4 ms·

> until the death of Stalin, black and red caviar was very inexpensive and accessible. Actively farmed in the Caspian Sea, it was one of the country’s top expor

> until the death of Stalin, black and red caviar was very inexpensive and accessible. Actively farmed in the Caspian Sea, it was one of the country’s top exports. What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar? Maybe someone else knows the history here? Perhaps the elites, previously held in check by fear of Stalin, began hoarding for themselves and exporting for hard currency?

cromka 5y ago
> What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar? Because it wasn't free economy, but a centrally regulated one. So if Stalin wanted caviar to be cheap for whatever reason, he'd make that happen.
- aaronchall 5y ago
  Not that you'd actually be able to buy it unless you were quite privileged...
  - mathgorges 5y ago
    Is that true? That seems at odds with what the article says. > What’s more, until the death of Stalin, black and red caviar was very inexpensive and accessible. Actively farmed in the Caspian Sea, it was one of the country’s top exports. But whereas in tsarist times caviar had been willingly consumed, Soviet people didn’t really get it. Some posters even exhorted: "Make yourself eat caviar." Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access?
    - mantas 5y ago
      Or put up posters to make it look like it's accessible. Sort of like making ads for personal cars. You couldn't buy one without a special permit. And queue for a regular citizen was next-to-eternity. But ads still were made. Overfishing may have been an issue too. Soviets weren't exactly concerned about ecology.
    - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
      > Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access? It this case, the workers probably had access to the foods, but there are a lot of assumptions in that sentence that don't apply to the Soviet Union. At one point, the Soviets decided that western ads were insidious propaganda that needed to be countered, and decided that every company must spend one percent of it's budget on ads. Don't make anything for consumers? Doesn't matter, still need to spend that one percent advertising to them. Either make ads for things no consumer is interested in, or just invent products that don't exist. Then once the tv ads were done, the people in charge of tv scheduling didn't care one bit about where the product was actually available. People living in Estonia grew up frequently seeing ads for orange juice that was only available in Ukraine. In general, when western people look at the USSR they see a state where everyone does exactly what they are ordered to do, and assume that they were following a coherent plan of some sort. Lol no. The guys giving the orders, and the guys giving those guys orders, were all just following the letter of their orders too. The place where the original plans come from were so far removed from facts on the ground they might just as well have been on Mars.
      - pilsetnieks 5y ago
        > At one point, the Soviets decided that western ads were insidious propaganda that needed to be countered There was no Western advertising in the Soviet Union at all.
        Tuna-Fish 5y ago
        Regardless, a huge portion of the soviet population was constantly exposed to it. For example, all the people living near the borders who could watch foreign tv.
        pilsetnieks 5y ago
        That worked for some radio, although you either had to be uncomfortably close to the border, or the radio had to transmit to the USSR intentionally, like Radio Free Europe. They used signal jammers to jam most of foreign broadcasts but you can't jam everything everywhere. Anyway, even then if you got caught listening, you could face some consequences for anti-soviet behavior. All it needed was one nosy neighbor snitching on you, and commieblocks had notoriously thin walls. As to TV, the USSR and its allies used the SECAM D/K standard that was incompatible with most of the Western world, except France. So maybe East Germans could catch something but it's doubtful. The only people who could maybe have a PAL/NTSC TV would be sailors, truckers, airline personnel who could smuggle something in, however, such a TV would have no other purpose on the USSR apart from watching foreign broadcasts and later contraband VHS tapes. So again, if you get caught, anti-soviet behavior, consequences, and your smuggling career and any chances of getting a visa are over.
inkyoto 5y ago
> What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar? > Maybe someone else knows the history here? Perhaps the elites, previously held in check by fear of Stalin, began hoarding for themselves and exporting for hard currency? I think it is a pure coincidence caused by the rise of the population and the overfishing of the sturgeon in the Caspian sea. Sturgeon, that the black caviar comes from, is a large and long-lived fish that is highly prized for its flesh and has been highly sought after mostly because of that. It also «produces» large amounts of roe (i.e. the black caviar) as a «by-product». A mature sturgeon can easily dispense a bucket full of the black caviar or more. The downside is that the sturgeon takes a very long time to grow and mature. Some species can live for up 70 years. Now, back in the Russian emperial days, the black caviar was a delicacy for the nobility because they had been taught by French teachers at home, spoke French at home and had live-in French chefs / maids that cooked almost exclusively the French haute cuisine for the family. Traditional Russian food was generally frowned upon as something lowly that only the «unwashed masses» were supposed to eat. So it was the French who have taught the Russian nobility to eat and appreaciate the black caviar. It was a popular snack that was served exclusively with the icily cold vodka, but it was also used as an ingredient for a relatively small number of dishes as well. In other news, the demand for the caviar was rather small, and there was a constant huge oversupply of the black caviar, especially in the Caspian sea area. Sturgeon meat and black caviar were supplied to the nobility and the aspiring gentry, to the emperial court, and the black caviar was exported to European markets as an exotic food that originated somewhere in uncharted lands of the Russian Empire. Then, Russian peasants (who also happened to be fishermen) did not share the taste for the black caviar with the nobility, and, consequently, they ignored it as a food source. The oversupply of the black caviar was fed to pigs and dogs (ugh, omega-3 rich dogs, anyone?), or it was simply thrown away. Sturgeon flesh was equally prized by everyone, though. As the population in the post-WWII years started exploding, the sturgeon has become overfished, which has led to a sharp decline in the availability of the black caviar whereas the acquired taste for it on a mass scale started driving the increasing demand resulting the black caviar becoming a cultural cliche and a meme that the Russians are trolled for today. P.S. the red caviar, on the other hand, is an entirely different story as it comes from the fish that inhabits cold seas that have only become more or less accessible and «industrialised» in last 50-60 years. It was not as easily available back in the emperial days, I would imagine (I am afraid, I do not have much information on the subject here). The overfishing of the arctic fish had not been a problem until fairly recently, therefore large supplies of the red caviar flooded the Soviet market making it a «cheaper» and a more easily accesible substitute for the posh, expensive and hard to procure black caviar.

cromka 5y ago

> What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar? Because it wasn't free economy, but a centrally regulated one. So if Stalin wanted caviar to be cheap for whatever reason, he'd make that happen.

aaronchall 5y ago
Not that you'd actually be able to buy it unless you were quite privileged...
- mathgorges 5y ago
  Is that true? That seems at odds with what the article says. > What’s more, until the death of Stalin, black and red caviar was very inexpensive and accessible. Actively farmed in the Caspian Sea, it was one of the country’s top exports. But whereas in tsarist times caviar had been willingly consumed, Soviet people didn’t really get it. Some posters even exhorted: "Make yourself eat caviar." Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access?
  - mantas 5y ago
    Or put up posters to make it look like it's accessible. Sort of like making ads for personal cars. You couldn't buy one without a special permit. And queue for a regular citizen was next-to-eternity. But ads still were made. Overfishing may have been an issue too. Soviets weren't exactly concerned about ecology.
  - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
    > Why would the propagandists push people to eat foods they couldn’t access? It this case, the workers probably had access to the foods, but there are a lot of assumptions in that sentence that don't apply to the Soviet Union. At one point, the Soviets decided that western ads were insidious propaganda that needed to be countered, and decided that every company must spend one percent of it's budget on ads. Don't make anything for consumers? Doesn't matter, still need to spend that one percent advertising to them. Either make ads for things no consumer is interested in, or just invent products that don't exist. Then once the tv ads were done, the people in charge of tv scheduling didn't care one bit about where the product was actually available. People living in Estonia grew up frequently seeing ads for orange juice that was only available in Ukraine. In general, when western people look at the USSR they see a state where everyone does exactly what they are ordered to do, and assume that they were following a coherent plan of some sort. Lol no. The guys giving the orders, and the guys giving those guys orders, were all just following the letter of their orders too. The place where the original plans come from were so far removed from facts on the ground they might just as well have been on Mars.
    - pilsetnieks 5y ago
      > At one point, the Soviets decided that western ads were insidious propaganda that needed to be countered There was no Western advertising in the Soviet Union at all.
      - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
        Regardless, a huge portion of the soviet population was constantly exposed to it. For example, all the people living near the borders who could watch foreign tv.
        pilsetnieks 5y ago
        That worked for some radio, although you either had to be uncomfortably close to the border, or the radio had to transmit to the USSR intentionally, like Radio Free Europe. They used signal jammers to jam most of foreign broadcasts but you can't jam everything everywhere. Anyway, even then if you got caught listening, you could face some consequences for anti-soviet behavior. All it needed was one nosy neighbor snitching on you, and commieblocks had notoriously thin walls. As to TV, the USSR and its allies used the SECAM D/K standard that was incompatible with most of the Western world, except France. So maybe East Germans could catch something but it's doubtful. The only people who could maybe have a PAL/NTSC TV would be sailors, truckers, airline personnel who could smuggle something in, however, such a TV would have no other purpose on the USSR apart from watching foreign broadcasts and later contraband VHS tapes. So again, if you get caught, anti-soviet behavior, consequences, and your smuggling career and any chances of getting a visa are over.

inkyoto 5y ago

> What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar? > Maybe someone else knows the history here? Perhaps the elites, previously held in check by fear of Stalin, began hoarding for themselves and exporting for hard currency? I think it is a pure coincidence caused by the rise of the population and the overfishing of the sturgeon in the Caspian sea. Sturgeon, that the black caviar comes from, is a large and long-lived fish that is highly prized for its flesh and has been highly sought after mostly because of that. It also «produces» large amounts of roe (i.e. the black caviar) as a «by-product». A mature sturgeon can easily dispense a bucket full of the black caviar or more. The downside is that the sturgeon takes a very long time to grow and mature. Some species can live for up 70 years. Now, back in the Russian emperial days, the black caviar was a delicacy for the nobility because they had been taught by French teachers at home, spoke French at home and had live-in French chefs / maids that cooked almost exclusively the French haute cuisine for the family. Traditional Russian food was generally frowned upon as something lowly that only the «unwashed masses» were supposed to eat. So it was the French who have taught the Russian nobility to eat and appreaciate the black caviar. It was a popular snack that was served exclusively with the icily cold vodka, but it was also used as an ingredient for a relatively small number of dishes as well. In other news, the demand for the caviar was rather small, and there was a constant huge oversupply of the black caviar, especially in the Caspian sea area. Sturgeon meat and black caviar were supplied to the nobility and the aspiring gentry, to the emperial court, and the black caviar was exported to European markets as an exotic food that originated somewhere in uncharted lands of the Russian Empire. Then, Russian peasants (who also happened to be fishermen) did not share the taste for the black caviar with the nobility, and, consequently, they ignored it as a food source. The oversupply of the black caviar was fed to pigs and dogs (ugh, omega-3 rich dogs, anyone?), or it was simply thrown away. Sturgeon flesh was equally prized by everyone, though. As the population in the post-WWII years started exploding, the sturgeon has become overfished, which has led to a sharp decline in the availability of the black caviar whereas the acquired taste for it on a mass scale started driving the increasing demand resulting the black caviar becoming a cultural cliche and a meme that the Russians are trolled for today. P.S. the red caviar, on the other hand, is an entirely different story as it comes from the fish that inhabits cold seas that have only become more or less accessible and «industrialised» in last 50-60 years. It was not as easily available back in the emperial days, I would imagine (I am afraid, I do not have much information on the subject here). The overfishing of the arctic fish had not been a problem until fairly recently, therefore large supplies of the red caviar flooded the Soviet market making it a «cheaper» and a more easily accesible substitute for the posh, expensive and hard to procure black caviar.