The return of Yang Mingzhi gave the design bureau strong vitality and creativity.
Today's design bureau not only has more than 20 female design bureau employees, but also has an exclusive canteen for the design bureau, and also hired two Russian aunts.
They are standard Russian aunts. Both of them are wearing very traditional large Russian-style aprons. To keep out the cold, they are dressed very stocky. In fact, they are not fat, but they have a lot of fat on their faces, and most of them are wrapped in burlap.
The face is dressed up to give a very traditional image.
The number of personnel has increased. Including security personnel, the total number of members of the design bureau is already seventy. To cook for so many people, just one Anne is completely insufficient.
Even adding two full-time cooks, the labor intensity is still very high.
Yang Mingzhi finished training the new and old designers, and then explained the work in the future, as well as promoting or paying attention to certain people.
At this point, he felt that he could finally take a break, not to mention that his hunger was already very strong.
Dinner time finally arrived.
Snowfall has hit almost the entire Siberian region. Now that the snowfall has stopped, the roads around the design bureau are still covered with snow and trampled by people passing by. In fact, no one intends to clear the snow quickly, because it is unnecessary. Soon.
The snowfall will continue, and only when the snow melts in spring will the snow clearing work really begin.
Yang Mingzhi's leather boots have spikes underneath. A pair of shoes weighs nearly three kilograms. Fortunately, the metal spikes enhance the grip and are very suitable for walking in the snow.
Since night has fallen, all the street lights in the Academy of Sciences campus are powered on, and the design bureau's own lighting system is still operating normally. Because of the snow, the world is brighter.
Through the light, Yang Mingzhi saw the smoke rising from the chimney of the canteen and smelled the aroma of food.
He couldn't help but ask Popov: "What's for dinner today? It's the same as before."
"No! This situation is very good." Popov looked really happy.
"Oh? Do they not only provide beef, but also more?"
"Of course. The ration given to us by our superiors is still five kilograms of beef per day. Even if we now have more staff, it is still five kilograms."
"Ah? Aren't the rations actually reduced? Why are you happy?"
"Because new varieties have been added, the sugar we drink has changed dramatically during this period, ah... it's really delicious."
Is it because he drank the delicious soup that Popov, who is not young, is so happy?
What's so special about the soup? It's just a stew of dried vegetables, sauerkraut, dried mushrooms and minced beef, especially the potatoes, which have already been stewed into a sauce. The Russians seem to understand soup simply.
thick miso soup.
Popov obviously knew what the soup was tonight, but he just didn't say it. Yang Mingzhi didn't care, so he went to find out.
A large wood-carving room with an area of 200 square meters is the canteen for all the staff of the design bureau. After entering the room, Yang Mingzhi did not think it was very big. The main reason was that there were so many people. It was obviously crowded with more than 60 people eating at the same time. Unfortunately,
This is your own decision, you can only endure the crowding.
People entered the room one after another, bringing their own tableware and waiting for today's dinner.
Yang Mingzhi took a look, but he didn't see his wife. Thinking about it, it's not appropriate for his wife to walk around in the snow with a full belly. Although she is a strong girl, she must be taken good care of now.
Dinner looks the same as before. One portion will be delivered directly to his home. Yang Mingzhi also has a simple idea. He will not have dinner with everyone in the cafeteria today. He will take his own portion and go directly home with his long-lost wife.
Eat like a family should.
After everyone had finished cooking, all they had to do was bang their knives and forks on the wooden or metal plates and bends, and shout a few jingles to urge dinner.
After a while, two strong aunts from the independent kitchen came to the cafeteria carrying a pole and a large iron bucket full of thick soup. In an instant, the sweet aroma filled the whole room.
"Ah! It's sugar! What's going on? They actually provide sugar?!"
Yang Mingzhi boasts that his sense of smell is infallible. He smelled the smell of sucrose.
He quickly asked Popov: "What kind of soup is that? Did they put sugar in it? I smelled some special smell."
"Ah, you...your nose is better than the best hunting dog." Popov joked, "There is indeed sucrose in it, and they put sugar-extracting ingredients in it."
"Is it sugar cane? Huh? When did the Soviet Union have sugar cane?"
When Yang Mingzhi thinks of sucrose, he naturally thinks of sugar cane. Unfortunately, even in peacetime, there is no area in the Soviet Union that can grow sugar cane.
Popov almost laughed loudly, but he suppressed his excitement before explaining: "It's sugar beets! Sugar beets from southern Siberia, they are harvested a little later than wheat. You know, the winter here is long and cold, so
Don't expect to eat any vegetables in winter. Beet is the raw material for sugar extraction and is also a rare vegetable. I think the superiors may think that if 20,000 people in the Academy of Sciences eat soup made from dried vegetables and sauerkraut every day, their spirits will simply collapse. So.
I think we’ll be eating beet and beef soup every day for a long time to come.”
"Wow! Is it beet and beef soup? I really haven't tasted it before."
If that is the case, wouldn’t the soup be very sweet?
Dinner has arrived, and all the diners have their own customary seats, so everyone is arranged vertically, row by row, to receive their meals, and the whole room is in order.
Today's dinner is rye bread and beet and beef soup. Nowadays, such a simple meal has a very high standard, even much higher than the previous standard. Yang Mingzhi saw clearly the amount of black bread everyone received,
Russians have always regarded dinner as their main meal, so this meal is the most important. Regardless of men or women, everyone receives 500 grams of bread!
The energy of rye is no lower than that of wheat. Five hundred grams of rye bread can provide people with up to 1,800 calories, plus a large bowl of comprehensive soup rich in potato starch and beef. It is just one dinner, according to the Design Bureau
Personnel can meet a person's energy needs throughout the day.
Everyone also needs to eat breakfast and lunch. Although they are not as sumptuous as dinner, taken together, it is no problem for each person to eat 3,000 calories a day.
Bread is the last word! Yang Mingzhi casually heard the news and understood the standards of the Novosibirsk Oblast authorities for Academy of Sciences personnel.
The Soviet Union implemented a rationing system, which was the most difficult situation. Scientific workers and high-level technical workers enjoyed the highest food rations. Among them, the staff of the Academy of Sciences were the highest-ranking. Just bread as a staple food, each person's daily ration was
Up to one kilogram.
Yang Mingzhi knew very well what kind of superior treatment this was. According to the Soviet army's standards, a soldier performing heavy physical combat must be rationed one kilogram of bread. Of course, that was only an ideal situation. The real situation was that the Soviet Union
The military logistics department does not have that much capability. The rations for frontline soldiers are quite happy if they can eat 2,000 calories a day.
My subordinates actually live a happy life. Everyone can legally eat 4,000 calories a day. Although the weather is getting colder and colder, people's calorie consumption will be very high. Even so, everyone will eat too much. In the long run,
If this continues, everyone will inevitably gain weight.
So what? In today’s world, if you can eat as much as you can legally, then eat as much as you can.
Yang Mingzhi got the soup quickly, and it had a really complex texture. The soup tasted salty and sweet, but the overall taste was of course still sweet. He could easily distinguish the chopped beets in the thick soup, and couldn't help but think about something more.
"Beets should be the only raw material that can be used to extract sugar in the Soviet Union now and in the future!"
"They can provide me with this. I'm afraid it's not because of Umov's love for the Academy of Sciences, but because the Soviet Union can provide this to many institutions."
"Is it really because the autumn harvest is over that the entire Soviet Union has entered a brief period of relative food affluence? Or has the food aid from the Americans arrived in large quantities?"
Beet is the only raw material for sugar production in the Soviet Union.
The sugar beet cultivation industry in the Soviet Union began at the end of the 19th century and had a history of less than sixty years in 1942. Although its cultivation history in the Soviet Union was not that long, when it began to be cultivated, the planting area expanded quite rapidly.
By 1929, the Soviet Union began to be self-sufficient in sugar beet seeds, and soon sugar beets were planted from the Karelian Isthmus to Armenia.
Among them, the vast Ukrainian region and the central black soil area represented by the Voronezh region are very suitable for growing sugar beets. In addition, Armenia, the Far East, and Siberia also have some areas with suitable climate conditions where sugar beets can be grown.
But the best sugar beets come from Ukraine, which is worthy of the title of the Soviet Union’s great granary, and the sugar content of sugar beets there is often as high as 17%! The yield per hectare can easily exceed 20 tons.
Up to now, the German army has occupied all of Ukraine, and most of the "Central Black Soil Zone" of Soviet Russia has also been occupied. Some areas are still very stalemate battlefields.
Karelia and the area south of Leningrad are now occupied by Finnish and German troops.
The Soviet Union lost 84% of its sugar beet production areas, and the cane sugar processing industry suffered a huge blow.
However, the results of the 1942 autumn harvest were far better than the Soviet authorities imagined. The current Soviet-controlled areas still have a population of 100 million people, and the output of grain exceeds 30 million tons.
What kind of concept is this? Before the war broke out, the total population of the Soviet Union increased to 190 million due to the recovery of western Belarus, and the grain harvest in the autumn of 1940 was as high as 80 million.
At that time, the Soviet Union had not implemented rationing, and the authorities were confident about the autumn harvest of 1941 because there was enough food.
The war broke out and has lasted for more than a year now.
In 1942, the Soviet Union's autumn grain harvest reached 33 million tons. It was feasible to feed over 100 million people with this amount of grain until the next autumn harvest. The Soviet Union implemented a rationing system. Among the more than 100 million Soviet citizens,
There are 80 million residents and soldiers who are allocated food by the state. In other words, up to now, there are still one-fifth of the Soviet citizens in the Soviet-controlled areas, and they do not need to worry about food. Most of these people are from Central Asia
Regional residents have surplus food in their collective farms or in their own homes.
The vast majority of civilians mostly feed on potatoes, with bread as a side dish. However, a considerable number of frontline troops with stable supplies of supplies have sufficient supplies of bread and potatoes every day.
The assistance from allies in this winter was a timely help. Throughout September, as many as 300,000 tons of food were successfully transported to the Soviet Union. They were all pure military rations and were delivered directly to front-line soldiers.
Without food from its allies, the Soviet Union could still survive this winter smoothly. After all, compared to the nearly twenty successful transportations by the Allied transport fleet in October, the total amount of food successfully transported ashore was less than one hundred tons.
Comparing the pure grain harvest in the Soviet Union this year, the difference between the two is more than thirty times.
The allies' food is really the icing on the cake, but the biggest feature of the allies' food aid is that they are almost ready-to-eat rations, most of which are canned foods that are rich in calories and very shelf-stable. The officers and soldiers on the front line are very satisfied with eating such food.
It is already mid-October, and the Soviet Union has also completed its autumn grain harvest statistics. Most areas of the Soviet Union have essentially entered winter. Although the controlled area is still very large, unfortunately only a few areas can still wait for the final round.
The potato harvest has been completed. As for other areas, they have no choice but to enter the fallow period.
Sugar beets have also been harvested and counted, and the authorities immediately issued a procurement quota.
That was a purchase indicator based on the consumption of various types of grain in 1943.
Among the 33 million tons of autumn grain harvest, which consisted of wheat, rye, oats, even highland barley, and even corn, nearly 13 million tons were purchased as the most basic military grain reserves for the whole year of 1943. In addition,
, and also made targets to purchase 1.2 million tons of sugar beet, 1.3 million tons of red meat, 2.4 million tons of milk and dairy products.
Of course, plans can never keep up with changes. Relevant departments have also made plans. It is said that if the consumption of military rations in 1943 exceeds the budget, they will increase the amount purchased from granaries in various places.
After all, most of the food control rights in the Soviet-controlled areas were in the hands of the authorities and in the hands of local granaries. Four-fifths of the residents were controlled by the rationing system, so each locality adjusted and formulated their own policies in line with the spirit of their superiors.
The principle of rationing.
There are four main crops in Novosibirsk Oblast: wheat, rye, potatoes and sugar beets.
The rations for the majority of civilians are almost all potatoes, and they only eat bread occasionally, and beets are even more rare.
Why? There is a small sugar beet-producing area in Novosibirsk Oblast, and the harvest there is not something that ordinary people can enjoy.
But the Academy of Sciences is not an ordinary institution. Its relocation to Novosibirsk will definitely bring powerful benefits to the future development of local scientific undertakings. They are also the "most powerful brains" of the Soviet Union. Umov, who holds regional power, naturally
The staff of the Academy of Sciences must be given higher treatment. At the very least, it must be the same as during peacetime.