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Thursday was fish day in the USSR

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Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#21

Post by objectivetruth »

larsiusprime wrote: post #10
mustafa_pasi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 noth…

From the article:

> Another opinion holds that Thursday was chosen as a poke in the eye to Orthodox believers, since their fasting days are traditionally Wednesday and Friday (official doctrine did all it could to encourage atheism).

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#22

Post by baybal2 »

nine_k wrote: post #15
baybal2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm not here to glorify Stalin; he was a pretty bad guy. But read about Occidental Petroleum, Armand Hammer, and how that guy sold the Ford tractors and built Soviet tractor plants for a nice sum in gold at the time when nobody wanted to touch commerce with USSR with a ten-foot pole. These plants later produced a lot of tanks for WWII. USSR was not an industrial giant by 1940. Still, without buying Western tech, it w…

> These plants later produced a lot of tanks for WWII.

That's a plainest myth every moderately educated schoolchild in Russia knows.

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#23

Post by pydry »

aaronchall wrote: post #6

> 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...

It was less about ideology and more about Stalin's desire to industrialize so that they didn't get overrun in the next war.

Under a capitalist system with similar paranoia about the defence of their exposed western border they probably would have faced something similar.

Ireland's 1850 famine was another example of a grain exporting region being milked into famine during a bad harvest by an absent ruler.

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#24

Post by nanis »

adrianmonk wrote: post #2

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 the…

> If there's a famine or a meat shortage, wouldn't people turn to other foods on their own?

Maybe, just maybe, I am really going out on a limb here, the USSR did not have prices for things that reflected the relative scarcity of items.

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#25

Post by nanis »

gtm1260 wrote: post #12
veltas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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?

> wouldn't you then go to __x food shop down the street__

A-hem. Command economies and central planning are interesting like that.

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#26

Post by ajsnigrutin »

krzyk wrote: post #14
larsiusprime wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 noth…

I doubt it was to mock. Former east block countries had supply issues with meat. My experience is from Poland where the Party was not only glad that Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays (and you are allowed to eat Fish, but if you don't have it you won't eat it) but also tried to introduce No Meat Monday. BTW. In 80ties (don't remember exactly when) each family was receiving paper slips that allowed to buy meat (you h…

Yep, food coupons. It wasn't so bad in yugoslavia, but we still had coupons for stuff like gasoline. We also had odd-even days, where you could only drive your car on odd or even days (depending on your licence plate - so every second day).

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#27

Post by vodkapump »

adrianmonk wrote: post #2

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 the…

Could also be for the same reason my family made sure we had at least 1 (fatty) fish meal every week.

We live far north in Norway, sunlight is relatively scarce through the year, which means Vitamin D deficiency is a concern.

But what is also a good source of Vitamin D? Fish!

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#28

Post by drran »

> 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.

Mass famine was planed famine with intention to kill "kulaks" class as whole. Kulaks were farmers, which used their own fist ("kulak") instead of pillow, because they were so busy with work in field that they had no time to return to home for sleep. Any food in any quantity was confiscated, even minuscule amounts of partially rotten food, according to the law called as "law about 3 spikelets". Villains were shot by armed guard when they tried to dig rotten potatoes left in the field. Houses of kulaks and sub-kulaks were confiscated or disassembled in winter, to freeze to death their families. Trains were running regularly twice a week to collect corpses and hide them somewhere at territory of Russian Federation. (Location of corpses is still top secret of RF.)

It was not a famine, it was a genocide.

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#29

Post by bdefore »

drran wrote: post #28

> 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. Mass famine was planed famine with intention to kill "kulaks" class as whole. Kulaks were farmers, which used their own fist ("kulak") instead of pillow, because they were so busy with work in field that they had no time to return to home for sleep. Any food…

There are several famine events in the history of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian 'Holodomor' is a fascinating case. It appeared to be in the interest of both East and West at the time to deny that there was genocidal intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Re: Thursday was fish day in the USSR

#30

Post by tuukkah »

vodkapump wrote: post #27
adrianmonk wrote: post #2

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 the…

Could also be for the same reason my family made sure we had at least 1 (fatty) fish meal every week. We live far north in Norway, sunlight is relatively scarce through the year, which means Vitamin D deficiency is a concern. But what is also a good source of Vitamin D? Fish!

Good point. Did the USSR leaders know about the positive health effects of fish (vitamin D, fatty acids etc.) though, and if they did, why didn't they use that as an argument to convince people?
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