Now it seems to us that chocolate has always been. Meanwhile, the first chocolate bar appeared only in 1899 in Switzerland.
In the Russian Empire, confectionery production until the beginning of the 19th century. was, for the most part, makeshift. Foreigners also actively mastered the Russian confectionery market.
The history of the appearance of chocolate in Russia began in 1850, when Ferdinand von Einem, who came from Württemberg, Germany, to Moscow, opened a small workshop on the Arbat for the production of chocolate products, including sweets.
In 1867, Einem and his companion Geis built a new factory on the Sofiyskaya Embankment. This factory was one of the first to be equipped with a steam engine, which allowed the company to quickly become one of the largest confectionery manufacturers in the country.
After the October Revolution of 1917, all the confectionery factories passed into the hands of the state - in November 1918 the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the nationalization of the confectionery industry. Naturally, the change of owners entailed a change of names. The Abrikosovs' factory was named after the worker Pyotr Akimovich Babaev, chairman of the Sokolniki regional executive committee of Moscow. The Einem firm became known as Krasny Oktyabr, and the former factory of the Lenov merchants was renamed Rot Front.
True, the ideas of Marx and Lenin, the revolutionary spirit and new names could in no way affect the technology of confectionery production. Under both the old and the new government, sugar was needed to make sweets, and cocoa beans were needed to make chocolate. And there were serious problems with that.
For a long time, the "sugar" regions of the country were under the rule of whites, and the currency and gold, for which one could buy overseas raw materials, were used to buy bread. Only by the mid-20s. confectionery production has been more or less revived. The NEP helped this, the entrepreneurial spirit and the growth of the well-being of urban residents made it possible to quickly increase the production of caramel, sweets, cookies, cakes.
The planned economy, which replaced the NEP, left its mark on the confectionery industry. Since 1928, the production of sweets has been strictly regulated, each factory has been transferred to its own, separate type of product. In Moscow, for example, caramel was produced by the factory. Babaeva. The manufacturer of chocolate in the USSR was the Krasny Oktyabr factory, and the biscuits - the Bolshevik.
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During the war years, many confectionery factories were evacuated from the European part of the country to the rear. Confectioners continued to work, producing, among other things, strategically important products. The set of "emergency supplies" necessarily included a chocolate bar that saved the lives of more than one pilot or sailor.
After the war, for reparations from Germany, the USSR received equipment from German confectionery enterprises, which made it possible to establish the production of chocolate products in a short time. The production of chocolate has grown every year. For example, in 1946 at a chocolate manufacturer in the USSR named after V. Babayev processed 500 tons of cocoa beans, in 1950 - 2000 tons, and by the end of the 60s - 9000 tons annually.
Foreign policy contributed indirectly to this impressive growth in production. For many years the USSR supported various regimes in many countries of the world, including African ones. The main thing for these regimes was to swear allegiance to communist ideals, and then help in the form of weapons, equipment, equipment was provided. This support was practically free of charge, the only way the Africans could somehow pay off the USSR were raw materials and agricultural products, which is why confectionery factories were uninterruptedly supplied with raw materials from distant African expanses.
In those years, there was no competition between chocolate producers in the USSR, in its traditional sense. Confectioners could compete for awards and titles, for example, "best in the industry", for awards at exhibitions, for the love, after all, of consumers, but not for their wallets. Problems with the sale of sweets and other sweet products could have been with very careless and "tasteless" manufacturers.
But there was no deficit, at least in large cities. Of course, from time to time the names of sweets in the USSR, like "Belochka", "Bear in the North" or "Karakum", disappeared from the shelves, and "Bird's milk" rarely appeared on them, but usually Muscovites, Kievites or Baku residents could buy, even if not in every store, your favorite delicacies.
The exception was the pre-holiday days. Each pre-New Year children's performance in the theater or matinee ended with the distribution of sweet sets, which is why the most popular varieties of sweets disappeared from store shelves at that time. Before March 8, it was difficult to find sweets in boxes, which, together with a bunch of flowers, made up a “universal” gift that did not require serious thoughts from men for the holiday.
Let us now, on the eve of the New Year, recall the most famous sweets of the past, with which we associated this holiday.
Sweets "Squirrel". These were chocolates, the main attributes of which are crushed hazelnuts in the filling, as well as a stylized image of a squirrel with a nut in its paws.
The first "Squirrel" appeared at the beginning of the 40s. and was produced by the Confectionery Factory. N. K. Krupskaya, which was part of the Leningrad production association of the confectionery industry. In Soviet times, the factory's production of these popular sweets reached thousands of tons per year.
"Karakum" sweets. These chocolates are made from hazelnut praline with cocoa and crushed waffles. Few people know that initially "Karakum" was the trademark of the Taganrog Confectionery Factory.
Candy "Bear in the North". These soft glazed sweets with a nut filling, enclosed in a waffle case, received such an affectionate name, confectioners of the factory named after N. K. Krupskaya began to be released on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, in 1939.
The inhabitants of Leningrad were so fond of sweets that even during the most difficult period of the city's life, despite all the difficulties of wartime and the state of siege, the factory did not stop producing this delicacy and already in 1943 produced 4.4 tons of these sweets. And who knows, maybe "Bear in the North" became one of those important elements that supported the belief in victory in the residents of the besieged city.
Candy "Mishka clubfoot". This peculiar Soviet confectionery symbol does not come from the USSR, but from Tsarist Russia. Its history began in the workshops of the Partnership of the Steam Factory of Chocolate, Sweets and Tea Cookies "Einem", and the very history of the creation of the candy has long been overgrown with numerous legends.
Around the 80s. XIX century. For a sample, Julius Geis, head of the Einem Partnership, was given a candy: a thick layer of almond praline was enclosed between two wafer plates and glazed chocolate. The manufacturer liked the find of the confectioners, and immediately the name appeared - "Bear Footed".
According to legend, a reproduction of a painting by Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky "Morning in a Pine Forest" was hung in Gays's office, as a result of which the name was first thought up, and later the design of the new delicacy.
Sweets "Take it away!" These sweets with a praline body and chocolate icing, popular in Soviet times, were also produced more than a hundred years ago at the Einem factory thanks to the artist Manuil Andreev.
On the wrapper, he depicted a fierce-looking boy with a bat in one hand and a bitten bar of Einem chocolate in the other. There was no doubt that the boy was ready for anything to finish his chocolate.
In this form, the candy did not last long, because a happy Soviet kid could not have such a fierce look, let alone his pants with patches. Therefore, on the subsequent versions of the label of the factories of the NARKOMPISHCHEPROM of the USSR, and after 1947 - of the Ministry of the Food Industry - the boy smiles happily, his hand is already in his pocket and the stick has disappeared.
The name also changed slightly - the hyphen was rearranged and the word "confection" was replaced by the usual "candy". And in 1952 Andreyev's student, artist of the Krasny Oktyabr factory Leonid Chelnokov, creatively reworking and preserving the background of the wrapper, painted a girl in a blue pea dress with a candy in her hand and a white dog. The inscription has already been made in accordance with all the rules of modern spelling.
Red poppy sweets. Presumably the name of these chocolate-glazed sweets with praline filling with the addition of lollipop and vanilla and hazelnut flavors comes from the ballet Red Poppy.
In 1926, the Bolshoi Theater was preparing to stage a new ballet The Daughter of the Port, but the theater management considered the libretto of Reingold Glier's ballet insufficiently dynamic and not very interesting. The director and artist revived the plot, and the musical score for the ballet "The Port's Daughter", with the author's permission, was transferred to the score for the ballet "Red Poppy".
The storyline also includes negative characters in the form of conspirators and the insidious chief of the port of Hips, and Soviet sailors, and a young Chinese woman named Tao Hoa, in love with the captain of a Russian ship. The conflict between the bourgeois and the Bolsheviks, an attempt to poison a just captain and the tragic death of a brave girl.
In the final scene, representatives of the Chinese poor - the Red Lances guerrillas - carry the body of a mortally wounded girl on a stretcher, covering her with a red banner. Waking up, the dying Tao Hoa passes the scarlet poppy flower presented to the surrounding children by the captain. A huge red flower lights up in the sky. Poor people, freed from the rule of Europeans, are coming to him. Countless red poppy petals are falling on the dead Tao Hoa's stretcher. A sad and beautiful story at the same time. Isn't it worthy of perpetuation in the art of confectionery?
Bars "Rot Front". This chocolate bar with the addition of crushed waffles and grated peanuts dates back to 1826, when an enterprising bourgeoisie Sergei Lenov opened a "Confectionery workshop" for the production of fondant and caramel in the Zamoskvorechye region.
Soon, the company's products became very popular and received recognition from buyers and merchants throughout Russia, and a small workshop grew into a large factory of the G. A. and E. S. Lenovs.
In 1917 the Lenov family, the owners of the factory, sold it to Tsentrosoyuz. The enterprise receives a new name - "Confectionery factory of the Moscow Union of Consumer Societies". At the end of 1918, the factory, like many other enterprises, was nationalized. The name "Rot Front" appeared in 1931 as a sign of solidarity with the German anti-fascist workers (the words "Rot Front" (Red Front) were the motto of the German mass organization of anti-fascist workers).
Inspiration chocolate. It was the first chocolate in the Soviet Union to be cut into portions. Few people know, but we owe his appearance in the USSR to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexei Kosygin. During his visit to France, local confectioners treated him to something similar.
Inspired by Kosygin, he brought French chocolate with him and instructed the State Confectionery Factory N2 to immediately begin its own production. In 1967 a chocolate called "Inspiration" appeared on the shelves. To decorate the packaging, the theme of ballet was chosen, which has always been the hallmark of the Soviet Union.
O. BULANOVA