Public Catering at Logging Sites in the Middle Volga Region during the Pre-War Five-Year Plans

The article examines one of the most important aspects of the industrial and domestic components of the logging process in the 1930s. The work of canteens and food stations for lumberjacks is considered using the example of the Middle Volga region, whose logging was typical for the European part of the USSR. At the same time, the article compares regional problems of catering at logging sites with all-Union trends. The source base for the article was the funds of regional archives of the Penza, Samara and Ulyanovsk regions and materials from periodicals of the 1930s. In general, the catering system at the logging sites of the largest logger in the Middle Volga region, the Sredles trust, was organized already at the end of the first five-year plan. The greatest number of problems in the public catering system in the third five-year plan were recorded in the Kuibyshevles sections. Typical methods for supplying the canteens of timber industry enterprises with products in the 1930s. began to organize their own subsidiary farms and purchase food. There are numerous complaints about the quality of food prepared in the forestry industry canteens. In some cases, the shortcomings of catering at logging sites were associated not with the general food shortage in the USSR, but with the low professionalism of canteen workers.