History.
The historical milestone of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution - in the eyes of millions of workers, of all advanced mankind - is the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the flourishing and power of the countries of the socialist commonwealth and among them the pioneer country of the bright future of mankind - the USSR.
The peoples of the Soviet Union, closely united under the leadership of the Communist Party, showing mass heroism at all stages of the half-century journey, unrecognizably changed the image of their homeland, turned it into a powerful socialist power.
What our country has become in the field of industrial potential is evidenced, first of all, by the rates and volumes of growth of the entire social product, national income, production funds of the national economy and the level of development of the heavy industry, which determines the technical progress.
But even in the sectors designed to ensure steady growth of material welfare and satisfaction of the people's needs, there have been tremendous successes in the technical re-equipment, renovation, and multiplication of fixed assets, high rates of quantitative and qualitative growth in the production of consumer goods.
Among the branches of the second subdivision, a significant role belongs to the food industry, which is the material and technical base of food production, which, as K. Marx pointed out, "is the very first condition of life of direct producers and any products in general ..."
What was the food industry of our country in the pre-revolutionary years, what kind of legacy did the Soviet power get from landowner-capitalist Russia?
With the rapid development of capitalism in the post-reform period, the growth of the urban population created prerequisites for the organization of industrial production of food products. However, the level of development of the pre-revolutionary food industry, despite the availability of raw materials, much of which was exported, was extremely low. This was explained by the low standard of living of the workers, the semi-subsistence economy of the village, women's free labor in the household and several other features that narrowed the production and marketing of factory-made food products. There were no economic conditions for the creation of developed food industry. The technical backwardness of the Tsarist Russian industry made it impossible to provide the food industry with equipment and mechanisms, energy, cold, etc. The food industry of old Russia consisted of more than 300 thousand small and unproductive enterprises (mills, groats, butter chops, bakeries, confectionery and sausage workshops, etc.). Including censorship enterprises (enterprises that used the mechanical engine with or without 16 workers and 30 workers) were 4719, but the majority of these enterprises were based on primitive technology.
The most underdeveloped were livestock processing industries. The slaughter of livestock was mainly carried out in small slaughterhouses without mechanical engines. The whole-milk industry, except a few dairy plants in large cities, was almost non-existent. Milk was processed into butter at small enterprises using manual or horse traction.
In the fishing industry, fishing was carried out by the most primitive means; processing, mainly by ambassadors, was carried out by stingy traders. Many other food industries were also extremely underdeveloped and underdeveloped.
However, although the majority of food products were produced by small, technically backward enterprises, in the pre-revolutionary period there were branches of food industry represented by large capitalist enterprises of the factory type with a high level of technology for that time.
In his paper "Development of Capitalism in Russia," V. I. Lenin cites several data indicating a significant share of large enterprises. V. I. Lenin noted that in the development of some sectors of the pre-revolutionary food industry "... it is necessary to distinguish between two processes: on the one hand, the emergence of new small breeders... on the other hand, the concentration of production in large steam factories" 1.
By 1913, the pre-revolutionary food industry had already clearly revealed the predominant role of large factories in the production of several food industries. Thus, 4.5 thousand large commodity mills processed almost 50% of food grain in the country.
Industrial type factories accounted for 87.4% of the total processing of oilseeds. In the sugar industry, most of the beet processing capacities belonged to large enterprises, the share of small factories was expressed by only a few percent.
Under the special patronage of landowners and bourgeois tops of tsarist Russia, other excise industries, such as distillery and tobacco, also developed. The main role was played by distilleries, which were a part of the landowners' households, and by the fact that the distilleries and tobacco plants were the most important ones.