Organization of catering for workers in Stalingrad during the first five-year plan (1929-1933)

The article deals with the problem of organizing public catering for workers of large industrial enterprises in Stalingrad in the late 1920s - early 1930s, during the first five-year plan. Methods and materials. In this studytraditional methods (historical-descriptive, historical-genetic, historical-comparative) and the principles of historical research (historicism, systemacity) were used, which made it possible to restore the stages of organizing workers' catering in Stalingrad at the first stage of industrial modernization, as well as to identify and analyze reasons for the manifestation of crisis phenomena in the public catering system. Analysis and results. As early as the initial stage of industrialization, the food problem sharplyworsened. However, largely generated by the problems of industrialization, it was the food crisis that contributed to the development of the public catering system. In the conditions of normalized distribution of food products, the tasks of implementing planned installations for the administration of catering enterprises were simplified as much as possible. Having received standardized food products, workers could get the rest of the products only in canteens, which from the second half of the 1920s were part of the cooperative system, consolidated into a single Central Workers' Cooperative (CWC), which had both its advantages (centralized supply) and disadvantages (lack of close communication with the consumer and, as a result, lack of feedback and direct influence of enterprise management on the process of organizing food for workers). Factory buffets, canteens, and giant kitchen factories created at an accelerated pace were put into operation with a huge number of shortcomings. Unsanitaryconditions at public catering enterprises, a chronic lack of kitchen equipment, disruptions in food supplies, a monotonous menu, and, as a result, poor diet of workers have become commonplace. Prices in closed cooperative canteens were often comparable to market prices, while the qualityof products did not meet the established requirements. Neither the tightening of control, nor the reorganization of the catering system (the introduction of working supply departments) led to a radical improvement in the situation with catering. Meanwhile, systemic problems with the organization of public catering also determined the degree of public confidence in the authorities. Negative statements about the Soviet government on the basis of problems with public catering have become a verycommon phenomenon in the working environment and a kind of litmus test for determining the level of public confidence in the government's course.