In the USSR, the very first ice cream factory was opened in 1932 — when the Minister of Food Supply (if translated not too liberally) Anastas Mikoyan visited the United States of America and was so impressed with their ice cream, he decided that Russia needed something of the kind. So the ice cream making technology and equipment were imported and the ice cream supply to all and everybody began. The process was highly regulated and, indeed, the quality of Soviet ice cream was enviable. If in 1932 the total amount of icecream produced was about 300 ton, then 10 years later it grew about 270 times — in 1940 there were 82 thousand ton of ice cream produced.
The city of Khabarovsk, 1970.
This numbers were lost during the WWII as the factories had to cease work — but it quickly recovered and by 1950 there was a 20% increase of what was made before.
The sweet choice: the brick, the cup, the cone, the works. Unfortunately, the flavour variety was limited to two flavours: plain sweet or chocolate.
Funnily enough, in Russia the ice cream on a stick had become synonymous with the word eskimo — named after the indigenous people of the Northern countries. You could walk in a shop and ask for two eskimos!
Everyone’s favourite treat
An ice cream street vendor. Moscow, 1959
Year and author unknown, yet a very sweet picture
Pioneers: I’ll have what he is having!
Moscow, 1934. Would have been one of the very first ones!
Another street vendor — apparently, there is some march of protest on and everybody is politically concerned
Image courtesy to LIFE magazine archives
Image courtesy to LIFE magazine archives
Most likely it’s late October — early November, yet she must be making a mint!
A Moscow winter
Not your average job — selling icecream to the Russians
A cheery Soviet ad poster for the ice cream