Cartoon
This old cartoon was an old Soviet Russia style with the goal of persuading people to cherish the bread that they have. At the time of famine, food was considered to be the most important of all goods, especially bread. In food lines, people liked to get as many things as possible. It was mostly on a first come first serve basis, where whoever got to a bread store would often come there and get a lot of the bread to themselves and their families. With the man in the cartoon buying out a lot of the bread off of the shelves, he goes back home and emptiest is full bread box, filled with stale and hard bread. In fact the same man uses a piece of stale hard bread to hammer in a nail, emphasizing on the fact the the bread was in fact rock hard. The paper that the lady gave him at the register actually had the main theme of the short film stating: “ Cherish bread, it is our life”.
BBC Article
The BBC article talked about the import importance of smelling bread in Russian culture. This practice comes from the fact that Russians like to have little snacks after drinking some vodka to avoid getting drunk faster as well as washing down the hard taste of the vodka itself. With bread being a staple in Russian diet, it was often used as the snack to eat right after you drink vodka. A lot of Russians actually believe that by smelling the bread they achieve the same effect of absorbing strong taste of the vodka. The smelling ritual also came from the fact that during famine, there wasn’t a lot of bread to be eaten, so they preserved one loaf of bread to pass around the table while everyone drank vodka during their get togethers.
The idea of famine is presented through the lens of the several revolutions that Russia went through overthrowing the royal family, soviet regime and so on. Famine was often present in every one of those conflicts and revolutions.