I knew a disabled Russian immigrant who lived in Columbia, MD about 10 yrs ago who was partially paralyzed in one arm from service to his country and he always talked about how when he was in the Russian army they fed them cans of lard and loaves of bread. He came to the US in the 80's so he could get medical treatment he couldn't get at home as a vet. I used to work on his car for food because he could barely pay his bills and lived on section 8 and survived on food stamps and nobody else would help him. So to keep him from feeling like a beggar I would accept loaves of home made tomato bread as payment and my boss would always turn his head when he saw me helping the old man. It really feels good helping others in need.
That's awesome you were actually kind to someone you weren't required to. Most people today only care about their immediate wants. Also kinda funny cause so many ameris today eat lard and bread all the time by choice
the tea is Georgian, that meat is actually pork stew called "Tushonka" and you are definitely supposed to heat it up, that porridge is millet, that soup is pea soup, and "Наркомпищепром СССР" means "People's Committee of the Food Industry of the USSR" in russian. Written above it is ""Fly the highest, fastest and farthest!" The tea, 50 grams provided, you are only supposed to use about one teaspoon at a time.
@@The_Unkillable actually 2 videos. One Russian IMP and one Russian non-military arctic ration. Got a lot translated with google, but I'm guessing that it's not exact. Not everything can be "canned meat with vegtables"
I knew someone who was in the red army in WWII he said most of the food consisted of crackers ( whole wheat or rye ) buckwheat ( extremely common ) Kasha lentil pees or more rarely beans salt meat ( pork or beef ) usually in a can or big slabs hard as a rock to share amongst a group oats dried vegetables ( onions , carrots, potatoes , mushrooms , beats , garlic , peppers , corn , cabbage all reduced to small flakes all mixed together ) oil or margarine dried fruits generally chopped up and mixed canned fish, generally small fish in some sort of oil and salt tea or cocoa sugar or molasses Vodka or other alcohol never much but maybe a shoot or 2 mystery meat dried sausage, not much on extremely rare occasions, cheeses canned meat like spam or corn beef in a can ( the can was particular valuable even after the meat was gone for use as a drinking cup
I find your description much more credible. Not that I’m saying that this ration was invented, and it’s easy to believe that there were American made products on it; but I bet it never reached not even 5% of the troops, and even so I believe it was promptly taken by the Officers. Soldiers had to make do with what you describe.
I find exceedingly hard to believe that the 62nd Soviet Army in Stalingrad had such exquisite rations at its disposal. Many Soviet soldiers often spent more than a full day without eating because there was nothing to eat. And the Soviet Army was never very adept of issuing Combat Rations, preferring to forward a wheeled campaign kitchen instead, like the Wehrmacht normally did. They were lucky enough if they could eat a bowl of soup in the entire day. My Wife’s Grand Mother was Soviet Ukrainian and was deployed to Stalingrad as a nurse at her own request, to the Volga East Bank. They lacked everything, even after taking the offensive. They almost had no rations, medicines or even bandages. German wounded admitted in their campaign hospitals were immediately finished with air injections, she recounted. Likewise for Soviet soldiers in hopeless condition. It was by no means as smooth and organised as described by many Soviet writers. It was far worse. After taking part in the greatest battle of all times, my Wife’s Grand Mother quietly passed away alone on the _22nd June_ 2012 - exactly 71 years to the day after the invasion - in her shack in an Ukrainian village, surrounded by her chickens and no doubt contemplating for the very last time the portrait she always kept by her side: her Husband in Uniform, Colonel of the Soviet Army, killed in the first week of the war. I carefully keep a smaller _Sepia_ copy of the same picture. Her Husband’s grave was only found in 1961; that means twenty years of daily agony. Her brother also died in the Winter War. Can you imagine how this woman suffered? Well, now here we go again, my Stepson was mobilized for the second time into the Ukrainian Army and is fighting the Russian savages as I write. Unbelievable.
What a brave woman and men they were, fighting fascists/nazis at their own behest. If only the oligarchies/ruling elite now didn’t order poor working class people who were likely propagandized by the post-90s western russian capitalists to fight tirelessly for power’s sake, uselessly instead of bravely like our ancestors
duart... absolutely right. I live 30 miles from the Russian border here in the Baltics and my partner's grandfather fought for the Red army at Stalingrad. There's no way rations such as these were issued , no way. This is pure fantasy !
I heard that the reason why the canned SPAM in the Russian rations looks like that is because the Russians requested that the SPAM being sent to them be fattier to be better suited to the extreme weather conditions there.
The Russian troops fighting inside the city (62nd army) rarely got the good stuff. 1000 calories would have been a good day. The Army general complained that his troops were often getting 500 calories a day.
First impression from that YUGE chocolate bar was that this was a top-flight ration. On every point it matches or beats the German one you covered, though your reaction to the canned meat product in each makes me think they were interchangeable. Sorry to see that you didn't eat the porridge, but that was a lot of food. Merry Christmas 2022! =^[.]^=
I'm actually really surprised by how much content was in that box. The Soviet soldier if they got one of these was very lucky. It would keep you alive and be a big welcome in the hell of it all.
Crumble the compressed peas soup into your cooking pot, add cold water, heat and boil for 10 minutes. This soup was, and still is, produced in Ukraine. Enni Foods in Odessa still makes a modern version of it under the brand 'Aunt Sonja'. Still the same shape, just a greater variety of flavours. As for the chocolate, wrapping it in metal foil is authentic. If not protected from air, chocolate goes rancid. Even though aluminum foil is not a modern invention they would have used stanniol, tin foil, back then. The word Kasha simply means mush. Your package, according to your description, contains groats, coarsely broken wheat, but it could altenatively contain buckwheat (looking like tiny beechnuts) or millet (tiny round pearls) instead. They all would go under the name of Kasha. To cook kasha, just cover the grains with water, add some salt and cook until the water is absorbed, add the canned meat, mix well and heat thoroughly. It doesnt look appealing, but tastes great and is a filling and fortifying meal. It still is a staple in russian, ukrainian, lithuanian and polish rations today. The canned meat is Tushonka, canned chunks of pork, usually cut from the shoulder for some fat. At the bottom of the can you will find a bayleaf, which gives it its destinctive flavour.
@@Craigx71 The production plant was, and still is, in Odessa. Odessa lies in Ukraine which was the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic from 1922 until 1991 when it declared independence. The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR or short Soviet Union).
@@RK-cj4oc of course. My Wife was born Soviet, then she became Ukrainian, then Portuguese after marrying me. 😂 My Stepson was Soviet for six days, then he became Ukrainian. 😂😂
I recently had a Lithuanian mre with groats with pork and it was amazing. Crackers with aniseed or something in there was the best mre I've had so far. Old world cooking can absolutely be the best after a long walk or hicking. Try one there about £10
a WWII Wehrmacht vet once told me that in 1942, in Ukraine, they captured a bunch of Red Army fresh-conscripted soldiers. In their breadbags they found, for each man, half a pound of sawdust bread, an ounce of salt, and a tin cup filled with a handful of sunflower seeds and grain (yes, raw grain). That was all their chow, unchanged since Napoleon's era. The germans couldn't believe their eyes. In a post-war interview to a Red Army veteran on the BBC (I think), the old man said that Soviet reinforcements which disembarked from trains at Stalingrad, were not issued any ration at all: the reasoning of Red Army generals was that, since the average survival of a soviet soldier in Stalingrad was 8-9 hours, it wasn't worth the while to feed them: they simply died too quickly. Only those who survived 24 hours, would receive some canned meat and tea. However, through the entire war, Red Army soldiers had a solid reputation of constantly hungry and pillaging, looking for chow wherever they could find it. Only vodka was issued in plenty, and it was considered a good way to forget hunger!
200ML of vodka daily, plus extra before a charge. Right before Kursk, the Germans handed out schnapps as well. A last drink before you die. All we had in Iraq was crappy near beer.
@@MREScout right. Schnaps was the "secret weapon" of German and Austrian stormtroopers too; in Italian and French army, brandy was given for the same purposes. British army used rum. And the fun fact is that, in ordinary circumstances, spirits were severely forbidden in every army (and they still are) but they were quite handy, when troops' morale needed a boost.
That strong tea is typical of Russia and it wouldn't surpruise me if it gave you more energy than coffee, it's called Chifir. And the russian spam that was originally imported from the US was quickly adopted and produced locally and became a staple known as Tushonka.
I don't think chifir was consumed by soldiers. It's known to be an improvised prisoner drink, which they use to get a sort of high. It is also quite unhealthy, especially damaging the teeth.
my great grand uncle fought on the eastern front in ww2 with the Finnish army she said on many occasions that the Russian rations were desirable to the Finns as they were better than theirs and the way to eat them was to cook the canned meat in boiling water with the pea soup and biscuits
It looks pretty good, but given the chaos of the Russian front, I can't help but wonder how many soldiers actually got these neatly packaged rations on anything approaching a regular basis.
Nope, hardly anyone got the MRE packaged, rear service NCOs would just provide all the stuff in bulk from storage boxes. And only pilots and submarine crew would get chocolade.
@@MREScout Might be fun to review of the fabled Russian MRE they are issuing to Russian units in Ukraine right now. The one they are complaining about that are said to have expired in 2014/15 (though, in actuality have a fifteen year shelf life) I have a Russian friend who sent me one with a 2011 expiry, and I had it, all of it, and it was just fine. Quite a complex and diverse MRE if you can get it. Have to assume with current full mobilisation, they are ramping up production of brand new supplies, now older stock has been used.
Apparently the second wave of troops to attack had no ration packs, instead their Commisars told them to take them from their dead comrades who were mown down in the first wave. Joke.
Suggest learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet. Many Russian words have cognates in English. Saw the words soup and chocolate, and the root word concentrate. Doubt the average Soviet soldier in WWII ever saw such a ration pack. They were fed from field kitchens, or just handed whatever was available, or whatever they could scrounge. The meat in the can is called "Tushonka", specially prepared for the Soviets. As much fat as possible was provided to help keep out the cold. Rations improved after 1943, as the Red Army moved forward.
I imagine one would use the shredded paper to light the fire that heats all that stuff up. I'd be putting that can on the hottest engine block I could find, or boil the can with the water I needed hot. I've been digging this channel! Fascinating!
My great grandfather, bless him, served under the 248th Rifle Division in the defense of Stalingrad and Moscow. He used to tell me about the food in the military during his time in the war. The soup was very often mixed with what little they could scrape together at the time. The biscuits, he said, were always mediocre. The method that they are cooked has not changed since the first world war. The spam may seem unpleasant but during the duress of war most soldiers were so shaken and hungry that they did not mind.
The US provided weapons, vehicles, and lots of food in the form of Spam when the USSR was teetering during the first couple of years. By 1944 the Red Army was completely mobilized with American trucks. I'm amazed in that we fought a 2 front war with each item and soldier having to be shipped thousands of miles over two oceans and common GI issue items were considered luxuries by amazed Wehrmacht soldiers that captured or found supply drops; yet we still had plenty domestically. German POWs here in the States had it pretty good-getting a weekly movie and beer ration along with being allowed to buy things by mail order from the Sears-Roebuck catalog like window curtains.
How are the Russians able to keep their soldiers fed on 1,000 calories a day? The answer is,the average Russian soldier in Stalingrad do not live long enough for malnutrition to become a problem
Dude, I don’t know why I was directed here, however I watched your intro “NCO with combat time” and as a ret LTC, please believe when I say that I want you to succeed. Here are a few suggestions if you want to keep people watching. Your ENTIRE channel is about rations, and from your script I glean that, like this CCCP one, can come from around the world; please invest in an app that will translate using your phone’s camera. It got repetitive hearing “I don’t know what this says” that says I did some prep, however, maybe not as thorough as a 5 paragraph opord. Culturally, I know a significant number of Russian and Ukrainian friends who get excited by the lard/fat in pork and beef products. When it is cooked down it’s surprisingly delicious. Lastly, it may have helped if you had broken up the soup and porridge blocks to speed the process. In Stalingrad, as in the rest of the CCCP’s military, I learned that the soldiers would use their handkerchief to steep the tea. They would then carefully husband their leaves for the next time because it could be days or weeks until they had access to more. I read somewhere (crack in my company grade years & junior enlisted SGT) I read that the soldiers would “shave” the chocolate onto the biscuits and use the heat from the cooking fire to melt it like icing. You could also shave some chocolate into the tea to sweeten it up since sugar was scarce. Look, I only looked at you this hard because I want to be successful, with that, maybe move the microphone a little farther away from you to minimise any residual sound as you enjoy the chow. I think you are on to something and I will subscribe and look for your other videos. de Oppreso Liber
is this what the "unboxing" stuff people like? i just realized i can't watch those but this helps me calm the mind to fall asleep. very interesting and calming
" Comrade new soldier! Before allowed to eat rations we will destroy panzer, half track or kubelwagon...while in flames you will heat water for tea and soup and cook your Tushonka.....This is how the glorious comrades will do this...."
Cook up the soup (thick) .. add the spam and together with biscuits, you have a hot meal for a cold Winter's day. As supper, the fat will help keep you warm later.
My grand daddy was a cook in the Army for WWI. For the concentrated soup, tinned pork, and the biscuits, you put the pork in the pot and render the fat and brown the pork, then you crumble up the soup into a pot and bring it to the boil for a bit, then toss in some crumbled up biscuits. As you can imagine mostly ate once a day, big meal was breakfast and you ate the 'breakfast foods' for dinner. If you had coffee? or chocolate, you saved that for the night watch because both have caffeine and trying to stay awake on post at 2 am after marching all day and not getting any sleep for a few days meant staying awake and alert on post at stupid o'clock was a Herculean task that needed all the caffeine you could find.
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking that lol... couldn't imagine perfectly good paper and cardboard going to waste NOT warming the food and yourself in that kind of bitter cold.
one thing to understand with the German and or the soviet troops these rations were truly short term rations you were meant to get 90% of your meals from the mess wagon German units had cooks as part of the structure of a company. the same can be said about the American K rations they were calorie deficient. they were only meant to feed a guy 5-7 days max it was assumed by then you could have a field kitchen set up. tho the C ration was better but still was a 20 days max. this was WW1 thinking as kitchens were always close to the lines. it wasn't till the generation of rations after the war (at least for the US and most of NATO) that rations were designed to be lived off with the MCI
I wouldn’t think the Union would have such embellishment on rations. Or it would be a situation like “ Comrade. You get ration box after assault (chambering 7.62x54R) or else”
I remember hearing in my Russian/Asian history course about the food that was brought in during the war. I remember my Mom telling me the food America sent over was repackaged, but according to my history teacher the Russians didn't bother too much with it. In that movie about a Russian soldier trying to get home on a short furlough the scene where he's riding in a train with cans of food, the food is marked with made in U.S.A and he was surprised by this, but the Russians knew where the food was coming from. My Professor even said a Russian woman came up to him and thanked him for his country keeping them alive during the war. One show I watched claimed that when the Russians ate corned beef they called it "opening the second front" because it came from the West. Moreover, in regards to Spam, one country got so much Spam sent to it, the country got called "Spam Land." It might have been England, because they were reliant on America for supplies, but it could also have been Russia, I don't remember.
Lard isn't tasty, but it's very calorie dense. Keeps you warm from the caloric intake. You're supposed to smear the lard on your biscuits, much like we put butter on them.
Remember, you are use to everyday foods. When starving for days, the food at that time was king's dinner. Plus, other countries have different foods that is common.
I reed in a war's Novels of Sven Hassel that the soviet MRE was a plain brick cover by aluminium paper. Inside threre were a mix of meet, potatoes and vegetables smashed in a pourdrig ready to eat coold or warm with a horrible tast. Latter the soviet received tons of cans from USA and GB.
I took one of those fishing with me as an overnight meal while on vacation night fishing. I had the forethought to pack a tea stepper and an espit stove. Everyone went fishing and I had to tend the fire ( which made the stove kinda ancillary). Turns out I like stronger tea and once heated over the fire the water I had was absolutely perfect for everything. I used part of 1 biscuit pack for the soup and to make it just better. I used the other pack to eat with the spam by spooning it out of the can. It was a really nice meal on a 55 degree night in the fall. ( I used a big army metal cup for the soup so I could drink it as I needed a free hand to feed the fire )
A few tips on the compressed dehydrated soup , break it up In boiling water , crumble some of the hard tack in the soup , and Learn how to use both the P -38 and the can opener that you used . I can open that thirty seconds with a P-38 and remove the cover without sharp edges with that can opener . Canned pork stew has lots of fat and gelatin. And needs to be heated . Both provide both protein and fats to keep you warm , and the hard tack provides carbs . Most Russians don't drink tea with milk or cream. A quick look at the bag of grain tells that it is not cous cous but millet
@@RK-cj4oc war isnt all that "healthy" either lol. Not to mention there were people starving to death that were boiling & eating shoe leather, wallpaper paste, rats, sawdust & all kinds of other shit not fit for human consumption. There were even some rare reports of cannibalism in Stalingrad & Moscow. Along with not so rare reports of people being murdered for their ration cards. There are so many people today with all their specialized "diets" & other types of "thats not healthy" nonsense that most likely wouldnt have survived at any other time in history especially during times of war
@@RK-cj4oc You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. These items are actually cooked in the tins. Somehow reheating them in water at relatively low temps is a problem?
@@PaleoCon2008 Bro. Why are you reacting like a b@tch on her period? Of course i dont know what i am talking about thats why i asked a question. Do you not see the "?"
Saw a photo some years back that depicted a man and woman in Stallingrad with a street vending table set up on the sidewalk. Along with a few shoes, some nondescript canned goods and what appeared to be some type of textile cloth. What really got my attention was other items on display and being sold as food: human body parts, a man's head, and an entire corpse of a toddler.
it was from the 1922 famine, it wasn't Stalingrad, it was Samara (about 800km north), the Soviets used the famine as a reason to begin liquidating church property to sell for food from surrounding countries with the US providing a huge chunk of the famine relief
There is more common ration - field kitchens. They were very popular during WW2 and unless you're on a constant retreat, they are always more or less available in organized rear. One man from frontline squad is designated as food carrier, who goes to field kitchen everyday, fills his food container and goes back, from which he distributes to soldiers whatever kitchen cooked + bag of breads.
My history research indicates this box would have been a feast for the typical Soviet Red Army grunt, IF, he could get ahold of one. In reality, Soviet Red Army field cooking and field rations were on a basis of catch-can-catch, that is, you get what you get. Soviet priority was on manufacturing tanks, airplanes, and infantry weapons. Food was second priority. The Red Army still relied on the tried and true portable, two-wheel field kitchen, often pulled by two horses. The design outline was boxy with a stovepipe sticking out in the middle. This was a common design also shared by the German Army and other European armies like the Finnish Army. It was simple, straightforward, and easy-to-use. This common military field kitchen design dated far back into the late 19th century. The most common meal cooked from these Soviet and German type field kitchens were stews, soups, porridges but small amounts of bread could be baked as well. Usually that was left up to specialized field bakeries. When it came to field hard rations, again, it was pretty much, you get what you can get for the Russians, including, "grandmother's rations", a euphemism for foraging food supplies from farmers, whether they provided it willingly or not. A WW2 Red Army infantryman's MRE might well be handed two potatoes, pre-cooked if he was lucky, or else had to boil or roast it himself. There might be bread, whether wheat or rye. There might be kasha porridge or the ubiquitous Russian red beet soup. If he was lucky he might get tossed a can or sardines or potted meat. Often cans of meat would be Spam or Luncheon Meat provided by American Lend Lease. The Soviets would never give even the least of credit to the Americans for World War Two Lend-Lease. Most Russian citizens today would be surprised to learn about American Lend-Lease. The only thing the typical Russian citizen might know is the Amerikanskie cans of meat (Spam or Luncheon Meat) because the Soviet government couldn't hide that and all the Red Army soldiers talked about being lucky to get a can of American meat from time to time and this info passed down into the generations. Soviet home industry really didn't have the wherewithal to manufacture the hundreds of millions of these boxed rations for the massive, 12-million man Red Army. What we see here is probably an 'idealized' version of the intended Soviet Red Army MRE ration of WW2, when it could be manufactured in some quantity. How so? Look at all the WW2 news reels of the Soviet Red Army soldiers when they're in camp, lounging, relaxing with comrades, smiling for the cameraman. To date I haven't seen a single instance of a Red Army soldier holding a box of these rations. Not one man ever held up a box for the camera. Unbelievably, the Soviets didn't even consider the propaganda value of trucking in a small quantity of these MRE boxes, handing them out and then letting cameramen film them for the Soviet People to see back home that their loved ones were being properly fed. P.S. Side note on Spam. Spam saw widespread distribution around the world during WW2. Along with Spam were innumerable cans of its competitor, cans of Luncheon Meat. Spam had a better taste because the processed meat included deboned pork shoulder and ham. Luncheon Meat tended to be mostly ground-up, processed pork meat. As a result, luncheon meat proved blander to the taste than Spam. American servicemen were fed equal parts of Spam and Luncheon Meat but as a result conflated all canned meat with Spam. So Spam received a lot of ridicule at the end of the war and continues to do so today. The British People also received American Spam and Luncheon Meat in large quantities. Elder British people recount how grateful their elders were to receive ANY meat during the strict British rationing in wartime. But like the Americans, at the end of the war, Spam entered British public consciousness as 'blah, yuk, gross' meat, which it still holds today. Spam still does a bang-up business today selling tens of millions of cans of Spam to places like, Hawaii, even Alaska, American Samoa, other Pacific nations, South Korea, even some parts of the U.S., reputedly Louisiana. Spam is not going away any time soon.
Wehrmacht chocolate is an acquired taste. My dad was in the Kriegsmarine, and then marine infantry. He used to buy the stuff all the time and I've eaten it all my life.
I flew helicopters in RVN.. One of the C rations we ate was roast beef chunks with potatoes and gravy.. We often ate them cold, while flying from LZ to LZ.. Depending on which end of the can you opened, there would be about 1/2" of solid grease that had to be scraped off before you could eat it. Yeah.. real tasty..
I went to Russia 10 years ago From what I saw Russians are a tough people, very basic and have a halrously brutal sence of humor The older Russians didnt seem to like Americans at all. But the group of college age Russians i met in a coffee shop were friendly and wanted to know all about America To be honest i liked the Russians i met One part of the trip ill always remember was how hard and unforgiving the land scape looked from the plane flying from Frankfurt Germany to Moscow, I tried to imagine the horror of being a German soldier stuck in that frozen desolation in the winter in ww 2
Hunger will do strange things to a man. I went on a starvation diet earlier this year. Lost almost 50 pounds in 6 weeks. When you're hungry, and I'm talking REALLY hungry, not just uncomfortable, food begins to occupy your thoughts 24/7.
The "spam" is just canned meat called tushonka. My understanding is one of the Russian officer involved with Lend lease asked if the US could make a canned meat product that the Russians were more used to, and gave canniners his grandmother's recipe for a starting point
That's one cool repro! I haven't seen this one, where did you get it? The chocolate would be a very rare find/treat back then. Thanks for showing this one and your editing is great.
Funnily enough, Chuikov (Or maybe Rodimstev? Can't remember which at the moment) talk about how at one point in the battle the only ration stores they had left on the west bank was chocolate, so some portion of the 62nd Army was surviving off of chocolate for a little while.
Fry up the spam with broken up crackers, add some of the soup stock, you get yourself a stew.. The porridge is probably millet, it has the russian word "kasha" on it, meaning approx. grains.
Late to the party...thank you for your service. But, please do some basic research. Tinfoil was in use during WWII. Granted, aluminum was being diverted to aircraft manufacturing but it was still available for food preservation. The actual Wehrmacht chocolate ration had caffeine and Prevertin added to it.
The US government is still making those cans of pork and a bigger canned version. Heat then drain the fat. Then mixed the drained pork with your favorite barbeque sauce. Makes for a great tasty sandwich!
I try to keep it authentic to my own combat experiences and the experiences of soldiers back then. No time for heating in combat, and very foolish to do anything involving open flame. The soldiers who ate them, did so cold. Some of the German memoirs from Stalingrad talk about eating frozen potatoes and horse meat.
@@MREScout I can't argue with that. But what about just throwing the MRE inside your coat next to your core for a couple of hours before chow time? I think a few soldiers must have employed this method, but I am not sure of course and no offense intended.
For those that wonder how Soviet Soldiers heated water... They drove the Germans nuts by building fires! They knew the Germans were always short on Ammo, and they weren't going to waste it shooting at fires! Meanwhile... The Soviets usually Did have plenty of Ammo, so sometimes they would put out German fires. Just to mess with them.
It's a hardtack not a buscuit i guess if my english is correct. It's not quite authentic but that pea soup and porridge packings along with tea were neat and looked quite authentic. As it's a pea soup you suposed to boil it untill the brick is almost like porridge consistency.
I knew a disabled Russian immigrant who lived in Columbia, MD about 10 yrs ago who was partially paralyzed in one arm from service to his country and he always talked about how when he was in the Russian army they fed them cans of lard and loaves of bread. He came to the US in the 80's so he could get medical treatment he couldn't get at home as a vet. I used to work on his car for food because he could barely pay his bills and lived on section 8 and survived on food stamps and nobody else would help him. So to keep him from feeling like a beggar I would accept loaves of home made tomato bread as payment and my boss would always turn his head when he saw me helping the old man. It really feels good helping others in need.
You were doing God's work, Brother! You will be exalted because of your kindness...
Boy good comment !
I have degree in Military History. Sorry Sgt. But , you got a base run..😊
That's awesome you were actually kind to someone you weren't required to. Most people today only care about their immediate wants. Also kinda funny cause so many ameris today eat lard and bread all the time by choice
@@ThommyofThennnobody eats lard in America
the tea is Georgian, that meat is actually pork stew called "Tushonka" and you are definitely supposed to heat it up, that porridge is millet, that soup is pea soup, and "Наркомпищепром СССР" means "People's Committee of the Food Industry of the USSR" in russian. Written above it is ""Fly the highest, fastest and farthest!" The tea, 50 grams provided, you are only supposed to use about one teaspoon at a time.
I presume you speak/read/write Russian? I have another Russian video coming up, want to do some translating for me? For a fee of course.
@@MREScout what's it about?
@@The_Unkillable actually 2 videos. One Russian IMP and one Russian non-military arctic ration. Got a lot translated with google, but I'm guessing that it's not exact. Not everything can be "canned meat with vegtables"
@@MREScout and you don't have to pay me, i don't mind but keep in mind it might be a while before I reply or message back
Sounds like you needed to do for ham and scrambled eggs in US C rations. AWFUL cold, but not so bad if heated.
I knew someone who was in the red army in WWII he said most of the food consisted of
crackers ( whole wheat or rye )
buckwheat ( extremely common ) Kasha
lentil pees or more rarely beans
salt meat ( pork or beef ) usually in a can or big slabs hard as a rock to share amongst a group
oats
dried vegetables ( onions , carrots, potatoes , mushrooms , beats , garlic , peppers , corn , cabbage all reduced to small flakes all mixed together )
oil or margarine
dried fruits generally chopped up and mixed
canned fish, generally small fish in some sort of oil and salt
tea or cocoa
sugar or molasses
Vodka or other alcohol never much but maybe a shoot or 2
mystery meat dried sausage, not much
on extremely rare occasions, cheeses
canned meat like spam or corn beef in a can ( the can was particular valuable even after the meat was gone for use as a drinking cup
There was also Rice during Ghalkin-Gol conflicts like a soup with rice and meat with gelly
The mystery meat was gelly meat made from sheep organs
And many of these things were US manufactured, a fact soviets never really acknowledged...
@@laurentdevaux5617 Were Mongolia manufactured
I find your description much more credible. Not that I’m saying that this ration was invented, and it’s easy to believe that there were American made products on it; but I bet it never reached not even 5% of the troops, and even so I believe it was promptly taken by the Officers. Soldiers had to make do with what you describe.
I find exceedingly hard to believe that the 62nd Soviet Army in Stalingrad had such exquisite rations at its disposal. Many Soviet soldiers often spent more than a full day without eating because there was nothing to eat. And the Soviet Army was never very adept of issuing Combat Rations, preferring to forward a wheeled campaign kitchen instead, like the Wehrmacht normally did. They were lucky enough if they could eat a bowl of soup in the entire day.
My Wife’s Grand Mother was Soviet Ukrainian and was deployed to Stalingrad as a nurse at her own request, to the Volga East Bank. They lacked everything, even after taking the offensive. They almost had no rations, medicines or even bandages. German wounded admitted in their campaign hospitals were immediately finished with air injections, she recounted. Likewise for Soviet soldiers in hopeless condition. It was by no means as smooth and organised as described by many Soviet writers. It was far worse.
After taking part in the greatest battle of all times, my Wife’s Grand Mother quietly passed away alone on the _22nd June_ 2012 - exactly 71 years to the day after the invasion - in her shack in an Ukrainian village, surrounded by her chickens and no doubt contemplating for the very last time the portrait she always kept by her side: her Husband in Uniform, Colonel of the Soviet Army, killed in the first week of the war. I carefully keep a smaller _Sepia_ copy of the same picture. Her Husband’s grave was only found in 1961; that means twenty years of daily agony. Her brother also died in the Winter War.
Can you imagine how this woman suffered? Well, now here we go again, my Stepson was mobilized for the second time into the Ukrainian Army and is fighting the Russian savages as I write. Unbelievable.
I will pray for your stepson.
🇬🇧❤ 🇺🇦
What a brave woman and men they were, fighting fascists/nazis at their own behest. If only the oligarchies/ruling elite now didn’t order poor working class people who were likely propagandized by the post-90s western russian capitalists to fight tirelessly for power’s sake, uselessly instead of bravely like our ancestors
Of course not. Chocolate? What is chocolate?
duart... absolutely right. I live 30 miles from the Russian border here in the Baltics and my partner's grandfather fought for the Red army at Stalingrad. There's no way rations such as these were issued , no way. This is pure fantasy !
I heard that the reason why the canned SPAM in the Russian rations looks like that is because the Russians requested that the SPAM being sent to them be fattier to be better suited to the extreme weather conditions there.
No lie, the drawings on the wrapping paper were no less than divine. I loved them, they looked great.
The Russian troops fighting inside the city (62nd army) rarely got the good stuff. 1000 calories would have been a good day. The Army general complained that his troops were often getting 500 calories a day.
500 cal a day would kill you, the first deaths by inanition recorded by the German army in the pocket was when their ration was at 1000 cal a day.
@@memorydancer Very true, if it was every day. I feel 1000 calories would kill you eventually, if you were marching all the time.
Check out my personal 2nd favorite MRE ever here. th-cam.com/video/2_1tw_uu_xo/w-d-xo.html
First impression from that YUGE chocolate bar was that this was a top-flight ration. On every point it matches or beats the German one you covered, though your reaction to the canned meat product in each makes me think they were interchangeable. Sorry to see that you didn't eat the porridge, but that was a lot of food. Merry Christmas 2022! =^[.]^=
A lot of food? That's your three meals for one day.
I'm actually really surprised by how much content was in that box. The Soviet soldier if they got one of these was very lucky. It would keep you alive and be a big welcome in the hell of it all.
when emergency rations contain more and better food than what you actually eat daily
Straw was indeed used in packaging. Shredded newspaper was also sometimes used.
@@mysterystainontherug6290soldiers are expending way more calories than an average worker
Crumble the compressed peas soup into your cooking pot, add cold water, heat and boil for 10 minutes. This soup was, and still is, produced in Ukraine. Enni Foods in Odessa still makes a modern version of it under the brand 'Aunt Sonja'. Still the same shape, just a greater variety of flavours.
As for the chocolate, wrapping it in metal foil is authentic. If not protected from air, chocolate goes rancid. Even though aluminum foil is not a modern invention they would have used stanniol, tin foil, back then.
The word Kasha simply means mush. Your package, according to your description, contains groats, coarsely broken wheat, but it could altenatively contain buckwheat (looking like tiny beechnuts) or millet (tiny round pearls) instead. They all would go under the name of Kasha. To cook kasha, just cover the grains with water, add some salt and cook until the water is absorbed, add the canned meat, mix well and heat thoroughly. It doesnt look appealing, but tastes great and is a filling and fortifying meal. It still is a staple in russian, ukrainian, lithuanian and polish rations today.
The canned meat is Tushonka, canned chunks of pork, usually cut from the shoulder for some fat. At the bottom of the can you will find a bayleaf, which gives it its destinctive flavour.
@@Craigx71 Bro be silent if you dont know anything.
Ukraine was a Republic within the USSR.
@@Craigx71 The production plant was, and still is, in Odessa. Odessa lies in Ukraine which was the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic from 1922 until 1991 when it declared independence. The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR or short Soviet Union).
@@RK-cj4oc of course. My Wife was born Soviet, then she became Ukrainian, then Portuguese after marrying me. 😂 My Stepson was Soviet for six days, then he became Ukrainian. 😂😂
I recently had a Lithuanian mre with groats with pork and it was amazing. Crackers with aniseed or something in there was the best mre I've had so far. Old world cooking can absolutely be the best after a long walk or hicking. Try one there about £10
a WWII Wehrmacht vet once told me that in 1942, in Ukraine, they captured a bunch of Red Army fresh-conscripted soldiers. In their breadbags they found, for each man, half a pound of sawdust bread, an ounce of salt, and a tin cup filled with a handful of sunflower seeds and grain (yes, raw grain). That was all their chow, unchanged since Napoleon's era. The germans couldn't believe their eyes.
In a post-war interview to a Red Army veteran on the BBC (I think), the old man said that Soviet reinforcements which disembarked from trains at Stalingrad, were not issued any ration at all: the reasoning of Red Army generals was that, since the average survival of a soviet soldier in Stalingrad was 8-9 hours, it wasn't worth the while to feed them: they simply died too quickly. Only those who survived 24 hours, would receive some canned meat and tea. However, through the entire war, Red Army soldiers had a solid reputation of constantly hungry and pillaging, looking for chow wherever they could find it. Only vodka was issued in plenty, and it was considered a good way to forget hunger!
200ML of vodka daily, plus extra before a charge. Right before Kursk, the Germans handed out schnapps as well. A last drink before you die. All we had in Iraq was crappy near beer.
@@MREScout right. Schnaps was the "secret weapon" of German and Austrian stormtroopers too; in Italian and French army, brandy was given for the same purposes. British army used rum. And the fun fact is that, in ordinary circumstances, spirits were severely forbidden in every army (and they still are) but they were quite handy, when troops' morale needed a boost.
@@mariorossi-cj2flThe more you drink, the more it takes to make you carefree.
I've seen radio equipment built in Montreal with Cyrillic control markings, obviously for the Soviets in WW2.
That strong tea is typical of Russia and it wouldn't surpruise me if it gave you more energy than coffee, it's called Chifir. And the russian spam that was originally imported from the US was quickly adopted and produced locally and became a staple known as Tushonka.
to cook chifir, it is not enough to put a lot of tea in boiling water. Tea should be brewed for at least 30 minutes
I don't think chifir was consumed by soldiers. It's known to be an improvised prisoner drink, which they use to get a sort of high. It is also quite unhealthy, especially damaging the teeth.
my great grand uncle fought on the eastern front in ww2 with the Finnish army she said on many occasions that the Russian rations were desirable to the Finns as they were better than theirs and the way to eat them was to cook the canned meat in boiling water with the pea soup and biscuits
It looks pretty good, but given the chaos of the Russian front, I can't help but wonder how many soldiers actually got these neatly packaged rations on anything approaching a regular basis.
Almost never. I’ve read a few books by Russian WW2 vets. A big deal was some black bread and some tea.
Nope, hardly anyone got the MRE packaged, rear service NCOs would just provide all the stuff in bulk from storage boxes. And only pilots and submarine crew would get chocolade.
@@MREScout Might be fun to review of the fabled Russian MRE they are issuing to Russian units in Ukraine right now. The one they are complaining about that are said to have expired in 2014/15 (though, in actuality have a fifteen year shelf life) I have a Russian friend who sent me one with a 2011 expiry, and I had it, all of it, and it was just fine. Quite a complex and diverse MRE if you can get it. Have to assume with current full mobilisation, they are ramping up production of brand new supplies, now older stock has been used.
Apparently the second wave of troops to attack had no ration packs, instead their Commisars told them to take them from their dead comrades who were mown down in the first wave. Joke.
4 years of chaos? Isn't that too much?)
Really miss your regular updates! Life will do life tho, and gotta make that money just saying your channel rocks!
Suggest learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet. Many Russian words have cognates in English. Saw the words soup and chocolate, and the root word concentrate. Doubt the average Soviet soldier in WWII ever saw such a ration pack. They were fed from field kitchens, or just handed whatever was available, or whatever they could scrounge. The meat in the can is called "Tushonka", specially prepared for the Soviets. As much fat as possible was provided to help keep out the cold. Rations improved after 1943, as the Red Army moved forward.
Crush some of those crackers and fry them in the spam fat and you’ve got some gourmet stuff
HOBO style... is there any other way?
I imagine one would use the shredded paper to light the fire that heats all that stuff up. I'd be putting that can on the hottest engine block I could find, or boil the can with the water I needed hot. I've been digging this channel! Fascinating!
Bet that grassy packing material was used for kindling. Maybe even planned for it.
Soviet Army ass wipe?
My great grandfather, bless him, served under the 248th Rifle Division in the defense of Stalingrad and Moscow. He used to tell me about the food in the military during his time in the war. The soup was very often mixed with what little they could scrape together at the time. The biscuits, he said, were always mediocre. The method that they are cooked has not changed since the first world war. The spam may seem unpleasant but during the duress of war most soldiers were so shaken and hungry that they did not mind.
A lot of the lend lease aircaft came through Fairbanks on their way to The USSR
Well as Palin said. You can see Russia from her house
@@MREScout she didn't tho, that was an SNL spoof
The US provided weapons, vehicles, and lots of food in the form of Spam when the USSR was teetering during the first couple of years. By 1944 the Red Army was completely mobilized with American trucks. I'm amazed in that we fought a 2 front war with each item and soldier having to be shipped thousands of miles over two oceans and common GI issue items were considered luxuries by amazed Wehrmacht soldiers that captured or found supply drops; yet we still had plenty domestically. German POWs here in the States had it pretty good-getting a weekly movie and beer ration along with being allowed to buy things by mail order from the Sears-Roebuck catalog like window curtains.
How are the Russians able to keep their soldiers fed on 1,000 calories a day?
The answer is,the average Russian soldier in Stalingrad do not live long enough for malnutrition to become a problem
Very true, wasn't just in Stalingrad either. Average life expectancy of a Soviet infantryman was 2 weeks.
If you were a good soldier you could take your fallen enemies rations, and if you weren't a good soldier you wouldn't need them...
Dude, I don’t know why I was directed here, however I watched your intro “NCO with combat time” and as a ret LTC, please believe when I say that I want you to succeed. Here are a few suggestions if you want to keep people watching. Your ENTIRE channel is about rations, and from your script I glean that, like this CCCP one, can come from around the world; please invest in an app that will translate using your phone’s camera. It got repetitive hearing “I don’t know what this says” that says I did some prep, however, maybe not as thorough as a 5 paragraph opord. Culturally, I know a significant number of Russian and Ukrainian friends who get excited by the lard/fat in pork and beef products. When it is cooked down it’s surprisingly delicious. Lastly, it may have helped if you had broken up the soup and porridge blocks to speed the process. In Stalingrad, as in the rest of the CCCP’s military, I learned that the soldiers would use their handkerchief to steep the tea. They would then carefully husband their leaves for the next time because it could be days or weeks until they had access to more. I read somewhere (crack in my company grade years & junior enlisted SGT) I read that the soldiers would “shave” the chocolate onto the biscuits and use the heat from the cooking fire to melt it like icing. You could also shave some chocolate into the tea to sweeten it up since sugar was scarce.
Look, I only looked at you this hard because I want to be successful, with that, maybe move the microphone a little farther away from you to minimise any residual sound as you enjoy the chow.
I think you are on to something and I will subscribe and look for your other videos.
de Oppreso Liber
is this what the "unboxing" stuff people like? i just realized i can't watch those but this helps me calm the mind to fall asleep. very interesting and calming
" Comrade new soldier! Before allowed to eat rations we will destroy panzer, half track or kubelwagon...while in flames you will heat water for tea and soup and cook your Tushonka.....This is how the glorious comrades will do this...."
Not a single step back Comrades.
A bit stupid stereotypes 🤷🏻♂️
Same propaganda used on Ruzzian mobiks in Ukraine now 🤣🤣
Definitely love the editing in your videos man
I totally agree😁🤣👍
The Pork Tashonka definitely needs heated. The fat will liquify properly. Much better with rice or potatoes.
tUshonka
The u tuber using genuine period ration packs wins the day
Cook up the soup (thick) .. add the spam and together with biscuits, you have a hot meal for a cold Winter's day. As supper, the fat will help keep you warm later.
My grand daddy was a cook in the Army for WWI. For the concentrated soup, tinned pork, and the biscuits, you put the pork in the pot and render the fat and brown the pork, then you crumble up the soup into a pot and bring it to the boil for a bit, then toss in some crumbled up biscuits. As you can imagine mostly ate once a day, big meal was breakfast and you ate the 'breakfast foods' for dinner. If you had coffee? or chocolate, you saved that for the night watch because both have caffeine and trying to stay awake on post at 2 am after marching all day and not getting any sleep for a few days meant staying awake and alert on post at stupid o'clock was a Herculean task that needed all the caffeine you could find.
Another brilliant video
Love your work
Thanks for posting
The packaging was probably to start a fire
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking that lol... couldn't imagine perfectly good paper and cardboard going to waste NOT warming the food and yourself in that kind of bitter cold.
one thing to understand with the German and or the soviet troops these rations were truly short term rations you were meant to get 90% of your meals from the mess wagon German units had cooks as part of the structure of a company. the same can be said about the American K rations they were calorie deficient. they were only meant to feed a guy 5-7 days max it was assumed by then you could have a field kitchen set up. tho the C ration was better but still was a 20 days max. this was WW1 thinking as kitchens were always close to the lines. it wasn't till the generation of rations after the war (at least for the US and most of NATO) that rations were designed to be lived off with the MCI
I wouldn’t think the Union would have such embellishment on rations. Or it would be a situation like “ Comrade. You get ration box after assault (chambering 7.62x54R) or else”
You know, form the title, I was expecting two potatoes and a old boot.
Hollywood is NOT a source of historicalm truth. Grow up. Remember Russians WON.
I remember hearing in my Russian/Asian history course about the food that was brought in during the war. I remember my Mom telling me the food America sent over was repackaged, but according to my history teacher the Russians didn't bother too much with it. In that movie about a Russian soldier trying to get home on a short furlough the scene where he's riding in a train with cans of food, the food is marked with made in U.S.A and he was surprised by this, but the Russians knew where the food was coming from. My Professor even said a Russian woman came up to him and thanked him for his country keeping them alive during the war. One show I watched claimed that when the Russians ate corned beef they called it "opening the second front" because it came from the West. Moreover, in regards to Spam, one country got so much Spam sent to it, the country got called "Spam Land." It might have been England, because they were reliant on America for supplies, but it could also have been Russia, I don't remember.
Monty Python. Spam, spam and beans, spam and eggs, Spam spam Spam & Spam...
Apparently Russians were told, USA meant Death to Hitler (if you used Russian words).
Lard isn't tasty, but it's very calorie dense. Keeps you warm from the caloric intake. You're supposed to smear the lard on your biscuits, much like we put butter on them.
Remember, you are use to everyday foods. When starving for days, the food at that time was king's dinner. Plus, other countries have different foods that is common.
The tea was strong because of how much you put in your cup. Think about how much tea is in a tea bag.
About 1.5 - 2 grams
All that is good if you have the time to cook it properly..the meat and lard in it was good to help you not loose to much weight. Lard is good.
Food and military history together, can't go wrong.
It really bothers me that you never seem to heat the main dish.
That lard is useful if you are not going to eat it. I bet if you put some Tabasco on that canned pig it be better.
Dude you deserve a medal for taste testing that Comrade. very intereting video, my man.
A pinch of tea is enough in a cup when it is on the purely leaf form. Tea bags are mild so that it is tolerable.
It doesn't look so good, but i bet hunger was the sauce that made it worth eating.
Love the vids! Keep them coming!
Thanks, working on a few things now. Hope to have at least 1 out this week.
Good deal brother! Awesome stuff! Can’t wait to see what you have next!
Food in soviet union was like dark humor, some people get it..... Some dont.
I reed in a war's Novels of Sven Hassel that the soviet MRE was a plain brick cover by aluminium paper. Inside threre were a mix of meet, potatoes and vegetables smashed in a pourdrig ready to eat coold or warm with a horrible tast. Latter the soviet received tons of cans from USA and GB.
Absolutely bullshit, plz believe me 😂🤷🏻♂️
I took one of those fishing with me as an overnight meal while on vacation night fishing. I had the forethought to pack a tea stepper and an espit stove. Everyone went fishing and I had to tend the fire ( which made the stove kinda ancillary). Turns out I like stronger tea and once heated over the fire the water I had was absolutely perfect for everything. I used part of 1 biscuit pack for the soup and to make it just better. I used the other pack to eat with the spam by spooning it out of the can. It was a really nice meal on a 55 degree night in the fall. ( I used a big army metal cup for the soup so I could drink it as I needed a free hand to feed the fire )
A few tips on the compressed dehydrated soup , break it up In boiling water , crumble some of the hard tack in the soup , and Learn how to use both the P -38 and the can opener that you used . I can open that thirty seconds with a P-38 and remove the cover without sharp edges with that can opener . Canned pork stew has lots of fat and gelatin. And needs to be heated . Both provide both protein and fats to keep you warm , and the hard tack provides carbs . Most Russians don't drink tea with milk or cream.
A quick look at the bag of grain tells that it is not cous cous but millet
We always just dropped the unopened tins in a pot of boiling water. It helps the flavor immensely.
Isnt the inside lined with sealant? Thats sounds insanely unhealthy.
@@RK-cj4oc war isnt all that "healthy" either lol. Not to mention there were people starving to death that were boiling & eating shoe leather, wallpaper paste, rats, sawdust & all kinds of other shit not fit for human consumption. There were even some rare reports of cannibalism in Stalingrad & Moscow. Along with not so rare reports of people being murdered for their ration cards. There are so many people today with all their specialized "diets" & other types of "thats not healthy" nonsense that most likely wouldnt have survived at any other time in history especially during times of war
@@RK-cj4oc boiling it is fine, cooking in some cans can be. an issue.. not gonna kill you like the emenies bullets or dying of starvation though.
@@RK-cj4oc You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. These items are actually cooked in the tins. Somehow reheating them in water at relatively low temps is a problem?
@@PaleoCon2008 Bro. Why are you reacting like a b@tch on her period?
Of course i dont know what i am talking about thats why i asked a question.
Do you not see the "?"
That stew looks like it comes with its own tapeworm
Extra protein.
Saw a photo some years back that depicted a man and woman in Stallingrad with a street vending table set up on the sidewalk. Along with a few shoes, some nondescript canned goods and what appeared to be some type of textile cloth. What really got my attention was other items on display and being sold as food: human body parts, a man's head, and an entire corpse of a toddler.
Yikes
That was actually from before the war, IIRC. But yeah: Yikes!
Perhaps Stalingrad?
@@OscarReyes-ud4vz I think it was Stallingrad. A possible result of Stallin's decree that no evacuations could take place, civilian or armed forces.
it was from the 1922 famine, it wasn't Stalingrad, it was Samara (about 800km north), the Soviets used the famine as a reason to begin liquidating church property to sell for food from surrounding countries with the US providing a huge chunk of the famine relief
There is more common ration - field kitchens.
They were very popular during WW2 and unless you're on a constant retreat, they are always more or less available in organized rear. One man from frontline squad is designated as food carrier, who goes to field kitchen everyday, fills his food container and goes back, from which he distributes to soldiers whatever kitchen cooked + bag of breads.
Looks like a special holiday ration, that they wouldn't get every day.
I think it’s an idealized ration. For the most part they didn’t get fed. If you lived a day or two, then they’d worry about feeding you.
My history research indicates this box would have been a feast for the typical Soviet Red Army grunt, IF, he could get ahold of one. In reality, Soviet Red Army field cooking and field rations were on a basis of catch-can-catch, that is, you get what you get. Soviet priority was on manufacturing tanks, airplanes, and infantry weapons. Food was second priority.
The Red Army still relied on the tried and true portable, two-wheel field kitchen, often pulled by two horses. The design outline was boxy with a stovepipe sticking out in the middle. This was a common design also shared by the German Army and other European armies like the Finnish Army. It was simple, straightforward, and easy-to-use. This common military field kitchen design dated far back into the late 19th century. The most common meal cooked from these Soviet and German type field kitchens were stews, soups, porridges but small amounts of bread could be baked as well. Usually that was left up to specialized field bakeries.
When it came to field hard rations, again, it was pretty much, you get what you can get for the Russians, including, "grandmother's rations", a euphemism for foraging food supplies from farmers, whether they provided it willingly or not. A WW2 Red Army infantryman's MRE might well be handed two potatoes, pre-cooked if he was lucky, or else had to boil or roast it himself. There might be bread, whether wheat or rye. There might be kasha porridge or the ubiquitous Russian red beet soup. If he was lucky he might get tossed a can or sardines or potted meat. Often cans of meat would be Spam or Luncheon Meat provided by American Lend Lease. The Soviets would never give even the least of credit to the Americans for World War Two Lend-Lease. Most Russian citizens today would be surprised to learn about American Lend-Lease. The only thing the typical Russian citizen might know is the Amerikanskie cans of meat (Spam or Luncheon Meat) because the Soviet government couldn't hide that and all the Red Army soldiers talked about being lucky to get a can of American meat from time to time and this info passed down into the generations.
Soviet home industry really didn't have the wherewithal to manufacture the hundreds of millions of these boxed rations for the massive, 12-million man Red Army. What we see here is probably an 'idealized' version of the intended Soviet Red Army MRE ration of WW2, when it could be manufactured in some quantity.
How so? Look at all the WW2 news reels of the Soviet Red Army soldiers when they're in camp, lounging, relaxing with comrades, smiling for the cameraman. To date I haven't seen a single instance of a Red Army soldier holding a box of these rations. Not one man ever held up a box for the camera. Unbelievably, the Soviets didn't even consider the propaganda value of trucking in a small quantity of these MRE boxes, handing them out and then letting cameramen film them for the Soviet People to see back home that their loved ones were being properly fed.
P.S. Side note on Spam. Spam saw widespread distribution around the world during WW2. Along with Spam were innumerable cans of its competitor, cans of Luncheon Meat. Spam had a better taste because the processed meat included deboned pork shoulder and ham. Luncheon Meat tended to be mostly ground-up, processed pork meat. As a result, luncheon meat proved blander to the taste than Spam. American servicemen were fed equal parts of Spam and Luncheon Meat but as a result conflated all canned meat with Spam. So Spam received a lot of ridicule at the end of the war and continues to do so today. The British People also received American Spam and Luncheon Meat in large quantities. Elder British people recount how grateful their elders were to receive ANY meat during the strict British rationing in wartime. But like the Americans, at the end of the war, Spam entered British public consciousness as 'blah, yuk, gross' meat, which it still holds today.
Spam still does a bang-up business today selling tens of millions of cans of Spam to places like, Hawaii, even Alaska, American Samoa, other Pacific nations, South Korea, even some parts of the U.S., reputedly Louisiana. Spam is not going away any time soon.
Wehrmacht chocolate is an acquired taste. My dad was in the Kriegsmarine, and then marine infantry. He used to buy the stuff all the time and I've eaten it all my life.
I flew helicopters in RVN.. One of the C rations we ate was roast beef chunks with potatoes and gravy.. We often ate them cold, while flying from LZ to LZ.. Depending on which end of the can you opened, there would be about 1/2" of solid grease that had to be scraped off before you could eat it. Yeah.. real tasty..
dude your vids are top notch. love these ww2 ration reviews. great channel
It’s called kasha, a buckwheat porridge
The idea of the fat in the meat is to keep you warm and going in the extreme cold.
I went to Russia 10 years ago
From what I saw Russians are a tough people, very basic and have a halrously brutal sence of humor
The older Russians didnt seem to like Americans at all. But the group of college age Russians i met in a coffee shop were friendly and wanted to know all about America
To be honest i liked the Russians i met
One part of the trip ill always remember was how hard and unforgiving the land scape looked from the plane flying from Frankfurt Germany to Moscow, I tried to imagine the horror of being a German soldier stuck in that frozen desolation in the winter in ww 2
their was an unhealthy amount of cannibalism going on during the long 900'plus siege of stalingrad and in other area's of the rodina
Hunger will do strange things to a man. I went on a starvation diet earlier this year. Lost almost 50 pounds in 6 weeks. When you're hungry, and I'm talking REALLY hungry, not just uncomfortable, food begins to occupy your thoughts 24/7.
Dude your just not hungry enough to enjoy that fine old soviet fast foods. :)
If the Political officer asked...............everything was delicious .
Great video .
Peace , Be Free .
Those crackers would have also been great as a thickener in the soup
The Red Army slang for SPAM was 'Second Front'
Well, it certainly creates a quite a fight at the slit trenches for sure.
Take in mind a lot of ww1 and 2 rations were made to feed for two meal times or three in some cases.
The "spam" is just canned meat called tushonka. My understanding is one of the Russian officer involved with Lend lease asked if the US could make a canned meat product that the Russians were more used to, and gave canniners his grandmother's recipe for a starting point
A lot of Soviet tea and cigarettes came from the Caucasus and were notoriously strong
Use the camera feature of Google Translate to see what the packages are.
The Camo Lid is the British - Dutch DPM Camo Pattern. This is for fighting in German Woodland. Not Russia......
It looks like a interesting ration. And the can of mystery meat. I used to do do re enactment for ww2 period and we had these reproduction rations.
USA: Our MRE ration has 4000 kcal
Russia: Liars, nobody can eat 10 kg of potatoes!
That's one cool repro! I haven't seen this one, where did you get it? The chocolate would be a very rare find/treat back then. Thanks for showing this one and your editing is great.
Thanks. It came from Belarus.
@@MREScout but where?
Funnily enough, Chuikov (Or maybe Rodimstev? Can't remember which at the moment) talk about how at one point in the battle the only ration stores they had left on the west bank was chocolate, so some portion of the 62nd Army was surviving off of chocolate for a little while.
Wish I had some tushenka right now man
on Amazon
Fry up the spam with broken up crackers, add some of the soup stock, you get yourself a stew.. The porridge is probably millet, it has the russian word "kasha" on it, meaning approx. grains.
That dog S spam gives you like 1,000,000 calories. It's 3 g of actual meat and 500 of just straight fat.
This was making me hungry.
The spam can, looks bad. We have a reseller in Maine called Marden's. I bought a can of ham and it looked just like that.
Late to the party...thank you for your service. But, please do some basic research. Tinfoil was in use during WWII. Granted, aluminum was being diverted to aircraft manufacturing but it was still available for food preservation. The actual Wehrmacht chocolate ration had caffeine and Prevertin added to it.
The US government is still making those cans of pork and a bigger canned version. Heat then drain the fat. Then mixed the drained pork with your favorite barbeque sauce.
Makes for a great tasty sandwich!
Dude you must heats the chow up before you make a full declaration of it's lack.
I try to keep it authentic to my own combat experiences and the experiences of soldiers back then. No time for heating in combat, and very foolish to do anything involving open flame. The soldiers who ate them, did so cold. Some of the German memoirs from Stalingrad talk about eating frozen potatoes and horse meat.
@@MREScout I can't argue with that. But what about just throwing the MRE inside your coat next to your core for a couple of hours before chow time? I think a few soldiers must have employed this method, but I am not sure of course and no offense intended.
Love the M3 half tracks on the Russian biscuits. Yes you would have pictures. Lots of Russians would not be able to read. Grain porridge, kasha.
The pristine packaging throws the vibes off
Very good video, well done.
"Knowing life was uncertain, lets start with the dessert." LOL
For those that wonder how Soviet Soldiers heated water... They drove the Germans nuts by building fires! They knew the Germans were always short on Ammo, and they weren't going to waste it shooting at fires! Meanwhile... The Soviets usually Did have plenty of Ammo, so sometimes they would put out German fires. Just to mess with them.
Was expecting some tobacco
On a good day a shot of vodka
It's a hardtack not a buscuit i guess if my english is correct. It's not quite authentic but that pea soup and porridge packings along with tea were neat and looked quite authentic. As it's a pea soup you suposed to boil it untill the brick is almost like porridge consistency.
You're supposed to cook the soup in boiling water for about 5 minutes. And that's just cooked pork, not spam it's called tashonka(spelling?)
The grain says KASHA on the package which is Buckwheat.
I love that it includes the land&lease canned beef.
Great content. Subbed.
Where did you get the ration?? I am a reenactor and would love to find!
Many couldn’t get these rations. For civilians in stalingrad they were lucky to get even a crumb of bread.