Promotion of Wild Food Plant Use Diversity in the Soviet Union, 1922–1991

Abstract

In the Soviet Union, wild food played a secondary role in diet (as cultivated species dominated). Yet the authorities eventually acknowledged their importance as diet diversifiers and a safety reservoir, and started to promote their use through various means, including publishing books on the use of wild food plants. These government publications appeared during a specific time, and therefore, we mapped all centralized publications in order to understand the dynamics of the promotion of wild-plant-related knowledge. For deeper analysis, we selected a sample of 12 books promoting wild food plants, and compared the taxa and uses represented in these works, which fall into two key periods: during World War II (1941–1943) and after the war (1953–1989). A total of 323 plant taxa belonging to 69 plant families were named, of which Rosaceae had the highest number of proposed food uses, prompting the reader to explore the use of borderland species. Most diverse food uses were attributed to Sorbus aucuparia, followed by Rosa and Vaccinium oxycoccos. Wartime books had fewer taxa with less variety, with a clear preference for staple food and substitutes, while post-war books promoted desserts and alcoholic drinks.

Rowanberry—A Source of Bioactive Compounds and Their Biopharmaceutical Properties

“…In a study conducted in Russia on wild dietary plants, Sorbus aucuparia had the most numerous proposed dietary usages, followed by Rosa canina L. and Vaccinium oxycoccos L. [ 15 ].…”

Practicing Historical Ecology : Methods for the Collection, Analysis, and Integration of Interdisciplinary Historical Data

“…By studying historical ethnobotanical literature from the interwar period, it is clear that many communities from the Republic of Moldova (at that time called Bessarabia and was a part of the Romanian Kingdom) had incredibly rich ethnobotanical knowledge and very elaborate receipes for the preparation of medicinal teas to treat different illnesses. When such cases are encountered, it is mandatory that the researcher try to identify the influence of external sources in local intergenerationally transmitted knowledge, especially when the rest of the community considers certain persons as local experts (see Bexultanova et al 2022, Mattalia et al 2020). The existence of local experts specialized in medicinal plants with external knowledge sources (books, magazines) is a recent reality in (south-eastern) European rural communities, but researchers should not underestimate the traditions of peasant herbalists that might still exist in some European regions.…”

Foraging Practices and Sustainable Management of Wild Food Resources in Europe: A Systematic Review

“…Furthermore, two articles analyze plant availability instead of interviewing people [53][54][55], while some others analyze historical sources and literature to assess wild plant use [51,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. As for the characteristics of the studied territory, most of the selected articles focused on a well-defined rural area, again with some exceptions: some focused on urban areas [53,[62][63][64] or food markets [44,46,47], while others analyzed more generally different areas of a country [43,44,47,49,50,52,58,59,61,[65][66][67][68]. The articles selected for the systematic review, together with the aforementioned features and the specific area of study, are listed in Appendix A.…”

“…Policies and national support for businesses can influence the extent of foraging practices [85]. Some authors reported that state-induced procurement has historically played a role in keeping foraging practices alive [51,68,132]. As it will be further discussed in the next session, centralized procurement could lead to misleading results.…”