And so, in 1936, Anastas Mikoyan, the ministry’s head, took a delegation to America, to learn how Ford’s conveyor-belt approach and emerging technology could streamline food production. The food commissars knew they had to improve their centralized system. “Workers were complaining about the bad quality,” says Gronow. The soup might be little more than cabbage, the main dish perhaps macaroni. “A French style of dining.”īut we’re not talking soufflés and cheese courses. “They all had these three-course meals: zakuski (appetizer), soup, main dish. “They had menus that were centrally planned, down to the very small details - so many grams of potatoes.”Īt canteens, factory workers were fed meals that, on paper, sounded tasty. “The ideal was to make everything centralized, everything standardized,” explains University of Helsinki sociologist Jukka Gronow. In the centralized Soviet system, this task fell to the ministry of food - which was struggling. Tens of millions left the countryside for the cities as feudal farmers transformed into urban Soviet workers. President Donald Trump’s beloved hamburgers have ties to Russia.) In the 1930s, when McDonald’s was just a greasy twinkle in Ray Kroc’s eye - he didn’t open his first McDonald’s until 1955 - the Soviet Union was a couple of decades out from its revolution and in the midst of industrialization and urbanization on a staggering scale. (Yep, like so much about this current administration, even U.S. The char, the fat, the squishy perfection of processed bread sopping up the overflowing juices - doesn’t it somehow seem like Americans’ birthright?īut peel back the oil-spattered pages of history, and you’ll find that the sandwich so closely aligned with the stars and stripes was once also embraced by the hammer and sickle. WASHIGTON (Washington Post) - It’s high summer - hamburger season.
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