Communist Quality: Dairy Production at the Leningrad Dairy Combine, 1965-1985

This study examines the role, rhetoric, and implementation of quality in Soviet production via the lens of the Leningrad Dairy Combine. Throughout the 20th century, particularly post-WWII, dairy became a staple part of the “modern” diet throughout many parts of the globe due to new technologies in pasteurization and production. Dairy’s significance was felt in the Soviet Union as well, which used the food to improve the standard of living and open another avenue of competition with the West. Despite the importance of dairy within the country and its status as the largest producer in the world, the Soviet Union lagged behind the US and other Western countries in dairy utilization and quality. Two main questions are raised from this: how were Soviet ideas of quality imagined and constructed, and why was Soviet quality ultimately lacking when compared to the West? Within historiography authors often follow one of two frames of quality, that of productivist quality centered on enterprises meeting standards and guidelines like GOST, and that of consumer quality focused on consumer perceptions independent of production standards. This consumerist frame of quality is largely absent from the history of Soviet production, so this study tries to understand how both the productivist and consumerist frames of quality were imagined and implemented in the Soviet enterprise system. The main materials used for this work are quality reports from the Leningrad Dairy Combine and the Soviet Ministry of Meat and Milk Production, along with articles from professional journals, ranging from 1965’s Kosygin reforms to the 1985 full implementation of the Agro-industrial complex by Gorbachev. The result of this research reveals that while productivist quality was dominant within Soviet production, the consumerist frame of quality was present not only in rhetoric but in practice, with subjective factors like taste and consistency being part of evaluations. Regarding whether the Soviets achieved their standards, despite an earnest effort among those in the enterprise, dairy products were often of low quality and unsatisfactory for both the productivist and consumerist frames. These were largely due to issues with infrastructure and logistics, with cooling for milk particularly suffering. These findings point to a deviation or roadblock within Soviet modern milk and by extension Soviet modernization for not matching up to the West.