What Was Socialist Food and What Comes Next?

E-ISSN： 1469-2171|26|3|523-532

ISSN： 0960-7773

Source： Contemporary European History, Vol.26, Iss.3, 2016-10, pp. : 523-532

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Abstract

Food in the former Soviet Union remains serious political business. In the summer of 2014, in retaliation against Western sanctions imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin's government decreed an odd brand of ‘self-sanctions’ by forbidding the importation of many foodstuffs from the United States and the European Union. Conservative supporters of President Putin sprang into action, exhorting Russian consumers to embrace the opportunity to develop Russian agriculture while Putin's opponents raised the spectre of late Soviet food shortages. Though starvation does not seem like a genuine threat to modern Russia, the fact that these questions are raised at all requires scholars of food to pay attention to Russia and scholars of Russia to view food as an important aspect of the country's history. Serious studies of food in the Soviet Union and under other socialist regimes are particularly worthy of attention since these socio-economic systems, paradoxically, were best known both for proclaiming an end to hunger and for presiding over chronic shortages if not outright famines.