Ice cream in its modern version first appeared in Russia, in the 18th century, its recipe, published in Новейшая и полная поваренная книга / The Newest and Complete Cookbook (1791) by Nikolai Maksimovich Yatsenkov.

Mention of ice cream was not only recorded in the memoirs of members of the Imperial Court, but also in the works of poets and writers. The great Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), obliged his home cook to serve ice cream daily. Another Russian writer Thaddeus Bulgarin (1789-1859) writes about Venetian ice cream in his novel Ivan Vyzhigin (1829). The poet Gavriil Derzhavin (1743-1816), in honor of his name day, every year arranged a gala dinner, at the end of which ice cream was served in the form of an ancient temple or castle.

One of the scenes that struck the French aristocrat and writer Marquis de Custine (1790-1857) in the summer of 1839, was Muscovites eating ice cream in the Alexander Garden.

“Muscovites: shaved, curled, in tailcoats and white pantaloons, in yellow gloves, sit at ease in front of brightly lit cafes, eat sweet ice cream and listen to music? In the summer this can now be observed in Moscow every evening,” he wrote.

PHOTO: early 20th century Russian ice cream vendor

Expensive pleasure

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Russian people were content with traaditional folk dishes: cheesecakes and pancakes, syrniki [sweet cheese pancakes], topped with delicious sour cream and jam. Meanwhile, ice cream had acquired the status of a popular, fashionable and incredibly expensive dessert among Russia’s nobility. The new-fashioned cold treat was present at every social event, ball, and lavish feast.

At the time, sugar was in very short supply and was very expensive, which is why the old ice cream recipes, were considered an expensive pleasure, one which was only available to the very rich. Nevertheless, ice cream was already gaining popularity at Russian tables. By the end of the 18th century, they began to complete dinner with this cold treat more and more often.

The Court cooks slowly and masterfully coped with the whimsical melting product, creating new cold desserts, which included “Vesuvius on the Mont Blanc” – ice cream set on a platter, doused with rum or cognac and set aflame.

The production of ice cream by hand was a time-consuming and small-volume business. The amount of product directly depended on refrigeration equipment, which helped with the process of creating and preserving these cold delicacies.

The full-fledged and well-established production of ice cream in Russia began in the 1830s, when a shop was opened at a Moscow dairy plant, equipped with all the necessary equipment.

By the beginning of the 19th century, ice cream continued to gain popularity and more widely available, including fairs. Writer Pavel Efebovsky wrote in his essay Petersburg Peddlers: “Ice cream is sold by a Russian peasant in a huge tub filled with ice. This tub alone weighs at least three pounds . . . Only it’s expensive: a glass in three sips costs as much as two silver kopecks”.

Up until the middle of the 19th century, ice cream in Russia was prepared exclusively by hand. It was only in 1845, the Swiss-born restaurateur and confectioner Johann-Lucius Isler (1810-1877) patented a machine that made it possible to produce this delicacy mechanically. Isler opened one of the most popular St. Petersburg cafes on Nevsky Prospekt, where they served ice cream with unusual ingredients for that time: fruit liqueur, ground coffee, infusion of orange flowers, pistachios, walnuts. At the same time, three main varieties of cold desserts appeared: sorbetto (or sherbet) – a heavily chilled fruit drink; granito made from frozen fruit juice and ice cream – a dense mass of milk or cream with sugar and various ingredients, similar to modern ice cream.

PHOTO: this richly decorated Coronation menu indicates that ice cream was served at the Gala dinner in the Alexander Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, Moscow, dated 23rd May 1896

Ice cream at the Imperial Court

During the reign of Empress Catherine II, when various overseas amusements and dishes were very fashionable in Russia, recipes for ice cream made from cream and egg whites, included such ingredients as chocolate, lemon, currants, cranberries, raspberries, cherries and oranges.

During the reigns of her successors, ice cream continued to be popular at the Imperial Court. Emperor Alexander I had a French chef named Carem, who invented new types of this dessert to surprise the monarch. Emperor Nicholas I, on the other hand, refused ice cream: based on his solidarity with his brother Michael, who was on a strict diet on the advice of doctors. But the emperor’s wife Empress Alexandra Fedorovna ordered two portions of ice cream from the pastry shop every day for the amount of 1 ruble 72 kopecks.

Richly decorated menus confirm that Мороженое [ice cream] was served to guests at elaborate State Banquets. In particular, ice cream was served to members of the Imperial Family, Russian nobles and visiting foreign delegations, at the Gala dinners held over a three-week period in the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow, during the festivities marking the Coronation of Emperor Nicholas II in May 1896.

PHOTO: Maria Grigorievna Rasputina with a portrait of her father Grigorii Rasputin, in exile, 1972

Ice cream was especially popular at table of the last Emperor and his family. The recipe for “Romanov ice cream”, which was invented specifically for Nicholas II, has been preserved to this day. It included sugar, 10 egg yolks, heavy cream, whipping cream and vanilla. “I remember ice cream, the like of which I have never eaten anywhere else,” wrote the daughter of Grigorii Rasputin, Maria (1898-1977).

FURTHER READING:

Nicholas II’s menu: culinary preferences of Russia’s last Tsar + PHOTOS

© Paul Gilbert. 2 August 2022

In any country in the world, its national currency is one of the main guarantors of its independence. Moreover, its issuance is carried out by a central bank owned by the state. Only the United States is different. A private financial company, the US Federal Reserve, is responsible for issuing the dollar, one of the world’s primary reserve currencies. Many believe that its shareholders run the global economy. It is a little known fact that during the early 20th century, Emperor Nicholas II helped finance the authorized capital of the US Federal Reserve System [FRS].

The Russian Empire as the world arbiter

Despite the popular opinion that pre-revolutionary Russia was the gendarme of Europe, in reality it was a world power that sought not only to end wars, but also to create an international body regulating relations between countries. While on the throne, Emperor Alexander II in 1868 initiated the signing in St. Petersburg of the convention on the “rules of war”. This document, in particular, provided for a ban on the use of a number of inhumane types of weapons. Nicholas II followed the example of his grandfather by organizing the First World Peace Conference in 1899. With the active participation of the last Russian emperor, a proposal was made to create the League of Nations, the prototype of the UN. It sounds incredible, but even then, at the end of the 19th century, Nicholas II spoke from a high rostrum about the need to end the arms race.

Money is the engine of politics

Simultaneously with the discussion of the creation of the League of Nations at the beginning of the 20th century, proposals were raised for the establishment of an international financial body. Its functions were to include the regulation of financial disputes between different countries. It was then that the proposal to create the US Federal Reserve appeared. From the earliest days of its existence, this financial institution was essentially an international private bank, which was required to have its own authorized capital, denominated in gold. Today, the US dollar is not backed by either gold or the mass of commodities in the United States. But in 1913 everything was different. At the time when the FRS was created, the dollar, like the ruble, was obliged, if necessary, to be exchanged for an equivalent in gold. Not surprisingly, the US Federal Reserve had large reserves of gold as its charter capital.

Where did it come from?

Under US law, however, American banks involved in the creation of the FRS, could not utilize their gold as authorized capital. It was assumed that it would be provided by those countries, for the settlement of financial disputes between which the FRS was created. The major world powers showed little interest in the proposal to finance the authorized capital of the FRS with their own gold and foreign exchange reserves. This was done only by Emperor Nicholas II from Russia’s vast gold reserves. The contribution of the Russian Empire to the US Federal Reserve amounted to 88.8% of its authorized capital in gold! At the same time, Russia was supposed to receive 4% of the invested funds annually, as dividends. However, soon after the establishment of the FRS, the 1917 Russian Revolution broke out, and then the Imperial Family were murdered by order of the new Bolshevik regime.

The USSR, refused to recognize the debts of Tsarist Russia, and, accordingly, did not have any rights to its income from foreign assets. There was no one to pay interest to the FRS. Had the history of Russia taken a different course, perhaps today it would be the owner of the printing press of the world reserve currency.

© Paul Gilbert. 25 November 2021

For many years, Soviet historiography was dominated by the notion of “eternal” famine in Imperial Russia. With this lie, the Bolsheviks tried to justify the monstrous famines of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, as well as the constant shortage of food during the Soviet years.

In fact, there were many poor harvests leading to food shortages in Russia before 1912. The largest of them was in 1891, during the reign of Emperor Alexander III (1845-1894). This was the result of a global agrarian crisis in the 1880s, which also affected England, France, Germany, and parts of the United States. The terrible famine in Ireland between 1845-1850, claimed the lives of 1.5 million people. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the consequences of this famine reduced the Irish population by more than 30%.

The crop failure of 1891-92, was caused by severe drought. It affected 25 provinces in the Russian Empire. Between 1891-92, some 30 million people were starving. In 1897, another crop failure in 18 provinces was again caused by drought, worsened by an unfavorable winter, and an invasion of insect pests. Between 1897-98, 27 million people were starving.

In the summer of 1905, there was a subsidence in the Chernozem, Volga, Trans-Volga, and eastern provinces. The crop failures mainly affected traditionally agricultural areas, which, according to official data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, occupied up to 43% of all arable land in Russia. The last “royal” crop failure occurred in 1911 – it was a reflection of a serious pan-European crop failure due to drought. The crop failure covered a vast territory: all the districts of the Astrakhan, Orenburg, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk and Ufa provinces, as well as many districts of the Vyatka, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Perm provinces and the Don Army Region, affecting more than 20 million people in one way or another. In the affected areas, only 1/3 of the grain harvest was harvested against the annual average.

However, it should be noted that crop failures and malnutrition in Imperial Russia did not lead to mass mortality. All the Bolshevik allegations that up to 4 million people a year allegedly starved to death in Russia are an outright lie, which is based on false “annual reports of the College of the Life Chancellery.” It is worth noting that such a body did not even exist in the Russian Empire.

Minister of Agriculture and State Property Aleksei Sergeevich Ermolov (1847-1917)

Between 1892-1905, Minister of Agriculture and State Property Aleksei Sergeevich Ermolov (1847-1917), then the head of the Central Committee for the provision of medical and food assistance to the population, wrote that “not a single death from starvation, or from the complete absence of any food, not to mention the cases of suicides or murders of children due to hunger, were not recorded any where.” Ermolov noted that the population growth in 1906-07 in some provinces (Oryol, Tambov, Ufa) surpassed that of the previous year.

There is no data on deaths due to starvation among Soviet and Russian demographers. In his studies, Russian demographer Adolf Grigorievich Rashin (1888-1960) argued that in the period from 1890-1913 mortality steadily decreased: from 36.7 deaths per 1000 population in 1890 to 27.4 per 1000 population in 1913.

The multi volume work Население России в ХХ веке (The Population of Russia in the 20th Century) unequivocally states that “by 1913 all regions of European Russia reported a significant increase in population”. The Chernozem region and the Volga region, experienced one of the highest rates of population growth in the Empire.

In 1907 a very high natural population growth was recorded (18.1%), 1911 (17%) and 1912 (16.9%). The lowest increase in the first 15 years of the twentieth century was recorded during the troubled year of 1905 (13.9%).

During the alleged “great famine” of 1911-1912, the population grew by more than 3 million people. You can compare this to data on the years of the Soviet famines (1921-22, 1931-33, 1946-48): which resulted in complete cessation of the country’s population growth, and a sharp decline in life expectancy.

Hundreds of corpses piled up at the local cemetery, during the 1921 Famine in Russia

Thus, the only conclusion that can be made: after the famine of 1891-92, which was accompanied by an acute epidemic of cholera, the Russian Empire did not entail any “starvation deaths”.

It should be noted that the Imperial Government made great effort to combat the effects of crop failures.

In 1897, loans amounting to 5.4 million rubles were granted from the All-Empire capital, in 1898 – 35.2 million (34.4 million poods were purchased for the foodstuffs of the population – bread, and support of cattle breeding by peasants), public works were organized, in particular, the transportation by peasants of grain purchased by the government to provide bread for the hungry.

The death of horses caused by the lack of fodder was compensated by the purchase of horses from the steppe inhabitants of the local breeds and their delivery on favorable terms by the beginning of field work. The supply of feed to needy households was carried out on a “loan basis” (with payment over 3-5 years), in 1898 7 million rubles were spent on these needs.

In the canteens opened by the Red Cross, up to 1.5 million people were fed, mainly women, children, old people and the weak, but in exceptional cases, able-bodied men (in the absence of earnings), more than 2 million received rations.

Canteen to feed the hungry in Nizhni Novgorod province, during the famine of 1891-1892

The Guardianship of Diligence and Workers’ Houses, created at the initiative of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, began to take effect. Among the private philanthropists, the Bessarabian landowner Purishkevich was especially distinguished – thanks to his ebullient activity, some 20 canteens were opened, financed with donations and thereby saving hundreds of people from starvation. His efforts were noticed and greatly appreciated in St. Petersburg.

Everywhere where hunger arose, food centers were opened for children, women, and those incapable of work, each of which fed up to 1000 people.

According to observers, “the food campaign of 1906-1907. was carried out by the Food Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with much success.

At the same time, charitable organizations actively supported the hungry. One branch of the Red Cross, with the assistance of local authorities, opened free canteens and food outlets, which issued 270 million meals and rations during the famine. The Holy Synod introduced a gathering for the hungry on all Sundays and twelve feasts.

Private charity played an increasingly significant role. Numerous private trusteeships, local societies, unions, and committees were established. The assistance offered by  “private owners” turned out to be of great help to the state, whose stocks were greatly depleted as early as 1905.

For the supply of feed during the crop failure of 1911-12, the government spent 9-12 million rubles, issued loans for food (for example, in Siberia they issued 300 rubles per cow allowance), 16 thousand horses were distributed on favorable terms. Public work for peasants as an experiment decided this time to make the main form of assistance. 42 million rubles were allocated for their implementation, with 84% of the amount spent on wages. The hungry were provided with 222 million meals, under the guidance of priests and teachers in the Volga region alone, more than 7 thousand canteens were opened in schools, where 24 million lunches were provided to children. In general, the campaign was carried out at on a gargantuan level – and it is interesting to note that the state, who were in full control over the situation in both 1901 and 1911, managed to prevent starvation.

Thus, it can be seen that by the beginning of the twentieth century, the state had formed an integrated system of redistribution of food resources, which functioned effectively during periods of crop failure and with the depletion of bread in peasant farms. In addition, measures were constantly taken to support residents of the territories affected by crop failure. The Russian public actively participated in helping the victims, which caused widespread development of charity, and the formation of effective structures for providing assistance to the population. After 1892, deaths from starvation were avoided even under the most unfavorable conditions (such as the “revolutionary situation” of the mid-1900s).

Source: Petr Multatuli

© Paul Gilbert. 27 April 2020