Why was ketchup banned in the USSR?
Many residents of our country like to season different dishes with a delicious sauce – ketchup. It has a unique sweet taste, which has a slight sourness. Today, ketchup is sold in any grocery store or supermarket. But there was a time when this sauce was banned in the Soviet Union.
Who in the USSR came up with the idea to launch the production of American ketchup?
Few people know that ketchup production was established in Russia after the October Revolution. At the same time, American technologies were used. When the Soviet food industry worked under the leadership of People’s Commissar Anastas Mikoyan, ketchup was sold in stores.
The idea of producing this unusual sauce in the USSR came to Mikoyan’s mind when he was on a visit to the United States, where he tasted dishes with ketchup and appreciated its taste. Tomatoes were actively grown in the country. The production of ketchup did not require complex equipment.
The Main Channel of the Ministry of Food Industry of the Soviet Union was instructed to supervise the supply of ketchup for retail sale. At that time, the sauce in our country was made from tomato puree with the addition of various aromatic spices and spices.
Popularization of tomato sauce in the Soviet Union
In 1935, the USSR began to conduct an active campaign to advertise ketchup. Interestingly, the American product was promoted to the masses when supporters of the country’s Western path of development were imprisoned and sometimes sentenced to death.
The cost of Soviet ketchup was inexpensive. This product was bought by many Soviet citizens. The price of 250 g of such sauce was 1.60 rubles.
Half a kilogram of ketchup cost 2.25 rubles, which was quite cheap. Pay attention to the fact that sausages at that time were sold at a price of 10 rubles per 1 kg.
In the 1930s, large volumes of tomato sauce were produced in the USSR. But still, not all citizens of the Land of the Soviets immediately got used to ketchup and began to regularly use it in everyday life, for example, as a seasoning for various dishes and snacks.
In the late 1930s, the popularity of ketchup in the USSR grew. Many citizens fell in love with the taste of this tomato sauce with spices, but ketchup could not win the nation’s love at that time.
Why did the USSR stop producing ketchup?
When the Great Patriotic War began, the American tomato product was stopped in the USSR. The authorities were concerned about the survival of their people and the solution of other important issues. On the equipment previously used for the production of ketchup, they began to produce other products.
In the second half of the 1940s, World War III could have begun on our planet. Once a good friend of the Soviet Union, the United States, has become a real enemy of the USSR. The country has stopped producing products using American technologies. Soviet citizens should have forgotten about it.
In the first half of the 1950s, the country stopped publishing books of culinary recipes mentioning ketchup, which was actively advertised 20 years ago. This issue was resolved harshly by the Soviet authorities. Ketchup has ceased to be remembered at all.
Sauces that replaced ketchup and imported products
High-ranking officials from the Ministry of Food Industry of the USSR began to think about replacing American tomato sauce with a similar Soviet-made product. At that time, the production of the legendary sauces “Ostrogo”, “Yuzhny” and “Krasnodarsky” began. But these tomato products could not replace people’s favorite ketchup.
At the very end of the 1950s, the sale of Bulgarian ketchup began in the Soviet Union. Pretty quickly, this sauce turned into a scarce product.
Not all stores sold products that were in high demand. It was not until the 1980s that the USSR resumed importing ketchup produced in the United States and Europe.