Legendary NKVD ice cream

Witnesses of the heavenly Soviet past have a big problem: it is very difficult to prove the existence of this past to a modern, more or less wealthy layman.

Only a complete fool would believe in the outstanding reliability or amazing comfort of the Moskvich or Zaporozhets. Stories about Soviet medicine collide with the harsh language of statistics: why was the USSR in the 70s one of the very few countries in the world in which life expectancy was falling? how many dialysis machines were there in the USSR, and how many in the USA, Germany, Japan? how many people received chemotherapy? Finally, what did the equipment and painkiller kit of a conventional dentist look like in America and the Soviet Union? If Soviet TVs were good, why did everyone hunt for imported ones?

Myths take the place of reality - for example, about great ice cream. Ice cream was made on American equipment, which Mikoyan bought in the USA in the thirties (then they launched production in the Union). It’s just that according to the technology, ice cream had to be made from milk, and not from that mixture of all the rubbish in the world, on which the Soviet food industry was used to working “strictly according to GOSTs”. Against the background of the rest of the food, ice cream, of course, was a real treat.

Hence the love for Georgian cuisine, the greatness of which lay in the fact that the Georgians, as the richest people of the Union, could afford to make meat dishes from good whole meat and normal cheese. Good meat and good cheese are tasty in themselves, you can even do nothing with them.

And the "legendary" Finca NKVD from here. The production of these finca's in the thirties was established in a village in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Naturally, technologies, equipment, training of working personnel were at a primitive level. The USSR then had enough areas in which good equipment and trained workers were required like air - from the aviation industry to the petrochemical industry. (An ordinary experienced engineer earned many tens of times more than an unskilled worker. According to the memoirs of the invited American specialists, many engineers who graduated from the workers' faculty did not even know how to properly read the drawing - but they were still put in engineering positions even in the aviation industry (!), simply because there were no others). To allocate highly qualified workers and high-quality imported equipment, bought for precious currency, which was “mined” by collective farms, torgsins and anything else, for the production of knives in a remote village? Yes, this is sabotage, for such a execution.

To make a good knife, you need very good steel. A very good knife - steel of exceptional quality. Making cool steel is very difficult. The CPC Politburo once discussed the problem of steels for the blades of fighter jet engines: the blades burned, and the operating time of the engines of the copied Su-27/30 turned out to be ridiculous.

It's good that the legendary finca's from the Kizlyar masters have nothing to do with China! /* sarcasm*/

The Soviet Union desperately lacked special steels. Zhukov in his famous conversations ) with Simonov, speaking about the role of lend-lease, mentioned three articles: gunpowder and explosives, cars, special steels. At the same time, the main Soviet production of gunpowder was captured by the Germans back in forty-one, car factories switched to the production of light tanks. But of the three main sites of "Spetsstal" - in Zlatoust, Moscow and Zaporozhye - only the youngest and least significant "Dneprspetsstal" was captured. But the shortage at the beginning of the war was still so desperate that it was proposed to build concrete T-34s.

For good knives, ordinary tank armor steel is not enough. Much, much better steel is needed. It needs a huge amount of work of good engineers and skilled workers. And this is on the eve of World War II? Again sabotage.

In general, the fincas from the Nizhny Novgorod village could not help but be shitty. But after all, their "legendary" is not an invention of the Kizlyar masters. Their outstanding qualities are no less enduring myth than the legendary Soviet ice cream. And they are produced by everyone who can - after all, it's not just that it's all.

And the solution is simple. In 1935, Soviet citizens were forbidden to keep knives - except for those who could get permission from the NKVD. Well, the NKVD basically, of course, issued permission to its employees.

Outside the museum, a Soviet citizen had the opportunity to see three knives: a kitchen knife, famous for its fragility , the AK bayonet-knife and the same finca NKVD model of 1935. The latter could at least be used as a combat knife.

Naturally, there is no comparison with truly legendary knives - for example, knives from Solingen, from where back in 1805 Tsar Alexander took the craftsmen to the wonderful Zlatoust, to make officer sabers - the NKVD finca can not stand it. (Here is the discovery!). In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Milyaga's mood has improved. He glanced around nonchalantly, seeing the area darkened by twilight as something special. “Oh,” he thought, “how beautiful our nature is! In what other country can you find such pines, birches and so on?” Milyaga had never been to any other country in his life, but, due to his innate patriotism, he was convinced that vegetation worthy of attention was not found there at all. "Good! he rejoiced, filling his smoky lungs with air. “It seems that the percentage of oxygen content here is higher than in the office.”

Vasily Topolev 2022-11-24