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Morozhenoe: The Real Cold War
Ever heard of “Ded Moroz?” It’s Russian for “Grandfather Frost” — their Santa Claus. Morozhenoe is Russian ice cream, and even in Soviet days, it was available at ice cream stands all over Moscow, even in cold weather. Russians have some things in common with Americans–wide open spaces, manifest destiny, a less than delicate attitude towards life, love of country, a well-known space program. And ice cream; they make astonishingly good ice cream.
In 1986 you could go into a cafeteria–Stolovaya–and get a pretty good basic lunch. Chicken soup, bread, a vegetable, a glass of tea for about 35 cents. This is part of what makes writing about the Iron Curtain days tricky for pre-Trump conservatives: the Soviets weren’t lying about everything, just a lot of things. The subway was immaculate and cost seven cents. Ice cream was available everywhere, as evidently it was part of a confidence-building Five Year Plan at some point.
The most distinctive thing is, it was high fat ice cream. As in, OMG, this is the richest, sweetest ice cream I’ve ever tasted. Good thing that unlike so many other Ricochet members, I have no defense secrets to reveal. This Morozhenoe is more tempting than Mata Hari.
Not that ice cream and the left wing have no mutual associations in the USA. The slightly socialistic New Deal road development projects planned and built by New York’s midcentury superboss, Robert Moses, created a new beachfront community called Jones Beach, known now to generations of New Yorkers. There were no trains to Jones Beach, and that’s the way Moses–Robert Moses, that is–wanted it. You had to drive to get there, which in Thirties terms meant you had to be middle class, and–let’s be honest–you all but had to be white at that time. There weren’t too many Black families buying Ford Model A’s to get to Jones Beach. That was what amounted to progressive leftism in the NYC thirties.
Jones Beach attracted big crowds almost immediately, and a treat created for it was called Mello-roll. Before McDonald’s, this was a semi-automated fast food. It was ice cream in a Pillsbury Doughboy-style round cardboard container, perforated every three inches. A specially shaped Mello-roll cone accepted the sideways cylinder of ice cream, which was unwrapped from its backing when it was dropped in the cone. Kinda futuristic by Thirties standards.
After the war, an entrepreneur named Tom Carvel pioneered the use of soft ice cream dispensers. Carvel was a northeastern “thing” and he had a walk-up location a few blocks from where I grew up. When I say, “walk up,” I mean it; no inside, no chairs, no nothin’. But the ice cream was pretty good, fondly remembered by NYC expatriates to this day.
Finally, in the late Seventies, a decadent decade got the decadently rich ice cream America deserved. Haagen-Dazs was made in the Bronx (like me!) but its name and mildly pretentious packaging convinced yuppies that they were eating something better than American ice cream.
As if there could be such a thing.
Published in General
We took turns ever few weeks in my Russian tutorial bringing in different traditional snacks and sweets for each other from an Eastern European goods shop in our uni’s city, and one of our tutors always brought cake for birthdays (Russian is a language that benefits from frequent motivational rewards). When we actually went to Russia the food was as bad as we had expected, and by day 3 the two female friends that I was sharing a host family with and I were desperate for something half way palatable at 10 pm, after 6 hours of classes all in Russian. We stumbled into a convinence/grocery store (they look almost indistinguishable) and I was searching desperately for ice cream. In the refrigerated section, under a package of combined octopus and escargot and various offal monstrosities, were desserts. I grabbed my chocolate covered ice cream (the only large word on the package) and ran for the exit with my friends. As we stepped out onto the street, I bit into the first decent food we had found in days and discovered that I in point of fact had purchased chocolate covered cheese. It was a…memorable moment.
Ya gotta use every part of the buffalo, dude.
I love sweet bread, but when you’ve had an angry Russian woman misprepare kasha and liver (clearly from an old cow) and eat the whole plate to avoid offense, offal just never looks as good as it once did. God help me, I hope it came from a cow.
Apropos, I learned only after my aunt died of cancer that she had developed a dairy testing standard.
And she set up a drug testing facility for race horses and greyhounds. I think we had one single conversation about science in years of visiting.
Another distinctive feature of the Soviet street was kvass, fermented bread that tasted vaguely like beer. Kvass vending machines were nearly as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola machines were here. One oddity: there were no paper cups. Each machine had a drinking glass. You used it, then placed the glass upside down on a spigot of hot water that cleaned it for the next customer.
Russians used to refer to “kvass patriotism”, meaning they knew that nobody else drank it.
Phone booths were called “Taxiphone” and Russian friends always asked to be called from the street rather than the hotel. Of course, the KGB not being stupid, the most monitored phone in the city was probably the only one conveniently placed a few feet from the entrance of the Intourist Hotel.
Petty theft was surprisingly widespread. Drivers removed their windshield wipers after parking their cars. Several times my drivers bought gas directly from operators of military tank trucks using a siphon, and it went as quickly as a real gas station.
There was outdoor advertising, but weirdly generic. A big neon sign: “Fly Planes”. Shops were numbered: “Riba #13”–Fish Store 13.
It’s okay, provided the right combination. Although never when you’re not expecting it.
That’s a sound statement of scientific economics.
They weren’t mistaken in saying that involuntary production consistently produces economic goods. They were only mistaken in saying that it produces that value at a social profit.
Instead of valuable ice cream, their planned production could have easily produced valuable sausages, or valuable yo-yo’s.
It’s just that the sausage, or yo-yo’s would have been less valuable than what was given up to produce it. Just as their ice cream was.
Their wonderful ice cream was “that which is seen“. What the more liberal capital structures in the West produced was just what the Soviets would have produced.
What the Russian people would have produced is “that which is unseen“. (No doubt it would have produced more, and better ice cream, incidentally.)
This isn’t complicated. Economic science is simply common sense, consistently applied. But to understand economics requires that you think for yourself, and not simply mimic the words of those who you have been told have economic credentials…people who are supposedly smarter than you.
To understand the effects of a coercive action against human rights by a criminal (like the pirates off the Horn of Africa) or an interventionist politician, you have to think common-sensically about not just what did happen, but what would have happened if the human rights that were violated had not been violated.
Mark Steyn had his opinion of the mixability of ice cream with alternative fillers and stretcher substances. I think he is correct even when the ratio get to only a few percent of the other stuff….
A tangent to the tread but brought to the fore from the description, I recall learning how to swim in the 1960’s at Jones beach. The thing the think I recall the most was how freaking cold the water was.
The Atlantic is pretty damn cold, even in the summertime.
Your telling me?
It probably postponed the dropping of “the sac” by a few years at least.
Please, no bare chested pictures in Mother Russia with Comrade Bernie. 😀 j/k
It was all over European Russia in the 1970s when I was there. Especially in Odessa. I was stuck in Odessa for a week.
I didn’t particularly care for Russian ice cream because it was so rich and sweet.
Interesting. I looked all over the place throughout my six weeks traveling looking for kvass and only found it once. And it sold out quickly. There were no machines, it was dispensed from a Russian version of a food truck. There were half liter mugs. Kvass is definitely an experience.
It was water machines that served up seltzer water that had the community cups, but there were no hot water cleaners that I ever saw. It was just disgusting.
There were stores selling bottled alcoholic drinks that were pretty ubiquitous. I would buy Soviet champagne from Georgia or Armenia for about 1 rouble and it was low in alcohol and could drink it all day long without any effect. It was cheaper than buying a bottle of water.
When I was there, it started raining one day, everybody pulled over, jumped out and put windshield wipers on their cars. Strange and dangerous.
If you were there in 1970 and I was there in 1985-90, that might be the difference.
Great observations, Hang On.
I have a distinct fondness for jokes that are really just one line which implies a world of context. ‘offal just never looks as good as it once did’ fits the bill spectacularly. Bravo!
Gary, we gotta get you up to Wisconsin, get you to try some of the frozen custard. Possibly at the end of this month for the Milwaukee meetup.
And, let’s be honest, you would have spilled any secrets soon as Svetlana smiled at you, while your better instincts were screaming ‘No you fool! If you hold out longer she’ll have to offer more!’.
You’re an excellent judge of character, Hank! My wife’s family is from that part of the world–I’m sure you’ve all heard of “Fiddler on the Roof”–and I can testify that when she smiles with her dark, almond-shaped Russian eyes, I lose all volition. She could talk me into anything. Like buying a condo in California.
The USSR wasn’t PC. If you were a young-ish male delegate of any rank, you were assigned a young, pretty interpreter, a pleasant if somewhat inquisitive young lady.
But if you were an old male delegate, you were assigned a really really young and pretty interpreter. Old goat, meet cabbage.
I have heard of this rich, tasty, natural milk you describe. It sounds intriguing.
I gotta tell you, Mongo; It tasted so good I wouldn’t have cared.
Yep! The bottom right corner of the illustration, uh, illustrates the effect well. The title is literally “Very Dark” though we usually call it “Dark Eyes”.
“Ya iz ochin seriozna, droog”,
“I am very serious, friend”.