was proudly called “the hall” - there usually stood a sideboard, a TV and a sofa on which the parents slept, and on holidays, from somewhere behind the closet or from the balcony, a table-book was pulled out with a crash and laid out on half a room ... There was exactly room left for the passage to the TV, on which they told that we live in the best country in the world.
What is most interesting is that even all Soviet propaganda publications, such as “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”, did not greatly embellish the squalor of the New Year's table. They simply portrayed this squalor with bright enough colors - which did not make it look so gray. Let's analyze what's 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 away for 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”? - Yes, just because on all 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 pork belly. In fact, it is the food of the poor, which lies proudly on the scooped festive table.
3. Olivier salad, how can we do without it
The popularity of Olivier in the USSR is explained quite simply - it was prepared from long-term storage underground vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots and beets, plus boiled sausage, Hungarian green peas “Globus” and mayonnaise - products that were just “thrown away” before the New Year ... The salad is actually heavy, unhealthy and not very tasty - just making a normal salad, like a Greek salad, was not possible 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, bought in June with the words “do not touch, this is for the New Year”
Fans of the USSR from time to time flaunt the Soviet food abundance - so caviar, which is now in any quantity in any store, was in short supply in a 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 be called only by the word "sparkling". Instead, in the USSR they made some kind of carbonated drink, called it “Soviet champagne” and drew an incredible number of medals on the bottle - which was supposed to show some kind of “premium” drink. In general, “Soviet champagne” was just as fake as everything else in the USSR. Surprisingly, many people still continue to buy this mura for the New Year, although the sale is full of inexpensive and delicious sparkling wines.
In general, even in propaganda pictures, the Soviet table looked, though visually beautiful, but was, in fact, squalor.
On the subject: 'Wretched dishes of Soviet cuisine': what treats from the USSR we do not miss
Let's look at real photo Soviet table, made in the late USSR, in 1990 - it was recently published by Alexander Udaltsov on his Twitter account, and we can see what was on the tables of Soviet people. As Alexander himself writes, “everything on the table was purchased through pull or bought on trips to the capitals. Nothing but bread from a nearby store. ”
On the table you can see the same "Soviet champagne", as in the picture above - however, for some reason the medals were removed from the label. A little closer to the edge of the table, you can see the bottle Georgian brandy "Gremi" - “five stars” cognac was considered good in a scoop, 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 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 "by pull". To the right you can see a bottle of another sparkling wine - judging by the label, also produced by the Socialist camp, most likely Hungarian. An important point - all this “wealth” was most likely collected for a whole year in the bar of the furniture wall, after which it was proudly displayed on the New Year's table.
You can also see on the table a box of Gracia chocolates from the German company Mauxion - a similar set of sweets, which can now be bought at any crappy stall, was then worth its weight in gold. And also pay attention to the jar of instant Nescafe coffee - according to modern ideas, in general, it is 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 dry pastries and sliced bread from the very neighboring store that Alexander is talking about. Apparently there was nothing else in the store ...
Afterword
Well, friends, as you can see - the Soviet table was an incredible squalor both in beautiful drawings and in real life. At the end of the scoop, people incredibly appreciated the most ordinary products in modern terms - like sweets, cognac and liqueur, bought them in advance and saved them for the New Year - because there was nothing at all in the stores. How after all this one can feel nostalgic for the USSR - I can't imagine.
Original column published on the blog. Maxim Mirovich.
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