Siberian Winter - It's Time To Eat The Horses

KHATASS, U.S.S.R. - Winter has come to Siberia.

The last wheat has been laboriously gathered, and the potatoes have been scraped from the unyielding earth by hand. The first snow has dusted the landscape. Vast piles of freshly chopped firewood stand next to log cabins in readiness for the numbing cold about to descend.

It's time to start eating the horses.

Plagued by food shortages, Siberia gets a key part of its meat supply, which is dwindling, from the horse slaughter when most other kinds of food must be imported from other regions for the duration of nine-month winter.

At State Farm No. 69 here, nearly half the herd of 360 horses is being gathered this year for sale to state butchers. As part of an annual rite of winter common to most collectives, the farm waits until October to start the horse roundup, because the weather is now so cold that unrefrigerated meat will not spoil.

"The young ones taste the best," said Prokovia Feodorov, the collective farm's director. About 140 young horses will be sold to the state, he said. Siberians have an intense fondness for horse meat and, as is true with every other kind of food, there is rarely any horse meat available in the state shops or even in the open market.

In a paradox left over from the days of communism's centrally controlled economy, the state pays farmers 12 rubles a kilogram (2.2 pounds) for horses on the hoof but sells the meat for only 4 rubles a kilogram, a dramatic loss that also helps to explain why meat is so rarely available.

Although horse meat has become something of a traditional Siberian winter delicacy, in these hard times state farms have a distinct advantage in raising the animals, because horses need almost no human maintenance. They feed themselves almost year round, foraging for grass even under deep snow.

At the Khatass State Farm, only four men are needed to look after the entire herd of horses. In contrast, the farm employs 1,000 people to care for 3,500 cows in winter.

"Our equipment won't work in the cold weather," Feodorov explained. "Everything from milking to feeding the cows must be done by hand."

Such inefficiency helps explain why virtually all food, from butter to macaroni, is rationed in the Yakutia region. In contrast, in Moscow only sugar and vodka are rationed, although meat, vegetables, fruit and most staples are in short supply in the capital, as in other Soviet cities.

"The collective farms only gave the state 50 percent of what was planned," said Anatoly Dolgorukov, a City Council specialist on the food supply in Yakutsk, the capital of the region. "That's why we have to bring in food from as far away as Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk."

Each resident is entitled to buy only 3.3 pounds of meat a month in the state shops. Some meat is available without ration cards on the open market, but it costs 10 rubles, about half a day's average pay, for just one pound.

Rice, butter, cooking oil, sugar, salami, flour, salt and fat are all on the ration list. Even wooden matches have to be purchased with a ration card.

While the prices in the state stores are much lower than on the open market, there are long lines of two or more hours for food in the big shops.

"My family grew vegetables during the summer on our apartment terrace, just to save something for the winter," said Vladimir Tayurksy, deputy editor of the newspaper Yakutia. "Everything is in short supply."

Yakutsk residents complain frequently that ration cards have been copied by private entrepreneurs and are now available for five rubles on the black market.

Dolgorukov said that while the city of Yakutsk, about 20 miles from the farm, has only 230,000 residents, more than 460,000 cards were turned in for the month of August. As a result, the state's food allotment often runs out by the 15th of the month.

Regional officials said the shortages are so acute that without horse meat, there would be almost nothing to eat in many of the small villages in the Yakutsk region.