[HN Gopher] Thursday was fish day in the USSR
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Thursday was fish day in the USSR
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 24 points
Date : 2021-06-06 04:22 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rbth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rbth.com)
| mapgrep wrote:
| > 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?
| tuukkah wrote:
| I wonder if they got the idea of devoting a day of the week to a
| specific food item from the long and continuing custom of their
| Nordic neighbours: "Consumption of pea soup in Sweden and Finland
| dates back to at least the 13th century, and is traditionally
| served on Thursdays." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| It was much more likely meant to mock the Christian tradition
| of eating fish (actually the point is, not eating meat, but
| then people naturally turned to fish) on Fridays (and for the
| hardcore ones also on Wednesdays). This same Christian
| tradition has become a bit of a joke nowadays since fish is now
| more of a luxury and is more expensive and less accessible than
| meat, which is now super common and much cheaper.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| What you're describing is the modern post-vatican II Catholic
| fasting tradition. If one follows specifically the Russian
| Orthodox fasting rules strictly, you'd be approximately vegan
| for half of the year (every wednesday and friday, as well as
| lent, apostle's fast, dormition fast, nativity fast, a few
| others sprinkled in, etc). On a conventional strict fast day
| (other than e.g. Clean Monday in lent where you eat nothing
| at all) you'd eat no meat, dairy, wine, or oil. Some of these
| fasting days (such as when a feast day happens to align on
| what would otherwise be a fast day) are loosened to be "fish
| days" when you are allowed to have fish (but not meat).
|
| So maybe it was intended to mock the Christian tradition of
| eating fish ... but like... unless the Thursday was during
| Lent or another major fasting period, if you weren't a monk
| you could already eat Fish that day? It doesn't seem too much
| like the Discordian tradition of eating Hot Dogs on Friday,
| as an attempt to roll up as many possible religious taboos at
| once (Halal, Kosher, Catholicism, and Bougies who are grossed
| out by hotdogs)
| [deleted]
| malinens wrote:
| it is still called fish day in many places in post soviet block
| aaronchall wrote:
| > Collectivization and aggressive food taxes on the peasantry had
| led to a pig breeding crisis, a reduction in livestock and,
| ultimately, mass famine in 1930-33.
|
| Ah, the malicious incompetence of Soviet ideology is why they had
| "fish day."
|
| I remember a joke from visiting Ukraine. "A sausage is the best
| fish."
|
| They had a lot of wonderful sausages too...
| nine_k wrote:
| Collectivization was about crushing the independent peasantry,
| which was created about 15 years before, when the Bolsheviks
| confiscated land from large landowners hand handed it to
| landless peasants. It created a class which was too pro-
| capitalist and too economically independent for the later
| Bolsheviks' taste. So the land was effectively taken back
| again.
|
| But the aggressive food taxes were not incompetence, but a
| calculated sacrifice.
|
| Food was one of the very few items the young USSR was able to
| export. It was paid in gold, because the Bretton Woods system
| was still in force, and real currencies were backed with gold.
| Yes, the USSR exported a lot of food right at the time its own
| citizens were dying from famine.
|
| The USSR then paid that gold for technology, in particular, for
| buying entire factories from the US. American firms built a
| number of large car, truck, and tractor factories, and taught
| the workers the then-current advanced manufacturing
| technologies. These factories were later converted to produce
| military trucks and tanks, which played a key role in WWII.
|
| BTW the Soviets were shrewd and bold, and of course cheated:
| they did not pay the last tranche of the gold once the last
| factory was completed according to the contract. In a few
| years, WWII started, and the point became moot for decades.
| baybal2 wrote:
| That's what the urban legend tells. Yes, USSR splashed gold
| left, and right on fancy things from the West, including the
| Moscow metro, but it wasn't US factories which played
| anything in USSR's WW2 preparations, or anything.
|
| USSR wasn't any kind of industrial giant by the time WW2
| started. That's a purest propaganda myth. Stalin was terrible
| in running the economy, probably even more than any
| subsequent USSR's ruler. Sputnik was possible mostly thanks
| to _post-war_ short growth spurt _resulting from undoing
| Stalin 's biggest economic blunders._
| adrianmonk wrote:
| At first I wondered why bother. If there's a famine or a meat
| shortage, wouldn't people turn to other foods on their own? So it
| seemed unnecessary and superfluous.
|
| But I suppose there's another possible reason. If you can't give
| people what they want (meat), give them something else (fish) and
| try to convince them they do want it. If you can actually pull
| that off, then maybe it makes you look better and/or makes them
| feel better.
| veltas wrote:
| >If there's a famine or a meat shortage, wouldn't people turn
| to other foods on their own? So it seemed unnecessary and
| superfluous.
|
| No, what will happen is some people will get meat for the week
| in their shop, and some will get none.
|
| Imagine meat is like toilet roll, one day a family turns up
| late to get their food from the store and there is no meat left
| for them.
|
| It's better to avoid situations like this by trying to convince
| households to eat more alternatives, than to leave some
| households with no meat at all or let meat queues start etc.
| gtm1260 wrote:
| Ok but if you turn up at the meat shop and can't get any,
| wouldn't you then go to __x food shop down the street__ and
| get something else instead?
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(page generated 2021-06-06 23:01 UTC)