Bulletin of Semashko National Research Institute of Public HealthBulletin of Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health2415-84102415-8429FSSBI «N.A. Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health»275810.25742/NRIPH.2024.02.018Научная статьяThe food problem in the USSR in the post—war 1946—1948SerebryanyRoman S.niiimramn@mail.ruhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2328-2931N. A. Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health04062024210811429042025Copyright © 2025,2025<p>The article examines the state of food supply of the Soviet people in the recovery period after the Great Patriotic War in 19461948. It is shown that, along with the primary goal of restoring cities and villages destroyed by Nazi Germany, the national economy, the task of feeding people and saving them from starvation was no less important. At the same time, the strategy and measures implemented by the Soviet government for this purpose have a stable negative assessment in historiography. However, a number of authors believe that with the advent of declassified data, the problem needs an objective and impartial study. The presented work reveals the priorities of the state in the rehabilitation of the national economy, insufficient measures to restore the food industry and, consequently, to supply food to the population. The conclusions of researchers who consider the allocation of minimal resources by the state to combat hunger to be a forced measure due to the need, in particular, to spend money on the prevention of external threats are supported. Various opinions of researchers on the causes of hunger are given. The scale of the famine with huge victims is emphasized. The significance of the introduction of the card system, the only possible way out of the existing plight at that terrible time, is demonstrated. An explanation is given for the contradictory views of scientists on the meaning of monetary reform, depending on the time of writing and their vision of the events of those distant and tragic years. The narrative of the events held by the Soviet government in those years, their negative and positive sides, in particular uncompromising Bolshevism, manifested in a number of regions, turning into a negative outcome, is presented. Data on the nutritional status of children are presented, using the example of the Kuibyshev region, typical for the whole country, the difference in the duration of hunger in the USSR as a whole and in individual regions. The problem of food supply to the population and the state of nutrition of the population, unlike other studies on this topic, has been subjected to a comprehensive analysis in the whole country and in the context of individual regions</p>historynutritionUSSRfamine of 1946—1948card systemmonetary reformchildrenfoodmortalityисторияпитаниеСССР, голод 1946—1948гг.карточная системаденежная реформадетипродовольствиесмертность1.Volkov I.M. Drought, famine 1946 — 1947. History of the USSR. [Istoriya SSSR]. 1991;(4):3—19 (in Russian).2.3.Perkovsky A.L., Pirozhkov S.I. Demographic losses of the population of the Ukrainian SSR in the 40s. Ukrainian Historical Journal. [Ukrainskijj istoricheskijj zhurnal]. 1990;(2):18—34 (in Russian).4.5.Kondrashin V.V. Three Soviet famines. In: Agrarian development and food policy of Russia in the XIII—XX centuries: history and modernity. 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