russian history 46 (2019) 29-52 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/18763316-04601002 brill.com/ruhi Milk and Milk Packaging in the Soviet Union: Technologies of Production and Consumption, 1950s–70s Elena Kochetkova National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia lena-kochetkova2008@yandex.ru Abstract This article examines the nature of Soviet consumption and technological develop- ment through the history of milk and milk packaging between the 1950s and 1970s. Based on published and archival materials, the paper focuses on the role that milk played in Soviet nutrition and the role that packaging played in Soviet consumption. The article also examines the modernization of technology for making packaging as well as technology transfer from the West. It concludes that, as in many Western coun- tries, both the Soviet state and Soviet specialists saw it as important to increase the consumption of milk after the war, but the meaning of milk changed. Milk, a basic staple for nutrition, became a matter of science and specialists sought to explain its positive effects. In addition, due to the development of the paper and chemical indus- tries, new forms of milk packaging, more practical in their uses, were introduced in the West. Soviet leaders and specialists saw the new packaging as a desirable feature of modernity, but were unsuccessful in launching domestic technologies for manufactur- ing such packaging. While experimenting with domestic technology, Soviet producers also received foreign equipment for making milk packaging. Nevertheless, the capacity of such foreign equipment was not enough to satisfy growing demand and the con- sumption of “modern packaging” remained lower than in the West until the introduc- tion of capitalism and, with it, foreign companies into the Russian market in the 1990s. Keywords milk – packaging – Soviet – consumption – modernity – technology – Cold War Downloaded from Brill.com04/08/2019 08:25:35AM by pavlovaa.margarita@gmail.com via Central European University